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Short abstract

As the climate crisis is increasingly framed as a global catastrophic risk, funding for SRM as a possible emergency response increases. However, the design of the current R&D phase of SRM narrows technological trajectories (with a strong focus on SAI), which constitutes a risk in itself.

Long abstract

Keywords: climate crisis, solar radiation management, technodiversity, global catastrophic risk

As Paul Virilio famously claimed, “every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.” Every technology simultaneously creates its own accident.

For solar radiation management (SRM) as an anticipatory response to catastrophic climate risk, the usual name of such an accident is “termination shock” - a highly disruptive event resulting from a sudden halt of the SRM process that would rapidly increase the global temperature with disastrous consequences.

This accident applies to the deployment phase of SRM, but I argue there is also a hidden risk in the current R&D phase that could exacerbate SRM's epistemic and political vulnerabilities and increase the likelihood of a future termination shock.

To illustrate this point, I will show how current R&D strategies for SRM foster a technological monoculture by focusing narrowly on a single technology: stratosphere aerosol injection (SAI). This approach constrains the range of socio-technical imaginaries available to future societies and creates additional systemic risk by relying on a monotechnological trajectory.

Building on the concept of technodiversity, I will argue for the technodiversification of the present SRM R&D phase and for a multiplication of anticipatory responses to avert future climate breakdown.

To further illustrate this discussion, I will present a comparative analysis of two funding strategies in SRM: the case of a for-profit startup, Stardust Solutions, backed by private venture capital, and the UK government agency ARIA's "Exploring Climate Cooling" funding programme.

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Short abstract

This paper reads the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) as an infrastructure of endless preparedness. It examines how “just-in-case” logics manage uncertainty and frame irreversible loss as preventable, thereby revealing how societies imagine, interpret and engage with the possibility of “the end”.

Long abstract

This paper examines how societies respond when “the end” is framed as possible, imminent or already underway, using Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) as a case. The global decline of crop diversity renders agricultural collapse imaginable and positions seed preservation as an urgent response to a future already unfolding. Located on Svalbard, Norway, the Vault stores millions of seed varieties from seedbanks worldwide and is widely presented as a safeguard for biodiversity and a mechanism for recovery after disaster. SGSV therefore exemplifies how distant, yet abstract risks are brought into the present through infrastructures of back-up and long-term storage, offering reassurance and a sense of control amid uncertainty.

By analyzing how SGSV is justified, normalized and evaluated, we explore how societies engage with the prospect of endings. SGSV operates in a tension between readiness for anticipated crises and the normalization of uncertainty as a permanent condition. At the same time, it embodies a form of institutional endlessness: terms such as “forever project,” “permanent collection,” and “intergenerational responsibility” articulate a temporal logic without a defined endpoint. Ongoing storage is framed as responsible action, while the uncertain future of food ensures that the Vault is both necessary and unnecessary.

Moreover, “just-in-case” logics tend to frame irreversible loss as insufficient foresight or mismanagement rather than as structurally embedded in industrial agriculture. Exploring back-up infrastructures as socio-technical responses to anticipated endings, we contribute to STS debates on temporality, risk governance, and future-making, asking how such responses shape what “the end” comes to mean.

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Short abstract

To stop an emergency becoming a catastrophe, deision‑makers, technical experts and citizens require instant “situational awareness”. COVID‑19 dashboards promised such immediacy, yet their unavoidable mediation reveals the inherently political dimension of making emergencies actionable.

Long abstract

Within the security rationale of response, decision‑makers, technical experts and citizens need a shared “situational awareness” of an ongoing emergency to prevent it from turning into a catastrophe. Throughout the COVID‑19 pandemic this awareness was largely supplied by web‑based dashboards that visualise real‑time epidemiological data as graphs, tables and thematic maps. While these dashboards became central representations of the crisis, their neutrality and quality have been contested from the outset.

Drawing on STS research on scientific representations and Critical Data Studies, I shift the focus from the “correctness” of the data to the inevitable political dimensions of emergency knowledge production. A case can appear on a dashboard only after it has travelled through a long chain of mediators—data collectors, modelers, software developers, visual designers—each imposing specific constraints and decisions.

Based on 26 semi‑structured interviews with dashboard creators and deploying situational analysis (Clarke, Friese & Washburn 2018), I map these more‑than‑human constellations and expose the contingencies, choices, and socio‑technical limitations that shape pandemic data capture and visualisation. The insight that no unmediated, direct knowledge of an unfolding emergency exists shows that what counts as good emergency knowledge depends on its intended use and the tolerable distortions and ambiguities. Although the empirical case concerns COVID‑19 dashboards, the theoretical contribution is directly transferable to other planetary emergencies—most notably climate crises—where the mediation of proximity, urgency and political stakes similarly determines whether data become actionable or remain abstract.

