The Arms Control Association was founded in 1971 and has its seat in Washington, DC, United States. It is a non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies and agreements. The organization provides policy-makers, the press and the interested public with regular publications and education programmes, through interviews, analyses and commentaries. The co-called Fact Sheets provide a basic overview of key agreements and issues of arms control, such as nuclear disarmament, or current nuclear negotiations.

Links:

• Arms Control Association - fact sheet on Nuclear Weapons
• Arms Control Association - Chemical and Biological Weapons Status at a Glance

The magazine "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist" was first published in 1945. Today, every two months, the influential online version that reports on current and broad nuclear topics is released. These topics comprise nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, international treaties and nuclear terrorism, amongst others. As concerns figures on the holdings of nuclear weapons one must be aware that this source only provides information on the military holdings of the United States. Information on Russian nuclear weapons, however, also contain those that have been decommissioned. This results in a major difference in weapons holdings between the United States and Russia.

Links:

• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - Inventory
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - Deployments

In the annual publication "WORLD MINING DATA", the production of 61 mineral resources in 173 countries is pooled and statistically processed. It makes available detailed information on the production of the 63 important resources (broken down by continents, groups of countries, development status, per capita income, economic blocs, political stability, largest producers, etc.). The World Mining Data Report also lists resource production in detailed tables according to producing countries.

Links:

• bmwfw - World Mining Data

In his blog and in an article published in April 2011 in the magazine Nature, reporter Declan Butler analyzes the world population size living within 30, 75, 150 and 300 km of each of the world's nuclear power plants with the intention to document how many people would be affected by nuclear accidents and to identify the locations that could endanger the most people.

His research is based on data of the Nuclear Reactor Information System of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the reactor data base of the United Nations Environment Programme, Global Resource Information Database (UNEP-GRID) and the Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), University of Columbia. These figures were calculated in cooperation with the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (NASA) and CIESIN. The complete data set is available as Google Earth file.

Links:

• Butler, Declan (2011). Reactors, residents and risk. Published online 21 April 2011, Nature.(http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110421/full/472400a/box/1.html)
• Butler, Declan (2011): Google Earth kmz Data
• [Umweltprogramm der Vereinten Nation (UNEP-GRID-Geneva, United Nations Environment Programme, Division of Early Warning and Assessment, Geneva)] (http://www.grid.unep.ch/index.php?lang=en)
• [NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) – Hosted by CIESIN at Columbia University] (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/)
• Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP)

Since 2005, the organization is an alliance of Brot für die Welt, medico international, Misereor, terre des hommes and Welthungerhilfe. In crises and catastrophes, aid is to be made available in a coordinated manner. Its mission is to foster positive development in the countries concerned. Since 2011, they have published the WeltRisikoBericht ('WorldRiskReport') on an annual basis. This report contains the WeltRisikoIndex ('WorldRiskIndex') that, with the help of indicators, calculates the risk of natural catastrophes and the ability of societies to manage these catastrophes.

Links:

• WeltRisikoBericht 2018

CNS was founded in 1989 by Dr William Potter in the United States. The CNS strives to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction by training nonproliferation specialists worldwide. The research programme is about chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, the drawing up of guidelines, disarmament in East-Asia, new emerging states and an education programme on disarmament. Part of its mission is to establish a worldwide network of disarmament experts. It publishes on all topics of weapons of mass destruction as well as on disarmament and terrorism. The CNS has collected data for a global data set on chemical and biological weapons that was last updated in 2008 and which is based on a large variety of publicly accessible official and unofficial individual sources and documents.

Links:

• Chemical and Biological Weapons - Possession and Programs Past and Present

Founded in 1996 and located in Vienna, CTBTO has made its mission to promote the Treaty and to hamper first development and the further development of nuclear weapons more difficult by operating. A global net of sensors serves as surveillance mechanism; furthermore, it intends to carry out on-site inspections after the Treaty has come into force. The organization can only fulfil its mission completely when the 44 states have ratified Annex 2 of the Treaty; so far, only 41 states have signed, and 36 have ratified the Treaty.

