Climate change at the nexus of society and the environment: empirical methods and simulation modeling
Join Jonathan Gilligan, Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Digital Technologies and Sustainability, as they explore how to use simulation modeling and statistical analysis to better understand interactions between human behaviour and the environment. This event is co-hosted by the Waterloo Climate Institute, TRANSFORM, and the department of Geography and Environmental Management in the Faculty of Environment.
When: November 14th, 2023
Where: Davis Computer Research Center, room 1304 (DC 1304)
Time: 1:00-2:00pm
Lecture Abstract: Climate change lies at the core of a complex coupled socio-environmental system. Assessing the impacts of climate change on human lives and designing effective policies to respond to climate change requires understanding interactions between human behavior and the environment. My research uses simulation modeling and statistical analysis to better understand the nexus of behavior and climate change. Rural agricultural communities along the coast of Bangladesh are vulnerable to many aspects of climate change, especially sea-level rise. Combining climatological analysis with household surveys and agent-based modeling allows me to identify new aspects of vulnerability and opportunities for adaptation. Combining machine learning methods with agent-based simulation models reveals that economic inequality within communities plays an important role in determining patterns of migration (how many leave, and who leaves) in response to extreme events. Combining field work on sediment transport with computational modeling shows that enough sediment is delivered to the Bengal coast by the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river system and worked into tidal channels, to maintain a steady-state relationship between land-elevation and rising sea-levels. However, social and political considerations affect the feasibility of adopting such land use. Simulation modeling can help understand when and why communities reject sustainable land use. Finally, I will briefly discuss a separate line of work that investigates the role of human behavior in analyzing greenhouse gas mitigation policy in the United States, and reveals a surprising potential for voluntary individual and household actions to significantly reduce emissions, and offers a path forward when partisan political gridlock paralyzes governments.
Biography
Jonathan Gilligan (they/them) is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University, and director of Vanderbilt's Interdisciplinary Grand-Challenge Initiative on Climate and Society. Gilligan received their BA from Swarthmore College and their Ph.D. in physics from Yale University. They are currently visiting the University of Calgary as Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Digital Technologies and Sustainability. Their research focuses on integrating social and behavioral sciences with natural sciences and engineering to study coupled socio-environmental systems, with a focus on incorporating psychologically realistic behavior into agent-based simulation modeling. In collaboration with law professor Michael Vandenbergh, they introduced a theory of private environmental governance, for which they received the 2017 Morrison Prize for the most important paper of the year on sustainability law and policy. Their book Beyond Politics: The Private Governance Response to Climate Change, co-authored with Vandenbergh, was named by the Environmental Law Institute as one of the most important books on environmental policy in the last 50 years. In addition to their research, Gilligan has been active in developing and promoting interdisciplinary university teaching. They co-chaired a committee that designed and launched Vanderbilt's new interdisciplinary Climate Studies major, which incorporates natural science, social science, and humanities perspectives on climate change on equal footing, and served on a committee that completely redesigned Vanderbilt's undergraduate liberal arts curriculum.