Equitable climate resilience - science and solutions for a warming world

Climate change poses an acute and accelerating threat to low-income, historically marginalized communities across the nation. This is particularly true in the Southeast, where extreme heat and increased coastal flooding intersect with high rates of energy poverty and substandard infrastructure to create widespread vulnerability to ongoing climate change. The path towards long-term resilience in many underserved communities must incorporate tools and approaches from the physical and social sciences as well as engineering and urban planning. By grounding such interdisciplinary research collaborations in community-based partnerships, community members and organizations can serve as irreplaceable sources of local knowledge and expertise, and guide the co-development of equitable climate resilience strategies. In this talk, I review two different transdisciplinary research projects:  one focused on urban heat islands in Atlanta, and another focused on sea level rise in Savannah, Georgia. Both projects involve distributed data streams of hyperlocal environmental data that inform the science of local climate risk, as well as community science and K-12 education, all in deep partnership with a multi-sector network of community partners.

About this Series:

The Department Lecture Series at EAPS at MIT is a series of Weekly talks given by leading thinkers in the areas of geology, geophysics, geobiology, geochemistry, atmospheric science, oceanography, climatology, and planetary science. For more information and Zoom password please contact Maggie Cedarstrom: maggie84@mit.edu