Climate Change Resilience: A Case for Human-Machine Collaboration in Solving Humanity’s Most Urgent Threat
Meghna Babbar-Sebens
Associate Professor of Water Resources Engineering
Oct. 27, 2020
Noon to 1 p.m. (PT)
Free and open to the public
Failure to mitigate impacts of climate change and adapt to related stresses, extreme events (such as floods, droughts, and storms), and natural hazards have been identified as the most likely global risks by World Economic Forum in a recent 2020 report. A collective will is critical to tackling these risks. But how do we mobilize a collective problem-solving process in communities for identifying opportunities to build resilience to climate change and adapt to learned lessons? In this presentation, we will examine whether a collaboration between humans and machines could create new ways for communities to create solutions for this intractable problem. We will also explore what such a collaboration might look like in watershed communities prone to flooding.
Meghna Babbar-Sebens is an associate professor of water resources engineering in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. She is also co-director of the OSU-Benton County Green Stormwater Infrastructure facility. Babbar-Sebens’ research interests lie in the area of water resources and environmental systems analysis. She and her students conduct interdisciplinary research in the fields of hydroinformatics and artificial intelligence to develop innovative and effective monitoring, simulation optimization, and decision support technologies for sustainable planning and management of water-based systems, including watershed systems, stormwater infrastructure, and systems at the nexus of food, energy, and water sectors.
