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      Q&A: Climate Grand Challenges finalists on new pathways to decarbonizing industry

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      Note: This is the third article in a four-part interview series highlighting the work of the 27 MIT Climate Grand Challenges finalist teams, which received a total of $2.7 million in startup funding to advance their projects. In April, the Institute will name a subset of the finalists as multiyear flagship projects.

      The industrial sector is the backbone of today’s global economy, yet its activities are among the most energy-intensive and the toughest to decarbonize. Efforts to reach net-zero targets and avert runaway climate change will not succeed without new solutions for replacing sources of carbon emissions with low-carbon alternatives and developing scalable nonemitting applications of hydrocarbons.

      In conversations prepared for MIT News, faculty from three of the teams with projects in the competition’s “Decarbonizing complex industries and processes” category discuss strategies for achieving impact in hard-to-abate sectors, from long-distance transportation and building construction to textile manufacturing and chemical refining. The other Climate Grand Challenges research themes include using data and science to forecast climate-related risk, building equity and fairness into climate solutions, and removing, managing, and storing greenhouse gases. The following responses have been edited for length and clarity.

      Moving toward an all-carbon material approach to building

      Faced with the prospect of building stock doubling globally by 2050, there is a great need for sustainable alternatives to conventional mineral- and metal-based construction materials. Mark Goulthorpe, associate professor in the Department of Architecture, explains the methods behind Carbon >Building, an initiative to develop energy-efficient building materials by reorienting hydrocarbons from current use as fuels to environmentally benign products, creating an entirely new genre of lightweight, all-carbon buildings that could actually drive decarbonization.

      Q: What are all-carbon buildings and how can they help mitigate climate change?

      A: Instead of burning hydrocarbons as fuel, which releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to atmospheric pollution, we seek to pioneer a process that uses carbon materially to build at macro scale. New forms of carbon — carbon nanotube, carbon foam, etc. — offer salient properties for building that might effectively displace the current material paradigm. Only hydrocarbons offer sufficient scale to beat out the billion-ton mineral and metal markets, and their perilous impact. Carbon nanotube from methane pyrolysis is of special interest, as it offers hydrogen as a byproduct.

      Q: How will society benefit from the widespread use of all-carbon buildings?

      A: We anticipate reducing costs and timelines in carbon composite buildings, while increasing quality, longevity, and performance, and diminishing environmental impact. Affordability of buildings is a growing problem in all global markets as the cost of labor and logistics in multimaterial assemblies creates a burden that is very detrimental to economic growth and results in overcrowding and urban blight.

      Alleviating these challenges would have huge societal benefits, especially for those in lower income brackets who cannot afford housing, but the biggest benefit would be in drastically reducing the environmental footprint of typical buildings, which account for nearly 40 percent of global energy consumption.

      An all-carbon building sector will not only reduce hydrocarbon extraction, but can produce higher value materials for building. We are looking to rethink the building industry by greatly streamlining global production and learning from the low-labor methods pioneered by composite manufacturing such as wind turbine blades, which are quick and cheap to produce. This technology can improve the sustainability and affordability of buildings — and holds the promise of faster, cheaper, greener, and more resilient modes of dwelling.

      Emissions reduction through innovation in the textile industry

      Collectively, the textile industry is responsible for over 4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, or 5 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than aviation and maritime shipping combined. And the problem is only getting worse with the industry’s rapid growth. Under the current trajectory, consumption is projected to increase 30 percent by 2030, reaching 102 million tons. A diverse group of faculty and researchers led by Gregory Rutledge, the Lammot du Pont Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Yuly Fuentes-Medel, project manager for fiber technologies and research advisor to the MIT Innovation Initiative, is developing groundbreaking innovations to reshape how textiles are selected, sourced, designed, manufactured, and used, and to create the structural changes required for sustained reductions in emissions by this industry.

      Q: Why has the textile industry been difficult to decarbonize?

