GCRI · Nexus Ecosystem

Spatial intelligenceObservations, models and their uncertainty in one view

Network and Core

Two layers of shared computing serve Nexus Consortiums. The Nexus Network is a durable federation of retained national and regional sites. Nexus Core is the temporary backbone assembled each year from contributed, authorized computing, networks and teams, then stood down. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) coordinates both through GCRI Canada. Part of Nexus Ecosystem.

01Workspace

The working screen for Network and Core.

Country programme console

Network and Core · Country programme A · Month 4 · Example interface, not a record

National Model in buildGCRI · GCRI

Programme

  1. Formationdossier
  2. National Deskstaffed
  3. National Modelbuild
  4. Portfoliooptions
  5. Annual missiontest
  6. Reportedition

System coupling

dependency strength, 0 to 100

Placeholder strengths a National Model replaces with estimates.

Evidence ledger

Reservoir storageOBSERVEDNational Desk
Hydropower outputMODELLEDTechnical office
Grid stressSCENARIOTechnical office
Hospital continuityESTIMATEDHealth ministry

GCRI · Country programme consoleCountry programme console, in outline: domain structure with placeholder names and illustrative values, not a record.

02Layers

Persistent, temporary and durable.

LayerWhat it holds
Persistent coordinationAuthorized institutions and projects; resource catalogues and qualification; identity, rights and methods; retained evidence and publication records
Temporary technical environmentQualified networking and high-performance computing; accelerators, cloud and edge capacity; secure data spaces and cyber ranges; simulation environments and technical support
Durable outputsTrained teams and tested configurations; reproducible workloads and software; datasets where permitted and evaluation results; improvements to institutional practice

The Network is not a permanent global supercomputer, and the Core is not installed, standing capacity.

03Geography

Habitat condition worldwide.

Vegetation, land cover, plant growth and true-colour imagery across the world, from NASA GIBS. Each layer carries its own date.

The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.

Layers 4

Habitat condition, for this page

Latest available

NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth

Loading the latest NASA imagery.

Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.

Habitat condition, framed on World. Layers as NASA publishes them, each with its own date.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.

Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA JPL OPERA DIST-ALERT · NASA HLS S30Sources and licences

  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • MODIS land products (vegetation indices, gross primary production, land cover), NASA LP DAAC and LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), VIIRS 375 m active fire product, NASA LANCE; vector tiles via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
  • Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). ODbL
  • Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
  • Globe: MapLibre GL JS 6.9.1, BSD-3-Clause, © MapLibre contributors.
  • Observed (EO): NASA JPL OPERA DIST-ALERT (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026). We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
  • Observed (EO): NASA HLS S30 (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026). We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
  • NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
  • Optional layers (6 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.

Layers and dates

  • Enhanced vegetation index, rolling 8 days: MODIS Terra EVI, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
  • Land cover type (IGBP), yearly: MODIS Terra and Aqua land cover (MCD12Q1), NASA LP DAAC · 2024
  • Gross primary production, 8-day total: MODIS Aqua GPP (MYD17), NASA LP DAAC · 30 Sep 2026
  • True colour: VIIRS NOAA-20 corrected reflectance, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
  • Active fires and thermal anomalies, last day: VIIRS NOAA-20 375 m (FIRMS), NASA LANCE FIRMS · 13 Oct 2026
  • Vegetation greenness (NDVI), rolling 8 days: MODIS Terra NDVI, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026

04Resource states

Seven states, none of which implies the next.

A contributed resource moves through offered, qualified, reserved, allocated, accessible, measured and accepted. An offer is never counted as reserved, consumed or funded, and neither membership nor sponsorship secures an allocation.

  • Owner and operating contact
  • Legal and use constraints, location and availability window
  • Hardware, software, interconnect, memory and storage profile
  • Security state, supported workloads and measured limits
  • Return and sanitisation requirements
05Twin and cascade simulator

Model Network and Core as a system. Run the cascade.

