Launch of web-based library ‘Biosecurity Central’

The ongoing pandemic has highlighted the need for nations to enhance their abilities to prevent, detect, and respond to all manner of biological threats, whether natural, accidental or deliberate. In this context, the biosecurity community also needs new ways to share and readily access the best available resources. Biosecurity Central provides a curated set of resources and tools applicable across the spectrum of biosecurity. The annotated library of reliable resources and tools is available without cost, online, and organized by topic and use case. The site is designed to be easily searchable, includes a guided exploration workflow, and provides key details on a page describing each resource with direct access to the resources and tools wherever possible.

Canada’s Weapons Threat Reduction Program (WTRP), in support of the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, sponsored the Biosecurity Central effort. WTRP partnered with the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security and Talus Analytics to assemble a group of experts who provided their recommendations for items to include in the library. From these experts, a working group was formed that met regularly to advise on the initiative and reviewed the resulting resource library to provide ongoing input.