      A: The industry currently operates under a linear model that relies heavily on virgin feedstock, at roughly 97 percent, yet recycles or downcycles less than 15 percent. Furthermore, recent trends in “fast fashion” have led to massive underutilization of apparel, such that products are discarded on average after only seven to 10 uses. In an industry with high volume and low margins, replacement technologies must achieve emissions reduction at scale while maintaining performance and economic efficiency.

      There are also technical barriers to adopting circular business models, from the challenge of dealing with products comprising fiber blends and chemical additives to the low maturity of recycling technologies. The environmental impacts of textiles and apparel have been estimated using life cycle analysis, and industry-standard indexes are under development to assess sustainability throughout the life cycle of a product, but information and tools are needed to model how new solutions will alter those impacts and include the consumer as an active player to keep our planet safe. This project seeks to deliver both the new solutions and the tools to evaluate their potential for impact.

      Q: Describe the five components of your program. What is the anticipated timeline for implementing these solutions?

      A: Our plan comprises five programmatic sections, which include (1) enabling a paradigm shift to sustainable materials using nontraditional, carbon-negative polymers derived from biomass and additives that facilitate recycling; (2) rethinking manufacturing with processes to structure fibers and fabrics for performance, waste reduction, and increased material efficiency; (3) designing textiles for value by developing products that are customized, adaptable, and multifunctional, and that interact with their environment to reduce energy consumption; (4) exploring consumer behavior change through human interventions that reduce emissions by encouraging the adoption of new technologies, increased utilization of products, and circularity; and (5) establishing carbon transparency with systems-level analyses that measure the impact of these strategies and guide decision making.

      We have proposed a five-year timeline with annual targets for each project. Conservatively, we estimate our program could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the industry by 25 percent by 2030, with further significant reductions to follow.

      Tough-to-decarbonize transportation

      Airplanes, transoceanic ships, and freight trucks are critical to transporting people and delivering goods, and the cornerstone of global commerce, manufacturing, and tourism. But these vehicles also emit 3.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually and, left unchecked, they could take up a quarter of the remaining carbon budget by 2050. William Green, the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor in the Department Chemical Engineering, co-leads a multidisciplinary team with Steven Barrett, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and director of the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment, that is working to identify and advance economically viable technologies and policies for decarbonizing heavy duty trucking, shipping, and aviation. The Tough to Decarbonize Transportation research program aims to design and optimize fuel chemistry and production, vehicles, operations, and policies to chart the course to net-zero emissions by midcentury.

      Q: What are the highest priority focus areas of your research program?

      A: Hydrocarbon fuels made from biomass are the least expensive option, but it seems impractical, and probably damaging to the environment, to harvest the huge amount of biomass that would be needed to meet the massive and growing energy demands from these sectors using today’s biomass-to-fuel technology. We are exploring strategies to increase the amount of useful fuel made per ton of biomass harvested, other methods to make low-climate-impact hydrocarbon fuels, such as from carbon dioxide, and ways to make fuels that do not contain carbon at all, such as with hydrogen, ammonia, and other hydrogen carriers.

      These latter zero-carbon options free us from the need for biomass or to capture gigatons of carbon dioxide, so they could be a very good long-term solution, but they would require changing the vehicles significantly, and the construction of new refueling infrastructure, with high capital costs.

      Q: What are the scientific, technological, and regulatory barriers to scaling and implementing potential solutions?

      A: Reimagining an aviation, trucking, and shipping sector that connects the world and increases equity without creating more environmental damage is challenging because these vehicles must operate disconnected from the electrical grid and have energy requirements that cannot be met by batteries alone. Some of the concepts do not even exist in prototype yet, and none of the appealing options have been implemented at anywhere near the scale required.

      In most cases, we do not know the best way to make the fuel, and for new fuels the vehicles and refueling systems all need to be developed. Also, new fuels, or large-scale use of biomass, will introduce new environmental problems that need to be carefully considered, to ensure that decarbonization solutions do not introduce big new problems.

