The Global Risks Forum (GRF)
The field Research Nexus works in sits where research on risk meets the institutions that use it. It draws on the study of research systems, knowledge translation, the science-policy interface and institutional learning. Its central issue is not whether good research exists, but whether institutions can find it, understand it, judge it and act on it, and whether research addresses what institutions need. This page sets out the discipline and the institutional issues; Research Nexus home links to the topics.
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For discipline and institutional issues, in GRF's situational-awareness reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and flood water, framed on Europe; 3 further NASA layers wait in the list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
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The Research Nexus field covers institutional research dialogue, comparative learning and evidence interpretation without taking over GCRI scientific publication authority. Experts in it study questions such as risk research dialogue and risk knowledge translation, with methods such as policy, institutional and decision science as well as probability and statistics. Its counterparts at GCRI and GRA look at the same systems through science and finance.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Several established fields study the movement of evidence into decisions. Knowledge translation studies how research findings are synthesized, communicated and applied. Science and technology studies examine how expertise gains and loses authority. Policy science studies how evidence enters agenda setting, decisions and evaluation. Evaluation science, including causal inference, studies how to judge whether an intervention worked.
Together they show that evidence use is rarely linear. Research does not simply flow from producers to users. It is negotiated, combined with values and interests, and often used to justify decisions already taken. Good practice makes this negotiation visible and fair rather than pretending it does not happen.
Research takes years; decisions take weeks. Evidence often arrives after the window has closed.
Disciplines and agencies define risks differently, making evidence hard to combine.
Many institutions lack staff who can commission, read and challenge research.
Systemic risks cross disciplines, sectors and borders, so no single body of research or institution can understand them alone. When evidence on such risks is fragmented, institutions act on partial pictures, duplicate effort and miss early warnings. Structured research dialogue is one of the few tools that can connect these pieces without centralizing authority over them.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Research integrity | Conduct of research in line with principles of reliability, honesty, respect and accountability, as the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity sets them out. |
| Knowledge translation | The practices that move research into use, from syntheses and policy briefs to co-production and embedded advisers, and that return decision needs to researchers. |
| Open science | Practices that make research publications, data, software and methods openly available and that open the research process to wider participation, as the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science defines them. |
| Systemic risk | Risk arising from interconnections, where failure in one part can cascade through a whole system. |
At The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI), Nexus Labs and Systems Science and Modelling conduct research that Research Nexus discusses. At GRF, Policy Nexus convenes on policy design. At The Global Risks Alliance (GRA), Financial Crime and Fraud builds shared industry understanding of evidence in its domain. The decision-rights context sets out who decides what.
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.