Centralising Information: Predicting and Managing the Risk of Pandemics at the WHO

In order to analyse the centralisation of information, the research team went to the SHOC Room of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, a critical hub through which passes all information destined to managing worldwide epidemic risks. The description of the WHO’s surveillance device for epidemic diseases has brought to our attention the fact that an information becomes ‘alive’ only if seized, translated and transmitted to the next level, which in turn, undertakes the same process, and so on, thus creating a succession of ‘captures’. Furthermore, the socio-technical intermediaries, which are constantly being perfected by technological advancements, have allowed to broaden, in response to the SARS crisis, the notion of risk and to display the emergence of a novel spatiality on the scene of world affairs. This broadening also tampers with temporality. The WHO must now not only come to terms with the ‘during’, but must also invest in the analysis of all potentially sensitise information, such as rumours.