      Perhaps most difficult are the policy, economic, and equity issues. A new long-haul transportation system will be expensive, and everyone will be affected by the increased cost of shipping freight. To have the desired climate impact, the transport system must change in almost every country. During the transition period, we will need both the existing vehicle and fuel system to keep running smoothly, even as a new low-greenhouse system is introduced. We will also examine what policies could make that work and how we can get countries around the world to agree to implement them. More

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      in Environment

      Using nature’s structures in wooden buildings

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      Concern about climate change has focused significant attention on the buildings sector, in particular on the extraction and processing of construction materials. The concrete and steel industries together are responsible for as much as 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. In contrast, wood provides a natural form of carbon sequestration, so there’s a move to use timber instead. Indeed, some countries are calling for public buildings to be made at least partly from timber, and large-scale timber buildings have been appearing around the world.

      Observing those trends, Caitlin Mueller ’07, SM ’14, PhD ’14, an associate professor of architecture and of civil and environmental engineering in the Building Technology Program at MIT, sees an opportunity for further sustainability gains. As the timber industry seeks to produce wooden replacements for traditional concrete and steel elements, the focus is on harvesting the straight sections of trees. Irregular sections such as knots and forks are turned into pellets and burned, or ground up to make garden mulch, which will decompose within a few years; both approaches release the carbon trapped in the wood to the atmosphere.

      For the past four years, Mueller and her Digital Structures research group have been developing a strategy for “upcycling” those waste materials by using them in construction — not as cladding or finishes aimed at improving appearance, but as structural components. “The greatest value you can give to a material is to give it a load-bearing role in a structure,” she says. But when builders use virgin materials, those structural components are the most emissions-intensive parts of buildings due to their large volume of high-strength materials. Using upcycled materials in place of those high-carbon systems is therefore especially impactful in reducing emissions.

      Mueller and her team focus on tree forks — that is, spots where the trunk or branch of a tree divides in two, forming a Y-shaped piece. In architectural drawings, there are many similar Y-shaped nodes where straight elements come together. In such cases, those units must be strong enough to support critical loads.

      “Tree forks are naturally engineered structural connections that work as cantilevers in trees, which means that they have the potential to transfer force very efficiently thanks to their internal fiber structure,” says Mueller. “If you take a tree fork and slice it down the middle, you see an unbelievable network of fibers that are intertwining to create these often three-dimensional load transfer points in a tree. We’re starting to do the same thing using 3D printing, but we’re nowhere near what nature does in terms of complex fiber orientation and geometry.”

      She and her team have developed a five-step “design-to-fabrication workflow” that combines natural structures such as tree forks with the digital and computational tools now used in architectural design. While there’s long been a “craft” movement to use natural wood in railings and decorative features, the use of computational tools makes it possible to use wood in structural roles — without excessive cutting, which is costly and may compromise the natural geometry and internal grain structure of the wood.

      Given the wide use of digital tools by today’s architects, Mueller believes that her approach is “at least potentially scalable and potentially achievable within our industrialized materials processing systems.” In addition, by combining tree forks with digital design tools, the novel approach can also support the trend among architects to explore new forms. “Many iconic buildings built in the past two decades have unexpected shapes,” says Mueller. “Tree branches have a very specific geometry that sometimes lends itself to an irregular or nonstandard architectural form — driven not by some arbitrary algorithm but by the material itself.”

      Step 0: Find a source, set goals

      Before starting their design-to-fabrication process, the researchers needed to locate a source of tree forks. Mueller found help in the Urban Forestry Division of the City of Somerville, Massachusetts, which maintains a digital inventory of more than 2,000 street trees — including more than 20 species — and records information about the location, approximate trunk diameter, and condition of each tree.

      With permission from the forestry division, the team was on hand in 2018 when a large group of trees was cut down near the site of the new Somerville High School. Among the heavy equipment on site was a chipper, poised to turn all the waste wood into mulch. Instead, the workers obligingly put the waste wood into the researchers’ truck to be brought to MIT.

