Transcript Tom Downing - Great Project - global change SysTem for Analysis

What makes a GREAT research project?
(Personal reflections on a
vulnerability/adaptation science)
Thomas E. Downing
SEI Oxford Office
• Nature-society integration
• Uncertainty and integrated assessment
• A human dimensions working group
Nature-society integration
– Millenium development goals
– Mult-agent modelling
Millennium
Development
Goals
•Do the impacts of climate change mean MDGs
are more difficult to achieve?
•Can adaptation to climate change help achieve the MDGs?
•Does climate mitigation affect the MDGs?
Linking driving forces, institutions and stakeholders
Drivers of change
Thematic networks
Signal events
Marketisation
Naturisation
Rescaling decisions
Inclusion/exclusion
Integration
Climate change
Stakeholders
Warning and
operational
responses
Regulation and
mitigation
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Land use and
economic
development
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Why a stakeholder approach?
• Model discourses
– Can we predict human-environment interactions over the
next decade and beyond?
– What are formal (quantitative) models for?
– How can formal models support stakeholder insight?
• Expanding the range of model approaches
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Mulit-criteria
Multi-agent
Tolerable windows
Risk and probabilistic scenarios
Coping ranges for representative stakeholders/activities
Interactive vulnerability mapping
Uncertainty and integrated assessment
• How can we evaluate uncertainty in
integrated assessment?
– NUSAP
• What are the local concern?
– Framing risk using the IPCC ‘reasons for concern”
• Do global/downscaled scenarios frame local
conditions of adaptive capacity?
– Compare alternative approaches
Location of uncertainty
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Input data
Parameters
Technical model structure
Conceptual model sruct. /assumptions
Indicators
Problem framing
System boundary
Socio-political and institutional context
NUSAP
• A protocol for evaluating integrated assessments
– Both models and stakeholder participation
• Based on the implications of post-normal science
• Notational system for evaluating models:
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Numerical
Unit
Spread
Assessment
Pedigree
• University of Utrecht: www.nusap.net
IPCC Fire Poker
I Risks to Unique and Threatened Systems
II Risks from Extreme Climate Events
III Distribution of Impacts
IV Aggregate Impacts
V Risks from Future Large-Scale Discontinuities
WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR CONCERN FOR LOCAL/REGIONAL STAKEHOLDERS?
HOW GREAT ARE THE RISKS FOR THOSE CONCERNS?
How well does SRES capture local
adaptive capacity?
• Macro driving forces are not directly related to
local vulnerability
• Optimistic boundary conditions:
– In the SRES scenario with the lowest rate of per
capita growth, developing countries are as rich in
2050 as OECD countries are now
• Some SRES population projections are now
unrealistic
A human dimensions group
– Exchanges of ideas, models, training material,
students
– Possible project extensions
• Multi-agent modelling
• Links to climate outlooks
– Representation in IHDP and other international
forums