What is an artist doing with 'Doomsday Equations' at the JRC’s Disaster Risk Management unit?
The Joint Research Centre is pleased to announce the start of Calin Segal’s artistic residency with the Disaster Risk Management Unit. From February to July 2026, Calin will be based in Ispra, Italy, to explore the modelling of natural systems under threat. Rather than viewing modelling only as a technical practice, this collaboration will also examine it as a cultural language – one that influences how institutions perceive, fear, and respond to risk.
Exploring “Doomsday Equations”
The artistic focus of this project is on what Calin Segal calls "doomsday equations": the minimal mathematical forms used to describe escalation, tipping points, cascading failures, and compounding uncertainty.
“I am interested in how these equations translate messy geophysical reality into decision-relevant signals, what assumptions are embedded in their parameters, and how those assumptions travel into public narratives of risk, preparedness, and inevitability”, Segal stated.
While disaster risk science is often described through numbers – such as forecasts, return periods, probabilities and model outputs – these figures are underpinned by assumptions, choices and interpretations that shape how threats are perceived and the fragile natural systems are at risk by policy decisions (or the lack of them).
By inviting an artist into the Disaster Risk Management Unit, the JRC aims to slow down and look critically at these scientific languages, making them more transparent, relatable and inclusive of both citizens and the natural systems that these decisions ultimately affect.
The JRC looks forward to exploring science-for-policy through a new lens, with the invaluable contribution of Calin Segal.
About Calin Segal
Calin Segal is a Romanian computational artist working at the intersection of architecture, generative systems, and research-based art. Trained in architecture in Paris, he shifted from spatial and humanitarian projects toward computational media, using algorithmic models to explore how ecological, social, and technical systems behave when reduced and recomposed. His practice treats analysis as a creative act, focusing on interaction, feedback, and emergence rather than representation.
His work takes the form of installations and sculptural environments that function as simplified, experiential models of complex systems. Segal has exhibited at events such as Nuit Blanche Paris, LEV Festival Madrid, Geneva Mapping Festival, the G7 Forum Bologna, and Ars Electronica, and has taken part in international research residencies including V2_ Rotterdam and S+T+ARTS VOJEXT.
About the Disaster Risk Management Unit
The JRC has a strong competence on disaster risk management. Starting from understanding geological and atmospheric processes, the JRC scientists have developed tools that forecast or monitor in real time extreme events such as floods, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. These tools provide necessary information to the Emergency Response Coordination Centre of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism, supporting the solidarity among Member States and the dispatch of the EU’s own response capacity (RescEU). Benefiting from ever-increasing computing capabilities, the JRC can look back in time and forward in the future to study changes in hazards and inform on the impacts of climate change and population dynamics.
A key challenge remains the role of the citizen and their understanding of the risks. In the Preparedness Union Strategy, citizens are rightly identified as the first in line for preparing for and preventing disasters. Science and Arts, and especially their combination, can help bring better risk awareness to citizens and activate them as the first line of defence.