Strategic chemical trade controls present unique enforcement challenges; vulnerabilities exist in determining whether a given substance is a concern or not – a task that can be complex and time-consuming even for trained chemists. The Partnerships in Proliferation Prevention Program hosted a series of workshops that were the latest milestones in the Stimson Center’s project to apply cheminformatics and other advanced technology to the automation of strategic chemical trade control enforcement.
The Cheminformatics project team hosted a series of virtual workshops on March 14th and April 22nd, 2024, covering the vulnerabilities in strategic trade control enforcement supporting the chemical weapons nonproliferation regime and exploring software tools that address them. The goal of the workshops was to define enforcement challenges to strategic chemical trade controls, promote awareness about tool solutions more broadly, discuss avenues for developing tools tailored to specified end-user needs, and engage a wide set of international stakeholders in government and industry. The Stimson Center presented on the challenges to strategic trade control enforcement, while private sector cheminformatics software developers and government representatives presented tools their organizations have developed for a variety of purposes, including chemical regulatory compliance, security and nonproliferation capacity building, and strategic trade controls. The workshops, generously funded by Global Affairs Canada, included a broad range of participants, including customs and strategic trade control representatives from 13 countries.
Several themes emerged across discussions in both workshops that provided important feedback for the development of tools to support strategic trade controls for chemical weapons nonproliferation. Cost was one – many agreed that national customs offices would benefit from tools, but said they needed to be affordable and accessible. Short timelines available to border and customs officials when performing checks on chemical imports and exports also reinforced the need to utilize systems when shippers submit documents, allowing for early detection of controlled chemicals. Emphasis was also placed on the need for tools to work in a variety of environments, including instances where internet or Wi-Fi is unavailable. There was broad agreement that, taking these concerns under consideration, better access to these tools would strengthen strategic chemical trade control enforcement.
Project Background
The workshops were the latest milestones in the Stimson Center’s project to apply cheminformatics and other advanced technology to the automation of strategic chemical trade control enforcement. In earlier phases of the project, the team developed and tested a proof-of-concept tool consisting of commercial off-the-shelf cheminformatics software and a database of controlled chemicals to allow users to check available chemical identifying information (name, registry number, and molecular structure) against national or international control lists of chemical warfare agents or precursors. The team tested the tool using information provided on randomly selected and anonymized real-world customs declarations and used the valuable insights gained to develop requirements for a more user-friendly web-based tool for deployment in a real-world user environment.
Outreach
The project team has also gathered feedback and gauged interest in such a tool by conducting outreach through workshops, demonstrations, webinars, and other presentations to:
- United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Container Control Programme
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
- Global Partnership Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Chemical Security Working Group
- Virtual Conference on Chemistry and Its Applications International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
- Australian Ministry of Defence
- OPCW event marking the 25th anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention
- Chemical Weapons Demilitarisation (CWD) conference
- CWC Conference of States Parties
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security INTERPOL Global Congress on Chemical Security and Emerging Threats
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Publications
The research required to build the proof-of-concept led to the publication of several academic articles and reports:
- “Expanding the Australia Group’s chemical weapons precursors control list with a family-based approach” Pure and Applied Chemistry, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2022-1113
- A project note: The Nonproliferation Compliance Cheminformatics Tool (NCCT) Moves to Field Testing, July 2022
- “Supporting the Fight against the Proliferation of Chemical Weapons through Cheminformatics,” Pure and Applied Chemistry, vol. 94, no. 7, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2021-1107
- A short note on the project in a piece on Stimson’s new technology projects in the Global Partnership Newsletter, December 2021.
- Related publications from the project team:
- “Lists of Chemical Warfare Agents and Precursors from International Nonproliferation Frameworks: Structural Annotation and Chemical Fingerprint Analysis,” Journal of Chemical Information and Modelling, 60, 10 (2020): 4804-4816.
- “Leveraging Cheminformatics to Bolster the Control of Chemical Warfare Agents and their Precursors,” Strategic Trade Review, 6, 9 (Winter/Spring 2020), pp. 69-92.
