WaterTalk: Putting People at the Centre: Towards transforming climate risk assessment for water security and delivery

Thursday, June 20, 2024 11:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)
Holger Maier

As part of the Water Institute's WaterTalks lecture seriesDr. Holger R. Maier, Professor of Environmental Engineering, School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, will present: Putting people at the centre: Towards transforming climate risk assessment for water security and delivery.

This event is in person in DC 1302.

More Information

Existing methods for dealing with climate risk have been highly ineffective, as they present a “science-centric” narrative that lacks connection with “everyday” concerns of stakeholders. To address this shortcoming, a new approach to climate risk assessment and management that is “people-centric” is needed, engendering stakeholder buy-in and empowerment. This talk will present the underpinnings of such an approach, examples of how it has been applied in practice, as well as details of a new project funded by the One Basin Cooperative Research Centre that will attempt to apply and further develop this approach in a variety of contexts, with the aim of establishing this approach as the “standard” way of conducting climate risk assessments.

Speaker Bio

Holger

Holger is Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Adelaide. His interests are in developing and applying methods that result in sustainable outcomes, especially when dealing with complex systems in an uncertain environment. Examples of this include the development of decision support systems for long-term disaster risk reduction under a range of plausible futures, the development of innovative bottom-up climate impact assessment methods, the development of adaptive approaches to urban stormwater management using smart technologies and the development of approaches supporting the decarbonisation of the gas industry. Holger is the recipient of Biennial Medals from the International Environmental Modelling and Simulation Society and the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand and is an International Advisory Board Member of Environmental Modelling and Software.