Draft, not yet released. In stewardship review. Not indexed until the first approved release.

North America Regional Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: Baseline Edition, The State of North America’s Interdependent Systems.

The first annual edition of the North America regional report. It fixes the 2026 reference state of North America as a region: its member countries, the basins and grids they share, and the positions against which every quarterly edition from Q1 2027 will be measured.

Read the executive summaryStart with chapter 1Cite this report
Editor
Saeed Valadbaygi
Desk
GCRI Systems Evidence
Publisher of record
GCRI for the Nexus Consortium
Evidence close
30 September 2026
Status
Draft in stewardship review; not yet released
ReportsREG-NAM

Regional Systems Risk & Resilience Report

North America 2026

Baseline Edition 2026NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINEGCRI for the Nexus Consortium
Findings12each with its status and source
Sources50numbered, editor first
Chapters and annexes11plus the executive summary
Indicators19in the data appendix, with CSV and JSON

01 · Status

Status and boundaries.

This edition governs nothing and certifies nothing. It records where the regional evidence stood at the 2026 baseline. Every value resolves to its source or to its stated method; where neither exists, the edition says so instead of filling the gap.

Publication ID
NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0
Series alias
NR-REG-NAM-2026-BL
Identifier status
Series alias and evidence cut are provisional until the owner confirms them. No UNI is minted.
Family · class
Regional Systems Risk & Resilience · Baseline Edition (inaugural annual)
Lifecycle state
◌ DRAFT, review copy before stewardship review
Publication date
October 2026
Evidence close
30 September 2026 · cut NQ-REG-NAM-2026-Q0-1
Reproducibility
sourced values cited; analytical values reproducible from stated parameters
Access class
PUBLIC-SAFE DERIVATIVE
Review
five passes scheduled before release (in Annex C)
Designed for
strategic planning · regional risk screening · portfolio discussion · research · multilateral dialogue · public communication
Not for
government assessment · official warning · rating · certification · investment advice · underwriting · procurement · operational authorisation
Registry
record NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE · current-version pointer at release
Corrections
registry correction pathway · history in Annex C
AI use
disclosed in Annex C
Next edition
NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2027-Q1-v1.0.0 · Q1 2027
Licence
text CC BY 4.0 · data on the terms of each source
Desk identifier
Collection

02 · Key messages

What the edition finds.

Five of the questions the edition answers, each with its status. The executive summary has all of them, with their sources.

  1. Canada reported 685 Mt in 2024. The three members together emitted 7,367 Mt excluding land use on the World Bank basis. Bases differ.

    Where do emissions stand?Reported

  2. A 1909 treaty created the International Joint Commission for Canada and the United States, and a 1944 treaty sets Rio Grande and Colorado River deliveries between Mexico and the United States.

    What governs the shared rivers?Reported

  3. Canada leans on hydropower, Mexico on oil, gas and coal, and the United States on a mixed supply.

    How is electricity supplied?Reported

  4. United States pipelines sent 2.42 trillion cubic feet to Mexico in 2025.

    How tied is gas supply?Reported

  5. The Bureau of Reclamation issued its record of decision on 21 August 2026. Reservoir levels at the close are not bound.

    What governs the Colorado River after 2026?Reported

All key messages and the headline finding

03 · Contents

Eight chapters and three annexes.

  1. ·

    Executive summary

    The edition on a few pages: the abstract, the key messages, the headline finding and what each steward reads in it.

  2. 1

    Chapter 1. North America’s risk travels through shared rivers, grids and pipelines

    Part I describes systems and their couplings.

  3. 2

    Chapter 2. Key findings

    Twelve findings carry the baseline. They are grouped by system, never ranked.

  4. 3

    Chapter 3. Systems and sectors at baseline

  5. 4

    Chapter 4. Risks and capability

    Four regional risk objects open the portfolio.

  6. 5

    Chapter 5. Dry, hot summer across the Colorado and Rio Grande basins and the southern grids

    A conditional statement under stated assumptions, never a prediction.

  7. 6

    Chapter 6. Readings from the other desks

    The regional baseline is read through each steward’s lens, then once as a whole.

  8. 7

    Chapter 7. The 2027 agenda

    Eight bounded questions open the 2027 Regional Agenda.

  9. 8

    Chapter 8. Systems in depth

    One section per system: its state at evidence close, its exposures and what the operational series will watch.

