Some of our members’ recent stories
Joao Baptista has a paper accepted in Management Information Systems Quarterly titled “Digital Resilience for the Climate Crisis: A Multi-Perspective Analysis” that shows how digital technologies can help societies adapt to climate change while stressing that no single solution will work. By examining cases from disaster response, supply chains, and carbon tracking, the authors highlight four key lessons: we must integrate nature into digital systems, act at both local and global levels, combine proactive and reactive strategies, and see climate change as an ongoing process rather than isolated events. The core message is that digital tools, used wisely and collaboratively, can strengthen resilience to the climate crisis.
Phillip Benachour has completed a project on “E-Commerce Fraud and Scams Prevention for Adult Consumers”. In the pilot study with 46 adult online shoppers, a story-driven, single-player role-playing quiz game helped participants detect scams correctly 86.7% of the time—outperforming a standard quiz—and left them feeling more confident about safe shopping. Players said the game’s fun missions and interactive format, combined with their own interest in gaming and online shopping habits, kept them
engaged and made the lessons stick. The story can be found here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/about-us/news/interactive-games-can-boost-online-fraud-awareness and the academic article here: E-Commerce Fraud and Scams Prevention for Adult Consumers: A Game-Based Learning Experimental Approach | SpringerLink.
In a cognate piece of research on “Protecting Vulnerable Older Adults and Young People from Cyber Fraud and Online Scams”, Phillip has been addressing the lack of sufficient awareness of cyber threats, including fishing attacks, among local vulnerable citizens, in particular older adults (over 60s) and young people (10-19 years), in the Bulk ward area of Lancaster (UK), which is considered as one of the deprived areas of the city.
Joe Burton, along with George Christou, Wilhelm Vosse and Joachim A. Koops, has edited a handbook book on Cyber Diplomacy. It is the main research output of the EU-funded Jean Monnet Network on Cyber Diplomacy - CYDIPLO, which Joe led, and includes over 40 chapters on cyber diplomacy, including from world-leading cyber diplomats (The book can be found at: https://link.springer.com/book/9783031933844).
Camilla De Camargo and Stephanie Wallace have conducted research into police uniforms. A national survey of 20,838 police officers and staff in England and Wales found that the majority regard their uniforms as restrictive, uncomfortable and linked to health issues – undermining both their effectiveness and safety. The story is here: here.
A team of Security Lancaster researchers funded by the QR Policy Support Fund allocated by Research England, led by Basil Germond, have conceptualized and mapped the cumulative impacts of climate change on maritime (in)security modelling vulnerabilities and risks arising from the effects of climate change and their impacts on the maritime threats landscape. The report and toolkit, raising awareness and understanding of the cumulative effects of climate change on maritime (in)security, were recently presented across the whole-of-government at a seminar in London and a workshop at Lancaster University.
A recent blog by Celine Germond-Duret, building on her extensive work on Blue Justice (Leverhulme Grant) and Blue Economy (Pentland Centre), reflects on the value of framing illegal fishing as an ocean justice issue rather than just a criminal phenomenon in order to address the root cause of the problem: Framing Illegal Fishing as an Ocean Justice Issue - Lancaster University
Claire Hardaker and Georgina Brown have recently run this Forensics Summer School, which primarily focussed on AI-powered fraud using audio deepfakes. About 75 attendees tackled crimes ranging from catfishing scams to a bank heist and helped assess the privacy protecting value of AI voice conversion on witness testimony after a duck-related crime spree broke out. Posts on LinkedIn about it (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4).
Anas Iftikhar has published a research paper with Mark Stevenson on “Firms’ strategic responses to rising uncertainty amid ongoing geopolitical tensions”. A survey of 242 Pakistani firms shows that during geopolitical upheaval, strong business networks are what really keep supply chains resilient, with innovation kicking in only once those networks are in place. The full paper is here.
Heather Shaw has a new paper “The DECIDE Framework: Describing Ethical Choices in Digital-Behavioural-Data Explorations” that introduces DECIDE, a proactive framework (with spreadsheet, app, documents, and flowcharts) that guides researchers through continuous ethical reflection across all stages of digital-behavioural-data projects to anticipate and mitigate harm (read it here: 10.1177/25152459251361013)
Charles Weir has conducted research on the human factor in cyber risks for critical supply chains. UK experts predict that by 2040 the biggest computing risks to critical national infrastructure will stem from human factors—operator errors, clumsy interfaces and recovery shortfalls—and recommend human-centred resilience measures, stronger regulation, and elevating Internet services to CNI status. The article can be found here and a recent blog exploring the conclusions can be found here.
Aaron Winter’s written evidence on 'AI and the Far-Right Riots in the UK’ has been published by the UK Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee as part of their Inquiry into ‘Combatting New Forms of Extremism’. It is based on collaborative research funded by the LSE Urgency Grant Scheme and including PI Beatriz Lopes Buarque (LSE), Aaron Winter (LU), Julia Ebner (Oxford), Allysa Czerwinsky (Manchester), Ashton Kingdon (Southampton), Rob Topinka (Birkbeck), and Meropi Tzanetakis (Manchester). Find the evidence here.