      In their project, the MIT team sought not only to upcycle that waste material but also to use it to create a structure that would be valued by the public. “Where I live, the city has had to take down a lot of trees due to damage from an invasive species of beetle,” Mueller explains. “People get really upset — understandably. Trees are an important part of the urban fabric, providing shade and beauty.” She and her team hoped to reduce that animosity by “reinstalling the removed trees in the form of a new functional structure that would recreate the atmosphere and spatial experience previously provided by the felled trees.”

      With their source and goals identified, the researchers were ready to demonstrate the five steps in their design-to-fabrication workflow for making spatial structures using an inventory of tree forks.

      Step 1: Create a digital material library

      The first task was to turn their collection of tree forks into a digital library. They began by cutting off excess material to produce isolated tree forks. They then created a 3D scan of each fork. Mueller notes that as a result of recent progress in photogrammetry (measuring objects using photographs) and 3D scanning, they could create high-resolution digital representations of the individual tree forks with relatively inexpensive equipment, even using apps that run on a typical smartphone.

      In the digital library, each fork is represented by a “skeletonized” version showing three straight bars coming together at a point. The relative geometry and orientation of the branches are of particular interest because they determine the internal fiber orientation that gives the component its strength.

      Step 2: Find the best match between the initial design and the material library

      Like a tree, a typical architectural design is filled with Y-shaped nodes where three straight elements meet up to support a critical load. The goal was therefore to match the tree forks in the material library with the nodes in a sample architectural design.

      First, the researchers developed a “mismatch metric” for quantifying how well the geometries of a particular tree fork aligned with a given design node. “We’re trying to line up the straight elements in the structure with where the branches originally were in the tree,” explains Mueller. “That gives us the optimal orientation for load transfer and maximizes use of the inherent strength of the wood fiber.” The poorer the alignment, the higher the mismatch metric.

      The goal was to get the best overall distribution of all the tree forks among the nodes in the target design. Therefore, the researchers needed to try different fork-to-node distributions and, for each distribution, add up the individual fork-to-node mismatch errors to generate an overall, or global, matching score. The distribution with the best matching score would produce the most structurally efficient use of the total tree fork inventory.

      Since performing that process manually would take far too long to be practical, they turned to the “Hungarian algorithm,” a technique developed in 1955 for solving such problems. “The brilliance of the algorithm is solving that [matching] problem very quickly,” Mueller says. She notes that it’s a very general-use algorithm. “It’s used for things like marriage match-making. It can be used any time you have two collections of things that you’re trying to find unique matches between. So, we definitely didn’t invent the algorithm, but we were the first to identify that it could be used for this problem.”

      The researchers performed repeated tests to show possible distributions of the tree forks in their inventory and found that the matching score improved as the number of forks available in the material library increased — up to a point. In general, the researchers concluded that the mismatch score was lowest, and thus best, when there were about three times as many forks in the material library as there were nodes in the target design.

      Step 3: Balance designer intention with structural performance

      The next step in the process was to incorporate the intention or preference of the designer. To permit that flexibility, each design includes a limited number of critical parameters, such as bar length and bending strain. Using those parameters, the designer can manually change the overall shape, or geometry, of the design or can use an algorithm that automatically changes, or “morphs,” the geometry. And every time the design geometry changes, the Hungarian algorithm recalculates the optimal fork-to-node matching.

      “Because the Hungarian algorithm is extremely fast, all the morphing and the design updating can be really fluid,” notes Mueller. In addition, any change to a new geometry is followed by a structural analysis that checks the deflections, strain energy, and other performance measures of the structure. On occasion, the automatically generated design that yields the best matching score may deviate far from the designer’s initial intention. In such cases, an alternative solution can be found that satisfactorily balances the design intention with a low matching score.

      Step 4: Automatically generate the machine code for fast cutting

      When the structural geometry and distribution of tree forks have been finalized, it’s time to think about actually building the structure. To simplify assembly and maintenance, the researchers prepare the tree forks by recutting their end faces to better match adjoining straight timbers and cutting off any remaining bark to reduce susceptibility to rot and fire.

