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Grappling with Climate Uncertainties: MIT’s Resiliency Approach

May 30, 2018 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT

Free

Heightened awareness from recent extreme weather events and emerging data about current and future climate risks is placing increasing pressure on university campuses to develop processes for enhancing the resilience of existing and future campus buildings, utilities, communities and landscape systems. Preparing university campuses for current and future climate risks requires grappling with the uncertainties of climate science and testing a variety of methods for translating these uncertainties into strategic operational and planning decisions. This webinar will present how MIT is engaging both climate researchers and campus operational experts in feedback loops to identify campus-based climate challenges and resiliency opportunities.  MIT is in the early stages of climate resiliency planning and will describe methods we are starting to use such as collective intelligence and systems-thinking across campus and city scales to grapple with climate uncertainties and campus complexities. The webinar will be presented by Brian Goldberg, a project manager in the MIT Office of Sustainability, and Dr. Ken Strzepek, a climate scientist with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

For members: Access webinar recording and presentation materials

Presenters

Brian Goldberg

Brian Goldberg, Sustainability Project Manager, MIT Office of Sustainability

Brian Goldberg is a project manager in the MIT Office of Sustainability, advancing climate resiliency; stormwater and land management; materials management; and student fellowship portfolios. Prior to joining MIT in 2016, Brian worked as an environmental planner and corporate social responsibility advisor for 10 years with AECOM, addressing urban and rural challenges across the U.S., Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Prior work includes engagements with the United Nations in Asia-Pacific; James Corner Field Operations in New York City; and the New York City Parks Department Natural Resources Group. Brian earned a Master of Environmental Management from Yale University and a BA from Union College.

Ken Strzepek

Kenneth Strzepek, Research Scientist, MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

Kenneth Strzepek has spent 30 years as a researcher and practitioner at the nexus of engineering, environmental and economics systems, primarily related to water resource planning and management, river basin planning, and modeling of agricultural, environmental, and water resources systems. His work includes applications of operations research, engineering economics, micro-economics and environmental economics to a broad range of applications: from project scale to national and global investment policy studies. He has worked for a range of national governments as well as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the USAID. He is Professor Emeritus of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and recently a Visiting Professor of Economics and Affiliated Professor in College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute as well as an International Fellow at the Center for Environmental Economics and Policy for Africa and Examiner in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He has been a contributing author to the Second IPCC assessment, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the World Water Vision, and the UN World Water Development Report. He is currently the USAID Scientific Liaison Office on Water and Climate Change to the CGIAR. Prof. Strzepek has a PhD in Water Resources Systems Analysis from MIT, an MA in Economics from the University of Colorado and is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Hamburg, Germany.