The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will organize a workshop to explore the climate-related security risks that involve urban systems. The overall goal of the workshop will be to inform the U.S. Intelligence Community's ability to assess, understand, and anticipate the interactions between urban systems and climate change that can create risks to U.S. national security interests.

The workshop will apply an integrative framework, previously developed by the Climate Security Roundtable, that applies a systems perspective to analyzing climate security across a range of regional and topical contexts. This Urban Systems workshop, specifically, will consider:

• The key climate security questions related to urban systems, in the context of U.S. national interests, and the appropriate bounds (in terms of geographic borders, societal sectors, spatial/ temporal scales, etc.) for analysis in each case.
• The key influencing factors and network interactions that link urban systems to climate-related security risk. These include underlying conditions; external influences and stressors; interactions between human and natural systems; and other factors.
• The indicators that can be used to assess and monitor climate-related security risks involving urban systems, and the pathways along which these risks can evolve.
• The critical analytic capacity and capabilities (e.g., data and information systems; tools and methodologies; collaborative relationships; fundamental research; etc.) needed to effectively assess, understand, and anticipate climate-related security risks involving urban systems.

Workshop activities would include, but not be limited to, plenary and small-group discussions with invited experts; examination of case studies; structured exercises to identify and describe indicators, pathways, and analytic capabilities.