Innovation Showcases (Asynchronous Session)
Confronting Climate Change in a Liberal Arts Educational Context View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Zoé Strecker
A two-year project, currently in progress at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, called “Crucial Terrain: Ecological Flourishing, Environmental Justice and Regenerative Culture in the Face of the Climate Crisis” aims to cultivate informed, regenerative visions for the future within a liberal arts curriculum and across the college’s community. This project strives to be intergenerational in reach, cross-disciplinary in structure, and transformational in long-term effect. Primary elements of the project include (1) year-long faculty learning communities of 6 members from a wide range of disciplines, (2) public programming including lectures, presentations, short workshops, art exhibitions and performances, delivered throughout each academic year by scholars (internal and external), artists, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders (3) a discussion group comprised of students (who earn partial credit), and other members of the college community (alumni, faculty, staff, administrators, and members of the university’s Board of Trustees and Board of Regents) in a spirit of cross-generational community-building and collaboration (4) an expansion of the existing Environmental Studies minor, currently contributed to by only a few disciplines, to a major that includes courses from all four academic divisions and, (5) for the long-term, plans for an interdisciplinary academic center for environmental arts and sciences that supports creative innovation and changemaking across boundaries of specialization to address urgent contemporary environmental challenges. This session provides an overview of this project-in-progress and invites recommendations for expanding this work and connecting with similar efforts in the liberal arts space.
The Climate Resilient Agriculture Network and Platform: Common Grounds for Adaptation in Turkey View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Melike Kuş
The impacts of climate change on agriculture are accelerating at an unprecedented pace and adaptation actions should not lag behind. Improving adaptation capacity at different levels requires close collaboration among different stakeholders to experience and disseminate best practises and knowledge. However, there are very limited instruments and resources engaging various stakeholders for collaborative action for climate change adaptation in Turkish agriculture. Conventional ways of agricultural dissemination activities have been mainly based on face-to-face meetings and the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted dissemination and monitoring activities for a long while. On the other hand, the pandemic also showed that digital technologies would be highly beneficial for remote management of production and knowledge during the times of crisis. The purpose of the project is to enhance informed decision making for climate resilient agriculture through a well-connected network and platform in Turkey. The project combines a social network and a digital platform to improve communication and dissemination of knowledge on climate resilient agriculture strategies, policies and practices and provide a common ground for collaborative working of different stakeholders. The platform also benefits from citizen science through a smartphone app that allows collecting real time climate related crop loss data, which feeds into the vulnerability mapping tool on the platform. The vulnerability map is an evidence- based decision making support tool to optimize the limited resources for adaptation. The network and the platform will help farmers and the other stakeholder to learn from other’s experience, share their success stories and build collaborations for improving their capacities.
Urban Hydrologics and Climate Adaptation in Tropical Cities: Policies, Narratives, and Emerging Technologies to Accelerate Water Sensitive Urban Design Implementation View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Pj Santa
Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is an interdisciplinary approach integrating engineering, ecology, planning, and design to restore the natural water cycle in cities. Implementing WSUD policies and projects increases urban resiliency, social-ecological wellbeing, and economic growth in cities. Previous research shows that while awareness favoring climate adaptation is growing, tropical cities are not adequately implementing WSUD and nature-based solutions to match the risks derived from existing climate models. Widespread disinvestment and lack of funding make the existing contributions of private, public, and individual change-makers slow, piecemeal, and inefficient. Adequate case studies and national narratives showing how large-scale WSUD implementation efforts lead to success for the economy, ecology, society, and progress are needed. We use empirical data gathered by Urban Hydrologics, a climate adaptation group registered in Singapore, to describe the evolution, trajectory, and adoption of WSUD approaches and policies in Singapore over the last ten years. Having witnessed firsthand the progressive roll-out of WSUD policies, incentives, and regulatory frameworks from 2011-2021, Urban Hydrologics' research reveals valuable nation scale implementation insights. The group's findings show how Singapore combined political, financial, educational programs to generate results at scale and within a decade. The findings indicate the right mix of national narratives, policies, and climate tech innovations can enable wider financing, implementation, community participation, and monitoring of nature-based solutions. Illustrated scenarios are showcased through the emerging tech innovation titled 'Urban Hydrologic Virtual Twin’, with finishing remarks on how it can set in motion a blue-green data economy for tropical cities of the future.
A Test Bed for Coastal Resilience: Using the Challenge Model to Accelerate Innovation View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Paul Robinson
Coastal communities are increasingly vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate-related changes. How can these communities build environmental and economic resilience in the face of these threats? This presentation shows the challenge model can be used to source innovative adaptation and mitigation solutions to critical problems, accelerate businesses in the coastal resilience sector, drive local workforce development, and help cities plan future projects. A new method of sourcing solutions was required and demonstrated in this work. RISE has funded more than $5M to over 30 companies to work in this area. Actual case studies are presented using the Hampton Roads region in Virginia as a test bed to demonstrate resilience-related innovations.
