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Extreme events, such as those caused by climate change, economic or geopolitical shocks, and pest or disease epidemics, threaten global food security. The complexity of causation, as well as the myriad ways that an event, or a sequence of events, creates cascading and systemic impacts, poses significant challenges to food systems research and policy alike. To identify priority food security risks and research opportunities, we asked experts from a range of fields and geographies to describe key threats to global food security over the next two decades and to suggest key research questions and gaps on this topic. Here, we present a prioritization of threats to global food security from extreme events, as well as emerging research questions that highlight the conceptual and practical challenges that exist in designing, adopting, and governing resilient food systems. We hope that these findings help in directing research funding and resources toward food system transformations needed to help society tackle major food system risks and food insecurity under extreme events.

AbstractObjective:Disaster impact databases are important resources for informing research, policy, and decision making. Therefore, understanding the underpinning methodology of data collection used by the databases, how they differ, and quality indicators of the data recorded is essential in ensuring that their use as reference points is valid.Methods:The Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub (AIDRKH) is an open-source platform supported by government to inform disaster management practice. A comparative descriptive review of the Disaster Mapper (hosted at AIDRKH) and the international Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) was undertaken to identify differences in how Australian disasters are captured and measured.Results:The results show substantial variation in identification and classification of disasters across hazard impacts and hazard types and a lack of data structure for the systematic reporting of contextual and impact variables.Conclusions:These differences may have implications for reporting, academic analysis, and thus knowledge management informing disaster prevention and response policy or plans. Consistency in reporting methods based on international classification standards is recommended to improve the validity and usefulness of this Australian database.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked health systems worldwide, with visible impacts on intensive care units and emergency departments. The concept of “surge capacity” should be analyzed within this context as this crisis could be seen as an opportunity to improve the knowledge base of intensive care units and emergency departments.