  10. A

    Annex A. Methodology

    How the edition was made: methods, the model card, the evidence cut and its age, the acceptance record and the glossary.

  11. B

    Annex B. Data appendix

    The indicator set with its sources, the source registers, the licences of every kind of material and the formats of the edition.

  12. C

    Annex C. References and record

    Every source the edition rests on, the publication record, the corrections log and the open record.

List of figures (4)
  1. S.1Rio Grande deliveries, cycle ended 24 October 2025 (acre-feet)
  2. 1.1How do electricity mixes differ? Share of electricity production, 2025 (%)
  3. 1.2Couplings between the five systems
  4. 2.1Rio Grande deliveries, cycle ended 24 October 2025 (acre-feet)
List of tables (45)
  1. 1.1Coupling matrix: from the row system to the column system
  2. 1.2Pairs of systems where both directions are rated strong
  3. 3.1Each domain read in words, not scored
  4. 3.2Sectors: baseline evidence and the exposure to watch
  5. 4.1Capabilities on the ladder of evidence: listed, exists, demonstrated, tested
  6. 6.1The quarterly rhythm every edition follows
  7. 6.2Who contributes what each quarter
  8. 6.32027 regional readiness pack
  9. 6.4Standards and regulatory watch
  10. 6.5Science and assessments
  11. 6.6Institutional reports
  12. 6.7Official statistics and regional sources
  13. 6.8Industry, grid and international sources
  14. 7.1Objects proposed for the first operational quarter
  15. 7.2Universe 2027: evidence pack for the regional candidate mission
  16. 7.3Handoffs and routing
  17. 7.4Routing rules by publication class
  18. 7.5Feeds watched from Q1 2027
  19. 7.6Signals at baseline
  20. 8.1Member system cards at baseline
  21. 8.2Shared basins and seas
  22. 8.3Shared grids and gas networks
  23. 8.4Member hubs as the registry names them
  24. 8.5The regional pathway at baseline
  25. A.1Methods
  26. A.2Coupling strength scale (matrix and model card)
  27. A.3Status grammar
  28. A.4From the baseline cut to the federation cut
  29. A.5Evidence age and coverage
  30. A.6Coverage by system at baseline
  31. A.7Designed empty states: what is not bound, what would fill it and why
  32. A.8Quality dimensions at baseline
  33. A.9Publication acceptance record
  34. A.10The status every value carries
  35. A.11Series terms
  36. A.12Abbreviations used in this edition
  37. A.13Technical annex
  38. B.1Baseline indicator set
  39. B.2Baseline indicator set
  40. B.3Regional source register
  41. B.4Regional reading: North America by member country
  42. B.5North America system card
  43. B.6Licences of each kind of material
  44. B.7This edition in every format
  45. C.1Release path for this version

04 · GCRI reading

How GCRI reads this edition.

The evidence supports a coupled reading of North American risk: drought, heat and fire act on water, energy and health together. Evidence is strongest for population, the electricity mix and reservoir levels, and weakest for losses, cross-border flows and the condition of nature.

CLI-001 · WAT-005 · ENE-004 · SYS-012

Chapter 6, lenses and readings

05 · Publication record

Version, dates and contributors.

The identity of this edition as its title pages record it. A review copy has no DOI; the DOI is issued at deposit.

Publication ID
NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0
Version
1.0.0, review copy
Edition date
Evidence close
Status
Draft under stewardship review; not yet released
Editor
Saeed Valadbaygi
Publisher of record
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Licence of the text
CC BY 4.0
DOI
Issued at deposit, on release
Previous edition
none: first edition of the series
Next edition
NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2027-Q1-v1.0.0

Contributors

RoleContributionBy
ConceptualisationSeries architecture and the North America regional system modelS. Valadbaygi (ed.)
MethodologyBaseline method, dependency scoring and status grammarReports editorial team, GCRI
Investigation · data curationSource review of North America regional, national and international releases to evidence closeReports editorial team, GCRI
Writing, original draftAll chapters; AI-assisted drafting, disclosed belowEditor · editorial team
Writing, review and editingFive review passes before releaseSteward reviewers (scheduled)
VisualisationPages, figures and tables in the Nexus design standardReports editorial team, GCRI
SupervisionEdition governance, registry record and depositS. Valadbaygi (ed.)