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Short abstract

Day Zero events, where cities announce an imminent water crisis, are increasing due to climate change. The proposed framework allows examining how diverging risk images influence responses to a water crisis and how bridging different views on water scarcity can make space for sustainable solutions.

Long abstract

Day Zero events, where cities announce they will soon run out of water, are becoming increasingly frequent due to climate change. They are magnets for societal attention, but to what extent does anything change by announcing such a crisis, how and why? I explore how different societal and political actors perceive and frame the risk of acute water crises and how these ‘risk images’ influence practices and opportunities for transforming the water system.

Combining theories of risk governance and transformational change, I present a conceptual framework of risk-based transformational change on how perceptions of risk enable or inhibit transformation. I apply the framework to critical Day Zero case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe to understand how different risk images of acute water scarcity influence the way policymakers, companies, and citizens respond to these risks.

At stake is the advancement of scientific insight into whether and how pending or actual crises work as inflection points for transformation, in terms of (i) how risk images are aligned or diverge between science, policy, and the media throughout the crisis, (ii) how they trigger policy change, and (iii) how the plurality of risk images can be harnessed for transformative governance pathways towards water security in the future.

Participatory foresight and evidence-informed deliberation processes can enable societal participation in decision-making and the development of practical tools for policy design. The proposed framework enables an understanding of how diverging risk images and responses enable or inhibit transformation of urban water systems under pressure.

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Short abstract

This paper explores how existential threats are translated into local contexts. Using Greece as a paradigmatic case and comparing Greek and international media coverage, it examines how risks are framed as distant dangers or urgent problems and who is portrayed as responsible for action.

Long abstract

Building on the experience we gained from organizing the EASST-funded workshop on global–local interaction (Emblematic Localities Against Existential Threats: STSing Balkans, Balkanizing STS, September 2025), we will present our ongoing study of this interaction in the case of Greece. European but peripherally placed at the borders of East and West, and defined by a geography combining islands and mountains, Greece offers a paradigmatic case for exploring how global existential threats are understood and addressed within specific local contexts. The presentation draws on research undertaken by our group while preparing a report for the newly founded NKUA Observatory for Research on Existential Threats, run by an eight-member faculty committee and supported by a team of three STS researchers. To explore this global–local relationship, we examine how existential threats are portrayed in Greek and international media and compare how they are framed in different contexts. Our analysis covers topics such as the environmental crisis, AI, and biotechnology/biomedicine, and asks how different actors describe the local–global connection of existential threats and how they frame the relevant time horizon for action. More specifically, through media analysis, we ask: How are existential threats presented to the public? Are they portrayed as distant, long-term dangers primarily monitored by experts, or as problems requiring immediate action? What kinds of responses are suggested, and who is presented as responsible for acting? The presentation seeks to contribute to discussions within STS about how catastrophic futures are interpreted, communicated, and connected to present forms of governance and action.

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Short abstract

This study highlights a Cross-Impact Balances inspired serious game that can facilitate participatory scenario building for uncertain developments and collective exploration of actions.

Long abstract

How we imagine distant catastrophes profoundly shapes our understanding of emerging risks and our ability to find solutions in the present. In addition, the urgency of potential crises often clashes with the uncertainty surrounding the possible courses of action, demanding approaches that can handle complexity without reducing it to a single, rigid pathway. Therefore, we ask: how can we approach these uncertain developments in the present in a way that considers essential factors while minimising unnecessary ones? In this context, the following work explores an extension to the Cross-Impact Balances (CIB) method, which uses an algorithm to examine different scenarios by incorporating various factors. However, as this algorithm makes the method and the results relatively deterministic, incorporating an element of playfulness and participation could enable us to explore diverse, less deterministic alternative scenarios that align with the perspectives and imaginations of those involved in creating them. This is achieved by creating a serious game application usable for any CIB model, which has been tested with stakeholders in three case studies on future water conflicts in Germany. Participants can use the game to explore even inconsistent scenarios that the algorithm would not typically produce, and, through interaction with, or possible modification of, the factors, identify appropriate actions for future developments. Additionally, since the serious game uses the same algorithm, the scenarios continue to reference the embedded factors and maintain traceability.