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Tim+Yelena

Innovating Climate-Change Analysis and Education

In a rapidly urbanizing and climate-changing world, inter-basin water supply megaprojects are on the rise, with huge energy, greenhouse gas, and water injustice implications. These projects are subject to perverse positive feedbacks such that they increase climate change, and thus increase the water scarcity used to justify them in the first place. Marsh Institute Researchers Timothy Downs (IDCE), Cynthia Caron (IDCE), Paul Cotnoir (Becker School), Abby Frazier (Geography), Karen Frey (Geography), Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger (IDCE), Rinku Roy Chowdhury (Geography), Morgan Ruelle (IDCE), and Terassa Ulm (Becker School), in collaboration with colleagues from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, recently received funding from the National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for International Research and Education program for the project Co-creating Research and Education Capacities to Understand, Visualize, and Mitigate Climate-Change Impact Cascades and Inequities in Central Mexico. Using a planned water supply expansion program for Mexico City as impetus, this innovative, multi-disciplinary project will integrate participatory GIS, collaborative system dynamics modeling, and eXtended Reality (XR) technology to visualize and compare alternative climate/development scenarios that diverse stakeholders can inhabit virtually.

For full project descriptions, see the Marsh Institute Research Projects web page.