Global events are significant occurrences that have international, cultural or economic impacts and implications and influence people’s lives and futures. These include wars, natural disasters, economic crises and major cultural movements such as artistic expressions or social re-configurations. They can change the shape of international relations and shift economic practices across countries, often leading to new forms of inter-cultural exchange.
The emergence of new global events such as tourism and business conferences are also important drivers of economic growth, as they are catalysts for investments that boost employment and create jobs. They can also increase trade and stimulate foreign direct investment in the hosting country, and can generate political commitment to policy priorities. However, to maximise the positive economic impact of these events, it is necessary to develop well-designed monitoring and evaluation frameworks, in order to accurately measure the long-term impact of such events.
Similarly, a number of societal changes are often caused by global events, including the development of national healthcare systems following the influenza pandemic, which led to free access to healthcare for the majority of the world’s population. Such examples highlight that whilst there is truth in Castells’ notion of placelesness, the intensity with which global events impact all places varies considerably and is not universal. The Big Event framework was developed in the attempt to understand what appear to be contingent outcomes of major global events, such as the fact that some global events seem to trigger large HIV epidemics whereas others do not. It explores the possibility of a variety of pathways through which global events can lead to better or worse short and long term outcomes for health conditions and diseases; it considers how pre-existing societal conditions and changing “pathway” variables might affect those outcomes; and it provides a number of innovative questionnaire-based measures for exploring this issue.