Review before release

PassScopeByState
1Scientific and technicalGCRI · key TScheduled
2Reproducibility of analytical valuesGCRI · key TScheduled
3Public meaning and claimsThe Global Risks Forum (GRF) · key MScheduled
4Finance-readiness boundaryThe Global Risks Alliance (GRA) · key FScheduled
5Regional context and safeguardsRegional consortia · key NScheduled

AI assistance was used for drafting, consistency checks and page composition. Every number, citation and status label was checked against its source by the editorial team before freeze. No AI system is recorded as an author or a reviewer, and no AI output is printed as fact without a source.

06 · Downloads

Read it in print, take the data.

FormatWhat it isStateGet it
Complete edition, print or PDFA4 or Letter, chosen in the print dialog: cover, contents, every chapter and annex, endnotes and running heads Review copyOpen for print
Indicators, CSV19 indicators with unit, year, status and source On this pageDownload
Indicators, JSONThe same indicators with the edition’s identity and licence On this pageDownload
Findings, CSV12 findings with status, evidence-quality level and references On this pageDownload
Citation, BibTeXFor LaTeX and reference managers On this pageDownload
Citation, RISFor Zotero, EndNote and Mendeley On this pageDownload
PDF, A4 and US LetterPrinted from the edition pack in the Reports print design, with the publication ID, the evidence cut and the pack hash in its metadata; signed with its DOI at release At releaseNot yet issued
Data packageEvery table of the edition as CSV and JSON, with the citation files (CSL-JSON, BibTeX, RIS), built with the site With the editionAnnex B, data

The print and the files are produced from the same edition pack as the web pages, so they always agree. Until release they are review copies.

07 · Cite

Cite this report.

This edition is a draft in stewardship review. Cite it as a draft; the DOI and the UNI are issued at deposit, and the citation then names them.
Catalogue keyNR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE

Standards applied to NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE

Cite as

S. Valadbaygi (ed.), North America Regional Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: Baseline Edition, The State of North America’s Interdependent Systems.. Reports, Baseline Edition 2026. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) for the Nexus Consortium, Toronto, 2026. NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE. DOI at deposit.

Applied

NS-1 catalogue identity (a UNI is allocated at deposit and resolves to this record), NS-2 citation and attribution, NS-3b dataset metadata, NS-5 figures and maps, NS-12 software and AI disclosure.

Monitoring

Corrections are new versions with a published notice; the earlier version stays resolvable.

An attestation is evidence, not a certificate. Nexus Standards parts are preparatory working drafts (2026).

APA 7
Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). North America Regional Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: Baseline Edition, The State of North America’s Interdependent Systems. (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI). https://therisk.global/nexus-reports/editions/reg-nam/
Chicago
Valadbaygi, Saeed, ed. North America Regional Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: Baseline Edition, The State of North America’s Interdependent Systems.. Baseline Edition 2026. Nexus Reports NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE. Draft under review. Toronto: The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI), 2026. https://therisk.global/nexus-reports/editions/reg-nam/.
BibTeX
@techreport{NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE,
  editor      = {Valadbaygi, Saeed},
  title       = {{North America Regional Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: Baseline Edition, The State of North America’s Interdependent Systems.}},
  institution = {The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)},
  address     = {Toronto},
  year        = {2026},
  type        = {Nexus Reports, Baseline Edition 2026},
  number      = {NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE},
  note        = {Draft under stewardship review; not yet released. DOI assigned at deposit},
  url         = {https://therisk.global/nexus-reports/editions/reg-nam/}
}
RIS
TY  - RPRT
ED  - Valadbaygi, Saeed
TI  - North America Regional Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: Baseline Edition, The State of North America’s Interdependent Systems.
T3  - Nexus Reports
ET  - Baseline Edition 2026
PY  - 2026
PB  - The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
CY  - Toronto
SN  - NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE
UR  - https://therisk.global/nexus-reports/editions/reg-nam/
N1  - Draft under stewardship review; not yet released. DOI assigned at deposit.
LA  - en
ER  -
NR-CIT-1 (house style)
S. Valadbaygi (ed.), North America Regional Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: Baseline Edition, The State of North America’s Interdependent Systems.. Nexus Reports, Baseline Edition 2026. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) for the Nexus Consortium, Toronto, 2026. NR-REGIONAL-NAM-2026-BASELINE. DOI at deposit.
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