The purpose of Project Warn is combine enhanced communications and IT systems to provide warning of impending natural or man-made disasters and to provide on-going communications and remote sensing and GIS support during disaster relief operations. The Clarke Foundation is working with the Pacific Disaster Center, the Asian Disaster Mitigation Organization, the United Nations, and the US and Japanese Governments as coordinated through the JUSTSAP organization to carry out a suitable test and demonstration in this area. In particular a simulation and test is being planned in the Pacific Region in 2005 to determine to how to use the latest information and sensing technology more effectively in the advent of that a major Tsunami might impact an Asian country or island. Clarke Foundation personnel are providing technical advice and support on a volunteer basis to this project.

For further research on the project, see Project Warn Tsunami Detection (Word Document or Flash Paper)

The concept of the Millennium Village is to provide a new and innovative approach to the use of modern technology in order to solve rural and remote needs in isolated areas. The specific idea developed by Dr. Joseph N. Pelton of the Clarke Foundation in partnership with Dr. Robert Freling of the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) is to combine tele-education, tele-health, renewable solar energy, modern telecommunications and IT systems with economic development and job training so that an integrated and sustainable approach can be taken to rural development. A trial project is being developed in partnership with the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technology in Moratuwa, Sri Lanka with funding support being sought through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). A revised proposal is being developed in response to JICA guidelines. Clarke Foundation personnel are providing advice on this project and seeking donation of key equipment.

The advent of broadband communications systems via fiber optic, satellite and wireless terrestrial technology is now allowing for the possibility of education and health care systems to be delivered around the world at affordable cost. The most difficult challenge is accessing the right educational materials or health care providers, but low cost communications systems that can be connected to the most isolated regions is also a key part of the equation since 2 billion people live in areas that are not connected to modern communications systems. The Clarke Foundation is working with the Global University System to make policy leaders around the world aware of the needs and how new technology can assist in the provision of rural services. A book dedicated to this purpose has just been published by UNESCO with Clarke Foundation members contributing to the writing and production of this global analysis. A workshop that would bring together key policy and technical leaders is seen as the next step forward. For more information on this subject one should go to the web site of the Global University System.

A team of researchers from The George Washington University were recently selected to carry out an independent and interdisciplinary academic study and assessment of human space flight safety in the past, present and into the future. The Space Shuttle Children's Fund awarded a $300,000 grant to a team of GW space experts headed by GW Professor Joseph N. Pelton, who also serves as Managing Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. The Clarke Foundation is assisting in the administration of the research.

The study is investigating the technical, policy and standards aspects of safety in human space flight and research new ways to achieve risk minimization for the U.S. shuttle programs, the International Space Station and other future human spaceflight programs. The study will seek to identify ways to make future human space flight safer, not simply in the near term, but looking more than a decade into the future, as humans resume journeys of exploration beyond Earth's orbit. The research team also includes Peter Marshall of the Clarke Foundation Board as principal editor.

Through this relationship, the Foundation and the Space Shuttle Children's Fund also have joined to establish the new John L. McLucas Fund to stimulate graduate research and study aimed at finding new approaches to astronaut and human space safety (for more information see Foundation “Scholarships”)

Some 120 people from over 40 space-related organizations convened in Washington, D.C. on Thursday March 27, 2003 to scrutinize issues facing space educators and students in the coming decades. The all day session, sponsored by the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation and NASA, and over a dozen financial backers, included keynote addresses by well-known space personalities followed by discussion groups. The workshop found many areas of agreement as to both the problems faced and possible solutions. The fact that employment in aerospace had declined from over 1.2 million down to some 700,000 was found to be of serious concern as was the fact that graduates in technical disciplines had declined in the last 15 years from 450,000 to 350,000.

Workshop participants posed a number of innovative suggestions as to ways of recruiting students to meet the needs of a “graying workforce”. One of the many ideas of the day was that future government contracts should require that bidders provide a 2% set aside in major contracts for training and education to be carried out in cooperation with schools, universities, museums and other non-profit groups on the basis of “in-kind” programs such as internships, scholarships and coop programs. The workshop also endorsed many of the ideas that were highly rated in the national questionnaire survey conducted before the workshop. These results are contained in the “White Paper (Word Document or Flash Paper) on Space Education”. Also key findings from the workshop are to be published in the journal of Space Policy in the Fall of 2004 in an article prepared by the key organizers of the workshop, Joseph N. Pelton of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, Randy Johnson of Auburn University and Don Flournoy of Ohio University.