Hot but Habitable

Hot, but Habitable

Humanity is rapidly being hurled into a warming future climate. We face certain exposure to more extreme heat events and warmer climatic conditions over the coming decades. Higher temperatures represent significant risks to how we live, how we get sick, and how we may die. Populations on all inhabited continents are vulnerable to heat exposure, labor productivity is in decline due to rising temperatures, and urban centers and the urban poor are at particularly high risk of extreme heat. We are not prepared for these present realities, nor are we innovating quickly enough to meet growing future challenges with sustainable solutions. But a new global network of is rallying to create new solutions to this problem.

The workshop will bring together an interdisciplinary team of practitioners and researchers who work to manage the risk of extreme heat as well as technologists, designers, and data scientists to identify transdisciplinary digital systems-based solutions to minimize the impact of heat waves on the habitability of our cities, the enjoyment of the outdoors, and the health of our people.

Teams will define and explore two grand challenges:

First, How to improve global heat risk and impact monitoring.

Secondly, how to better track, predict, plan, and respond to cascading and simultaneous heat triggered risks, such as extreme heat coupled with power failures, water insecurity, fires, air quality.

Outcomes will be refined by participants on day 1, but the workshop will allow participants to better understand the multiple dimensions of the grand challenges in an open-exploration way; outline future directions and frontiers; challenge assumptions and technical requirements; as well as identify concrete proposals for research-action. By taking a deep dive into solution-finding, teams will explore creative solutions to better utilize digital platforms and e-science to enhance information quality, interpretation, and flow to the last mile for informed communities and decision-making.

In addition to daily facilitated workshops, during the week participants will be able to retreat into innovation, through long-lunch sessions that allow for further idea-generating, group dinners and city events, such as activities and public lecture planned in collaboration with the Borhaave Museum of science and medicine.     

Lorentz-eScience call 
This workshop is winner of the Lorentz-eScience call 2019. For more information see our Lorentz-eScience program.