Links:

• CTBTO 2018 - World Overview

The Federation of American Scientists was founded in 1945 as a think tank intent on fostering the civilian use of nuclear energy and on protecting mankind of a nuclear war. Regular publications critically describe current nuclear developments and address the issue of nuclear weapons from a global and country-specific perspective. They offer information on nuclear weapons holdings classified according to strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons, reserves of nuclear weapons, the stockpile of nuclear weapons and the full inventory of each country. They also provide information on which countries have the technical means to develop nuclear weapons in the near future.

Links:

• FAS - Status of World Nuclear Forces

Geoscience Australia is an Australian public sector organization that deals with the use and management of resources, sustainable energy, tourism, environmental management and the connected well-being of the population. In 2008, it published a nuclear explosions database that documents all explosions in the years 1945 to 2007.

Links:

• Geoscience Australia - Nuclear Explosions Database

The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), founded in 1957 represents the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Its headquarters is in Vienna; besides that there a number of regional offices. About 2,300 experts from over 100 countries work in the Agency. Its main areas of work are nuclear security, science, technology, security clauses and checks of nuclear facilities. The annual Nuclear Safety Review publishes the global state-of-art of all nuclear power stations that are operating, pausing, shut down, planned or being decommissioned and their current status. In addition, the IAEA makes available data bases on research reactors worldwide and an information system on nuclear power plants.

Links:

• IAEA - Power Reactor Information System
• IAEA - Research Reactors

Delivery systems are published annually by IISS in The Military Balance. With research being central to IISS activities, its experts deliver impartial policy advice on military and strategic issues. In its annual publication The Military Balance, it provides information on the number of service personnel, weapons, population and GDP for 170 countries with an emphasis on detailed and differentiated lists of weapons and soldiers (including recruits and paramilitaries) per country. The Institute also evaluates military capacities and arms economies.

Links:

• The Military Balance

The International Law and Policy Institute ILPI in Oslo is an independent think tank focusing on good governance, peace and conflict, and international law. Besides research, analysis and policy advice, the ILPI provides training to clients ranging from private companies and institutions to governments and international organizations, thus aiming to improve the exchange and bridge the gap between academia and politics. One area of activity of the ILPI is the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Project". Its aim is to promote public debate on the elimination of all nuclear weapons. For this, it provides background papers and maps on the nuclear protective shield of NATO.

Links:

• Nuclear umbrella states

The IPFM initiative, founded in January 2006, has as its mandate to reduce the global production, storage and use of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. These two materials are the main components of nuclear weapons. A reduction of these materials leads to more security with regard to the risk of a nuclear war but also the risk of terrorists gaining access to these materials. These materials are used in nuclear power plants or are a by product of electricity generation. There is enough uranium and plutonium around to double the amount of nuclear weapons.

Links:

• IPFM
• IPFM - Global Fissile Material Report 2015

The Atomic Energy Commission that was established in 1947 set up the Nevada Operations Office in 1962 that, after several restructuring efforts, is under the leadership of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the US nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear testing. At the same time, it provides the US Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the US and abroad.

Links:

• United States Nuclear Tests - July 1945 through September 1992

START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism) Since its launch in 2005, START at the University of Maryland has been tasked with using research theories, methods and data to improve the understanding of the origins, dynamics and social and psychological impacts of terrorism. Research questions are, amongst others, under which conditions persons or groups become radicalized, which targets are chosen for what reasons and which influence terrorism has on societies. The Consortium makes available a freely accessible data base (Global Terrorism Database - GTD) that lists more than 104,000 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2018. Information in the data set includes incident date, location, type of incident, type of weapon used, nature of victim, number of fatalities, injured and the perpetrator group.

Links:

• GTD - Global Terrorism Database