Illustrative: tracers on the Lorenz attractor, a canonical coupled nonlinear system

Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium

Risk, taught as one connected system

Water, finance, health, infrastructure, technology and governance, and the systems that join them, taught as one field: free to study, worked on live models, open data and twins of real places, with every result stating its source and date.

Choose a faculty Browse the course catalogue
01Why

Why learn on twins of real places

Risk couples across water, finance, health, infrastructure and governance.

Faculties9each teaching on a twin of one real place
Courses11722 open, 95 in preparation
Pathways14ordered routes for a role
Streams5from foundation to Nexus-based risk management
Levels4L1 to L4, one per course

Counts from the Academy course index, generated from the curriculum snapshot and the atlas (2026). A course in preparation is listed with its status; a completion record does not certify competence.

02How learning runs

How learning runs, as a process you can run

Select a scenario and press Play: course, pathway, practice, faculty, cells and record.

03Faculties

Nine faculties, joined by cross-faculty programmes

05Live map

Hazards now in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

Flood water, active fires, heavy rain and smoke, beside where people live, over the Hindu Kush Himalaya.

The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.

Layers 3

Hazards now

Latest available

NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth

Loading the latest NASA imagery.

Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.

Hazards now, framed on the Hindu Kush Himalaya.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date. They are indicators, not assessments of any place.

Data: NASA GIBS · ASTER GDEM · Blue Marble · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Natural Earth · NASA EONET · U.S. Geological SurveySources and licences

  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • VIIRS near-real-time products (flood, land surface temperature, snow cover, corrected reflectance), NASA LANCE; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), VIIRS 375 m active fire product, NASA LANCE; vector tiles via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • GPM IMERG precipitation, NASA Precipitation Processing System; distributed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • MODIS and VIIRS atmosphere products, NASA LANCE and LAADS DAAC; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University. 2018. Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4): Population Density, Revision 11. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). doi:10.7927/H49C6VHW. CC BY 4.0
  • ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA (ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003, NASA LP DAAC); imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). Cite as: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003. doi:10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. NASA open data
  • Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Public domain
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via NASA GIBS (coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names). Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). ODbL
  • Blue Marble, NASA Earth Observatory; imagery via NASA GIBS. Colours redrawn from the published colour map; values averaged into H3 cells where shown (modified). NASA open data
  • Context on the globe and flat map: coastlines, boundaries, roads and place names from NASA GIBS reference layers (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Blue Marble imagery as an optional base; 3D terrain and the elevation read-out from the ASTER GDEM elevation colour index (5 m to 200 m classes, exaggerated for legibility). Boundaries are drawn as published and imply no position on any territory.
  • Globe: MapLibre GL JS 6.9.1, BSD-3-Clause, © MapLibre contributors.
  • Live events: NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET); events are indicative and keep their original source links.
  • Live: NASA EONET Events are indicative, not authority warnings.
  • Live: U.S. Geological Survey Events are indicative, not authority warnings.
  • NASA GIBS: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
  • River discharge forecast, 30 days with range (GloFAS via Open-Meteo): Contains modified Copernicus Emergency Management Service information 2026; not a flood warning.
  • Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
  • Optional layers (20 sources in the layer list: live, forecast, observed and context) print their provider credit on the map and here when switched on; forecasts are model output and derived indices are estimates.

Layers and dates

  • Flood water, 3-day composite: VIIRS Global Flood Product, NASA LANCE · 14 Oct 2026
  • Active fires and thermal anomalies, last day: VIIRS NOAA-20 375 m (FIRMS), NASA LANCE FIRMS · 13 Oct 2026
  • Precipitation rate, daily mean: GPM IMERG, NASA GES DISC · 12 Oct 2026
  • Aerosol optical depth, daily: VIIRS NOAA-20 Deep Blue AOD, NASA LANCE · 13 Oct 2026
  • Population density, 2020: Population: CIESIN, Columbia University, Gridded Population of the World v4.11 (2018), NASA SEDAC, CC BY 4.0 · static

06Research hubs

Research hubs: the newest work in every faculty

Each faculty keeps a live hub of research and preprints by discipline, with filters, trends and the most cited recent work; the cards show each hub's daily snapshot.

Nine faculty hubslive on each faculty page

07Take part

Take part in the work

Start from who you are.

08The Index

The Global Risks Index (GRIx) behind every course

The anchor data pipeline of the Consortium: registered sources with their licences, the Nexus Standards indicators and hazards, the Index series and the country profiles the Academy's courses, maps and labs read.

09Places

Places, what is changing now, standards and ways in

Every faculty teaches on a real place

A twin of one real place per faculty, built from open data with each layer's source and date, with the faculty's research hub.

10Questions

Questions, answers and key terms

Is study here free?
Yes. Every course and learning material of Risk Academy, led by the Nexus Consortium, is free to study, self-paced or with a cohort. Ordinary participation has no fee; paid work, internships and fellowships are separate arrangements.
What does completing a course give me?
A completion record: the course, its version, the date and what was assessed, private by default and shared by you. It stacks into discipline, department and programme achievements. A record states what was studied and assessed and does not certify competence; it is not a licence, a professional title or an employment status.
Who writes the courses, and who issues records?

The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI US) in Washington, DC and GCRI Canada in Ontario author courses in their own domains, as do the Global Risks Forum (GRF) and the Global Risks Alliance (GRA). Risk Academy hosts them. GCRI Canada leads the Consortium and is its global contracting party. A completion record is not a licence to practise.

GCRI Canada is the issuer of record. No credential is issued until the assessment method, the signing key and the status and revocation path are on record. Until then completion is recorded, not credentialed. No credential has been issued to date.

Where do the data and the places come from?
Every faculty teaches on a twin of a real place built from open data; each layer carries its provider, licence and date, and every result on the Academy states its source. Maps and figures are indicators for teaching, never an assessment of a place.
How do I take part beyond every course?
Form a competence cell of three to seven people, study a shared pathway, take a supervised assignment in the National Working Groups, or bring a cohort from your institution. For organisations.

Key terms

Term

Faculty

A broad field of risk with its own subsite, departments, disciplines and a twin of a real place.

Term

Twin

A model of one real place built from admitted open data, with every layer's source and date, on which a faculty teaches its instruments.

Term

Primary discipline

The one discipline a course counts towards; it may also be taught in others.

Term

Completion record

The record of a completed course or achievement: what was studied and assessed.

ReportsContribute

Contribute evidence from this page.

Nexus Reports is the Consortium's quarterly publication. What you know about this subject can become evidence, a case or a correction in the next edition, credited to you and published under CC BY 4.0 where it is your own work.

Risk Academy
Academy

Start with one place

Open a faculty, look at its twin, and take the first open course of the discipline closest to your work.

Choose a faculty Browse the course catalogue