      To guide that process, they developed a custom algorithm that automatically computes the cuts needed to make a given tree fork fit into its assigned node and to strip off the bark. The goal is to remove as little material as possible but also to avoid a complex, time-consuming machining process. “If we make too few cuts, we’ll cut off too much of the critical structural material. But we don’t want to make a million tiny cuts because it will take forever,” Mueller explains.

      The team uses facilities at the Autodesk Boston Technology Center Build Space, where the robots are far larger than any at MIT and the processing is all automated. To prepare each tree fork, they mount it on a robotic arm that pushes the joint through a traditional band saw in different orientations, guided by computer-generated instructions. The robot also mills all the holes for the structural connections. “That’s helpful because it ensures that everything is aligned the way you expect it to be,” says Mueller.

      Step 5: Assemble the available forks and linear elements to build the structure

      The final step is to assemble the structure. The tree-fork-based joints are all irregular, and combining them with the precut, straight wooden elements could be difficult. However, they’re all labeled. “All the information for the geometry is embedded in the joint, so the assembly process is really low-tech,” says Mueller. “It’s like a child’s toy set. You just follow the instructions on the joints to put all the pieces together.”

      They installed their final structure temporarily on the MIT campus, but Mueller notes that it was only a portion of the structure they plan to eventually build. “It had 12 nodes that we designed and fabricated using our process,” she says, adding that the team’s work was “a little interrupted by the pandemic.” As activity on campus resumes, the researchers plan to finish designing and building the complete structure, which will include about 40 nodes and will be installed as an outdoor pavilion on the site of the felled trees in Somerville.

      In addition, they will continue their research. Plans include working with larger material libraries, some with multibranch forks, and replacing their 3D-scanning technique with computerized tomography scanning technologies that can automatically generate a detailed geometric representation of a tree fork, including its precise fiber orientation and density. And in a parallel project, they’ve been exploring using their process with other sources of materials, with one case study focusing on using material from a demolished wood-framed house to construct more than a dozen geodesic domes.

      To Mueller, the work to date already provides new guidance for the architectural design process. With digital tools, it has become easy for architects to analyze the embodied carbon or future energy use of a design option. “Now we have a new metric of performance: How well am I using available resources?” she says. “With the Hungarian algorithm, we can compute that metric basically in real time, so we can work rapidly and creatively with that as another input to the design process.”

      This research was supported by MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning via the HASS Award.

      This article appears in the Autumn 2021 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative. More

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      in Energy

      Q&A: Climate Grand Challenges finalists on building equity and fairness into climate solutions

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      Note: This is the first in a four-part interview series that will highlight the work of the Climate Grand Challenges finalists, ahead of the April announcement of several multiyear, flagship projects.

      The finalists in MIT’s first-ever Climate Grand Challenges competition each received $100,000 to develop bold, interdisciplinary research and innovation plans designed to attack some of the world’s most difficult and unresolved climate problems. The 27 teams are addressing four Grand Challenge problem areas: building equity and fairness into climate solutions; decarbonizing complex industries and processes; removing, managing, and storing greenhouse gases; and using data and science for improved climate risk forecasting.  

      In a conversation prepared for MIT News, faculty from three of the teams in the competition’s “Building equity and fairness into climate solutions” category share their thoughts on the need for inclusive solutions that prioritize disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, and discuss how they are working to accelerate their research to achieve the greatest impact. The following responses have been edited for length and clarity.

      The Equitable Resilience Framework

      Any effort to solve the most complex global climate problems must recognize the unequal burdens borne by different groups, communities, and societies — and should be equitable as well as effective. Janelle Knox-Hayes, associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, leads a team that is developing processes and practices for equitable resilience, starting with a local pilot project in Boston over the next five years and extending to other cities and regions of the country. The Equitable Resilience Framework (ERF) is designed to create long-term economic, social, and environmental transformations by increasing the capacity of interconnected systems and communities to respond to a broad range of climate-related events. 

