This animated video introduces the challenges that frontline customs officers face when identifying proliferation-controlled chemicals, and explains how automated tools leveraging cheminformatics and other advanced capabilities have the potential to mitigate such chemical weapons proliferation risks.
Frontline officers for border security and trade controls must quickly determine whether chemicals declared for export are listed as a chemical warfare agent or precursor. Based on our research, Stimson believes a flexible tool is needed that is capable of processing large batches of detailed export declarations. This tool would extract relevant chemical information, such as registry numbers, synonyms, and family names, from the declaration forms and match chemical identifiers against proliferation control lists.
The Stimson Center is now conducting outreach to stakeholders to clarify the primary challenges that they face and identify how cheminformatics solutions could be adapted to automate complex chemical export control enforcement tasks. For more information, please contact [email protected].
The Cheminformatics project is generously funded by Global Affairs Canada’s Weapons Threat Reduction Program. We are grateful to Masters Group Design for their collaboration in developing this animation.