Strategic chemical trade controls present unique enforcement challenges; vulnerabilities exist in determining whether a given substance is a concern or not – a task that can be complex and time-consuming even for trained chemists. The Partnerships in Proliferation Prevention Program hosted a series of workshops that were the latest milestones in the Stimson Center’s project to apply cheminformatics and other advanced technology to the automation of strategic chemical trade control enforcement.
The Cheminformatics project team hosted a series of virtual workshops on March 14th and April 22nd, 2024, covering the vulnerabilities in strategic trade control enforcement supporting the chemical weapons nonproliferation regime and exploring software tools that address them. The goal of the workshops was to define enforcement challenges to strategic chemical trade controls, promote awareness about tool solutions more broadly, discuss avenues for developing tools tailored to specified end-user needs, and engage a wide set of international stakeholders in government and industry. The Stimson Center presented on the challenges to strategic trade control enforcement, while private sector cheminformatics software developers and government representatives presented tools their organizations have developed for a variety of purposes, including chemical regulatory compliance, security and nonproliferation capacity building, and strategic trade controls. The workshops, generously funded by Global Affairs Canada, included a broad range of participants, including customs and strategic trade control representatives from 13 countries.
Several themes emerged across discussions in both workshops that provided important feedback for the development of tools to support strategic trade controls for chemical weapons nonproliferation. Cost was one – many agreed that national customs offices would benefit from tools, but said they needed to be affordable and accessible. Short timelines available to border and customs officials when performing checks on chemical imports and exports also reinforced the need to utilize systems when shippers submit documents, allowing for early detection of controlled chemicals. Emphasis was also placed on the need for tools to work in a variety of environments, including instances where internet or Wi-Fi is unavailable. There was broad agreement that, taking these concerns under consideration, better access to these tools would strengthen strategic chemical trade control enforcement.
Project Background
The workshops were the latest milestones in the Stimson Center’s project to apply cheminformatics and other advanced technology to the automation of strategic chemical trade control enforcement. In earlier phases of the project, the team developed and tested a proof-of-concept tool consisting of commercial off-the-shelf cheminformatics software and a database of controlled chemicals to allow users to check available chemical identifying information (name, registry number, and molecular structure) against national or international control lists of chemical warfare agents or precursors. The team tested the tool using information provided on randomly selected and anonymized real-world customs declarations and used the valuable insights gained to develop requirements for a more user-friendly web-based tool for deployment in a real-world user environment.
Outreach
The project team has also gathered feedback and gauged interest in such a tool by conducting outreach through workshops, demonstrations, webinars, and other presentations to:
- United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Container Control Programme
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
- Global Partnership Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Chemical Security Working Group
- Virtual Conference on Chemistry and Its Applications International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
- Australian Ministry of Defence
- OPCW event marking the 25th anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention
- Chemical Weapons Demilitarisation (CWD) conference
- CWC Conference of States Parties
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security INTERPOL Global Congress on Chemical Security and Emerging Threats
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Publications
The research required to build the proof-of-concept led to the publication of several academic articles and reports:
- “Expanding the Australia Group’s chemical weapons precursors control list with a family-based approach” Pure and Applied Chemistry, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2022-1113
- A project note: The Nonproliferation Compliance Cheminformatics Tool (NCCT) Moves to Field Testing, July 2022
- “Supporting the Fight against the Proliferation of Chemical Weapons through Cheminformatics,” Pure and Applied Chemistry, vol. 94, no. 7, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2021-1107
- A short note on the project in a piece on Stimson’s new technology projects in the Global Partnership Newsletter, December 2021.
- Related publications from the project team:
- “Lists of Chemical Warfare Agents and Precursors from International Nonproliferation Frameworks: Structural Annotation and Chemical Fingerprint Analysis,” Journal of Chemical Information and Modelling, 60, 10 (2020): 4804-4816.
- “Leveraging Cheminformatics to Bolster the Control of Chemical Warfare Agents and their Precursors,” Strategic Trade Review, 6, 9 (Winter/Spring 2020), pp. 69-92.