Assembled from the Nexus Standards area profile Global and systemic risk: the hazards it names, the systems and sectors that carry the loss, the controls that dampen it and the data that observe it. Choose the components, pick an initiating hazard and step through the cascade. The Map view places the run on an example geography with open data. Every coupling weight is a stated assumption you can change. A teaching model, not a forecast, an assessment or a certification.

Hazards

  • Dam failure
  • Financial contagion
  • River flood (set off downstream)
  • Flash flood (set off downstream)
  • Mass displacement (set off downstream)
  • Widespread power outage (set off downstream)
  • Water supply shortfall (set off downstream)
  • Sovereign debt crisis (set off downstream)
  • Currency crisis (set off downstream)

Controls

  • NS-0 Constitution and principles
  • NS-3 Risk record UNIs (grammar, legacy crosswalk, allocation authority)
  • NS-9 Contextual UNIs (deployments, instances, programme instances)
  • NS-10 Policies and clauses (machine-readable obligations: definition, binding, evaluation and enforcement)
  • NS-11 Verification and monitoring (evidence, attestations, zero-trust conformance observation)
  • NS-14 Conformance and crosswalk to external standards
  • NRS-H120 Hazard family: Structural fragility of interconnected systems (NHS-1 sys.fragility)
  • NRS-C6 Systemic and cascading risk
  • NRS-H61 Hazard family: Cascading failure (NHS-1 sys.cascade)
  • NRS-H62 Hazard family: Compound and multi-hazard events (NHS-1 sys.compound)
  • NRS-H94 Hazard family: Systemic cyber events (NHS-1 cyber.systemic-cyber)
  • NRS-H60 Hazard family: Supply-chain and flow disruption (NHS-1 sys.supply-chain)

Observation

  • INFORM Risk Index (listed for reference)
  • World Bank Open Data and World Development Indicators API (listed for reference)
  • IMF data services (WEO, IFS, FSI via SDMX) (listed for reference)
  • Direct economic loss attributed to disasters in relation to global GDP
  • Macroeconomic Dashboard

Example geography

  • Bangladesh: 134 H3 hexagons at resolution 4
  • Night lights tonight, outages (VIIRS Day/Night Band), NASA GIBS
  • Surface water through cloud, 30 m (OPERA DSWx-S1 radar), NASA GIBS
  • Rain rate, last half hour (IMERG), NASA GIBS
  • Surface soil moisture (SMAP), NASA GIBS
06Measurement

Rules for describing capacity.

  1. 01

    State the conditions

    Publish measured capability with workload, data size, hardware, topology, precision, concurrency, software version and interval.

  2. 02

    Separate the numbers

    Keep peak, sustained, available and allocated capacity apart, and never sum hardware specifications into a performance claim.

  3. 03

    Federation is not one machine

    Describe local low-latency computing and wide-area federation separately.

  4. 04

    Count the footprint

    Track energy, cooling, water, transfers and logistics, keeping measurements apart from estimates.

07Stand-down

How the temporary Core is closed.

The proposed one-day stand-down closes new submissions, checkpoints authorized jobs, freezes the evidence manifest, revokes temporary credentials, reconciles equipment and records open exceptions. It becomes a commitment only when the annual programme records it. Review, reconciliation and corrections continue afterwards. Contributors start at Technology and infrastructure providers. The Global Risk Forum (GRF) governs the annual programme: see its Annual operating cycle.

08Questions

Questions and answers.

Is any Core capacity available now?
No allocation is open. The current service level is information and enquiries.
Does offering capacity give us a role in the programme?
An offer receives a disposition and, if suitable, a qualification record. Allocation is a separate, approved step, and an offer confers no governance role.
Is data deleted within a day of stand-down?
No such promise is made. Media are purged or retained under approved, validated rules, and review continues after stand-down.
NRNexus Reports gateway · GW-GCRI

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Nexus Reports is the Consortium's quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.

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The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation

Bring a method, a dataset or a question.

The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.

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Maps, data and figures on this site are shown for context and general information. They are not advice, forecasts or warnings; the limits of the information are set out in the Disclaimers and Data Notices.

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