Very interesting research on AI modeling climate damage to cities.
BY Andrea Lawson July 11, 2024
Canadian cities can use artificial intelligence to save millions while predicting and protecting themselves against climate change, say two McMaster engineering researchers behind a new virtual modelling system.
“We’re already seeing the impact of climate change and extreme weather on our municipal infrastructure,” explains Moustafa Naiem Abdel-Mooty, a researcher and instructor in the department of Civil Engineering.
“The 2013 Calgary flood and the Fort McMurray wildfires in 2016 are examples of how incredibly expensive and damaging it is for municipalities not to be prepared.”
Naiem, a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) postdoctoral fellow at Western University, did his doctoral work at McMaster, studying ways to enhance climate adaptation and resilience.
He used machine learning to predict the impact of climate change on infrastructure systems, but soon realized he could do more using what’s called “digital twins” technology — creating an evolving virtual model of something based on real data and subjecting it to projected influences to predict how its physical version will be affected.
Naiem created a virtual, self-updating replica of a city that continuously exchanged data with what was happening in real life.
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“I want our municipalities to see the power of these tools to prevent and lessen impacts that we know are coming and will come more frequently,” he says.
“We’ve seen extreme weather events disrupting whole cities. Climate change is here. We’re beyond the point of stopping it, but we can lessen the impact.”
With leaders focused on reducing carbon emissions, successfully pitching the model will require convincing them that they should also set aside some money for limiting the impact of existing climate events.
“There is a saying that climate resiliency is being hijacked by the race to net zero,” Naiem says. “Everyone is putting their money into this basket and it’s very good to prevent a worse future, but where we are right now is already bad.”
“There is a cost to doing something, but what is the cost of doing nothing?”
Source: McMaster Brighter World
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