Symposium on Crisis Early Warning

The team of the Center for Crisis Early Warning would like to thank all participants of the Symposium on Crisis Early Warning for their attendance.

Information

Information to the Symposium on Crisis Early Warning

Date:                               September 17 to 18, 2025

Topic:                              The Potential of Data, AI, and Interdisciplinary Analysis in Situational Awareness and Decision Making

Organiser:                     German Federal Foreign Office

                                          Center for Crisis Early Warning (CCEW) | Kompetenzzentrum Krisenfrüherkennung (KompZ KFE)

Location:                        German Federal Foreign Office, Werderscher Markt 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany

The program for the Symposium on Crisis Early Warning

Please download the program as a PDF.

Wednesday 17.09.

08:15 – 09:00         Registration & Coffee

09:00 – 09:45        Welcome & Keynotes

                   State Minister Florian Hahn, Federal Foreign Office
                   State Secretary Nils Hilmer, Federal Ministry of Defence
                  Prof. Carlo Masala, Head, Center for Crisis Early Warning

09:45                          VIP Policy Panel: “Crisis Early Warning in times of perpetual crises – still worth it?”

                   Chair: Prof. Carlo Masala, Head, Center for Crisis Early Warning
                      Philipp Rotmann, Director, Global Public Policy Institute
                      Anka Feldhusen, Director for Civilian Crisis Prevention and Stabilization, FFO

followed by              Coffee Break

11:00 – 12:30             Research Panel I: “Leveraging Large Language Models in Crisis Early Warning”

                   Chair: Dr. Hannes Müller, Institute for Economic Analysis
                          Dr. Edoardo Vigano, Witten/Herdecke University
                          Dr. Egemen Bezci, University for Continuing Education Krems
                          Laura Braun, Center for Crisis Early Warning

12:30 – 13:30             Lunch

13:30 – 15:00            Research Panel II: “Advancing Methodological Approaches in Crisis Early Warning”

                   Chair: Dr. Paola Vesco, Uppsala University
                         Prof. Thomas Chadefaux, Trinity College Dublin
                       Chandler Williams, Peace Research Institute Oslo
                         BND Desk Officer

15:00 – 16:15             Workshops (parallel)

                   Session 1: Interactive Scenario Lab – A Case Study on Strategic Foresight (Willy-Brandt-Saal)
                   Session 2: Hybrid Threats – State-Targeted Cyber Attacks as Digital Smoke Before Escalation? (Adenauer-Saal)
                   Session 3: Data driven Anticipatory Action (Stresemann-Saal)

16:15 – 16:45             Coffee Break

16:45 – 17:45             Policy Panel I: “How to warn? – lessons and best practices”

                   Chair: Isabelle Arradon, International Crisis Group
                         Andreas Pérez Fransius, European External Action Service
                       Minako Manome, Development Risk Practice Unit, UNDP
                        Dr. Philip AbdelMalik, Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, WHO
Colonel (GS) Oliver Esdar, Chief of Branch MEO I 3, Federal Ministry of Defence

17:45 – 19:00            Canapés & Fingerfood (Genscher Forum)

Thursday 18.09.

08:15 – 09:00          Check-in & Coffee

09:00 – 09:15          Welcome

09:15 – 10:45            Research Panel III: “Conflict Onset and Civil War Recurrence in Crisis Early Warning”

                   Chair: Dr. Nadine O’Shea, Technical University of Munich
                       Lotta Rüter, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
                       Hannah Frank, Trinity College Dublin
                       Dr. Namig Abbasov, Arizona State University

10:45 – 11:00            Coffee Break

11:00 – 12:15            Workshops (parallel)

                   Session 4: Central Risk Factors in Early Warning (Stresemann-Saal)
                  Session 5: Think Like an Adversary – A Practical Exploration of the Disruptive Potential of AI (Willy-Brandt-Saal)
                   Session 6: Pimp My Dataset – Enhancing Existing Event Datasets with Large Language Models (Adenauer-Saal)

12:15 – 12:30              Plenary Workshop Recap

12:30 – 13:30             Lunch

13:30 – 14:15              Policy Panel II: “Global Commons or national silos? Informed decisions through common datasets”

                   Chair: Anka Feldhusen, Dir. for Civilian Crisis Prevention and Stabilization, FFO 
Dr. Martin Frick, World Food Program
                        Prof. Clionadh Raleigh, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data
                        Dr. Barbora Šedová, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

14:15 – 15:45              Research Panel IV: “Exploring New Data in Crisis Early Warning”

                   Chair: Prof. Melanie Sauter, Universität Mannheim
                      Christoph Deppe, Helmut Schmidt University
                        Dr. Allison Koh, University of Birmingham
                        Dr. Anne Schneibel, German Aerospace Center

15:45 – 16:00            Closing Remarks: Anka Feldhusen, Federal Foreign Office

Impressions 2025

Pictures:  © CCEW

Chatham House Rule

We are pleased to welcome you to our upcoming event. As part of the event, we would like to draw your attention to the application of the Chatham House Rule, which is mandatory for all participants.

The Chatham House Rule aims to promote an open dialogue among participants while maintaining confidentiality. The rule states that participants are free to discuss the contents of the event, but must not disclose the identity or affiliation of the speakers or participants. This allows participants to share their views and experiences honestly and openly, without fear of being traced or published.

As organizers, we want to ensure that all participants have the freedom to express their opinions and views without any consequences. We therefore ask all participants to adhere to the Chatham House Rule and treat their discussions confidentially.

We are confident that the application of the Chatham House Rule will help facilitate an open and productive discussion that will be of great benefit to all participants.

We thank you in advance for your cooperation and look forward to your participation at the Symposium on Crisis Early Warning.

Contact

If you have any questions, please send an Email to:

kompzkfe+symposium@unibw.de