U.S.-Mexico Risk Task Force to Support the Health Supply Chain Systems for Infrastructure and Workforce Threatened by the COVID-19 Pandemic

Issue: COVID-19 knows no borders, and its effects on people and the economy have taken a resounding toll on both sides of the U.S. – Mexico border. The people of the workforce and their families have been affected and subject to the local and regional resources and policies of their communities, and these effects have echoed into factories and industries, changes for migrant workers, and amplified to effects on trade and supply chains.

Objective: The Cross-Border Threat Screening and Supply Chain Defense (CBTS) Center of Excellence in partnership with the Texas A&M University College of Engineering, has initiated a binational taskforce comprised of representatives from academia, industry and government, from the U.S. and Mexico to address the public health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. – Mexico workforce, supply chains, and trade.

Outcomes: The taskforce, led by CBTS-Texas A&M University, has secured three strategic Mexican partners in addition to key US representation: The National Association of Governors (Consejo Nacional de Gobernadores, CONAGO), the Business Advisory Council (Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, CCE), and the National COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Board. Collaborations stemming from the taskforce are structure for generation of up-to-date analytics following a Risk systems approach through a data-lake platform.

Value Proposition: This project is facilitating the identification, characterization and modeling of existing or potential threats to health and supply chain systems.  It is facilitating the assessment of the current state of vulnerability of health and supply chain systems and enabling the assessment of social, economic and environmental impacts that may be produced by likely combinations of threats and states of vulnerability of these systems.