      Q: What is the problem you are trying to solve?

      A: Inequity is one of the severe impacts of climate change and resonates in both mitigation and adaptation efforts. It is important for climate strategies to address challenges of inequity and, if possible, to design strategies that enhance justice, equity, and inclusion, while also enhancing the efficacy of mitigation and adaptation efforts. Our framework offers a blueprint for how communities, cities, and regions can begin to undertake this work.

      Q: What are the most significant barriers that have impacted progress to date?

      A: There is considerable inertia in policymaking. Climate change requires a rethinking, not only of directives but pathways and techniques of policymaking. This is an obstacle and part of the reason our project was designed to scale up from local pilot projects. Another consideration is that the private sector can be more adaptive and nimble in its adoption of creative techniques. Working with the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium there may be ways in which we could modify the ERF to help companies address similar internal adaptation and resilience challenges.

      Protecting and enhancing natural carbon sinks

      Deforestation and forest degradation of strategic ecosystems in the Amazon, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia continue to reduce capacity to capture and store carbon through natural systems and threaten even the most aggressive decarbonization plans. John Fernandez, professor in the Department of Architecture and director of the Environmental Solutions Initiative, reflects on his work with Daniela Rus, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Joann de Zegher, assistant professor of Operations Management at MIT Sloan, to protect tropical forests by deploying a three-part solution that integrates targeted technology breakthroughs, deep community engagement, and innovative bioeconomic opportunities. 

      Q: Why is the problem you seek to address a “grand challenge”?

      A: We are trying to bring the latest technology to monitoring, assessing, and protecting tropical forests, as well as other carbon-rich and highly biodiverse ecosystems. This is a grand challenge because natural sinks around the world are threatening to release enormous quantities of stored carbon that could lead to runaway global warming. When combined with deep community engagement, particularly with indigenous and afro-descendant communities, this integrated approach promises to deliver substantially enhanced efficacy in conservation coupled to robust and sustainable local development.

      Q: What is known about this problem and what questions remain unanswered?

      A: Satellites, drones, and other technologies are acquiring more data about natural carbon sinks than ever before. The problem is well-described in certain locations such as the eastern Amazon, which has shifted from a net carbon sink to now a net positive carbon emitter. It is also well-known that indigenous peoples are the most effective stewards of the ecosystems that store the greatest amounts of carbon. One of the key questions that remains to be answered is determining the bioeconomy opportunities inherent within the natural wealth of tropical forests and other important ecosystems that are important to sustained protection and conservation.

      Reducing group-based disparities in climate adaptation

      Race, ethnicity, caste, religion, and nationality are often linked to vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate change, and if left unchecked, threaten to exacerbate long standing inequities. A team led by Evan Lieberman, professor of political science and director of the MIT Global Diversity Lab and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives, Danielle Wood, assistant professor in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Siqi Zheng, professor of urban and real estate sustainability in the Center for Real Estate and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, is seeking to  reduce ethnic and racial group-based disparities in the capacity of urban communities to adapt to the changing climate. Working with partners in nine coastal cities, they will measure the distribution of climate-related burdens and resiliency through satellites, a custom mobile app, and natural language processing of social media, to help design and test communication campaigns that provide accurate information about risks and remediation to impacted groups. 

      Q: How has this problem evolved?

      A: Group-based disparities continue to intensify within and across countries, owing in part to some randomness in the location of adverse climate events, as well as deep legacies of unequal human development. In turn, economically and politically privileged groups routinely hoard resources for adaptation. In a few cases — notably the United States, Brazil, and with respect to climate-related migrancy, in South Asia — there has been a great deal of research documenting the extent of such disparities. However, we lack common metrics, and for the most part, such disparities are only understood where key actors have politicized the underlying problems. In much of the world, relatively vulnerable and excluded groups may not even be fully aware of the nature of the challenges they face or the resources they require.

      Q: Who will benefit most from your research? 

      A: The greatest beneficiaries will be members of those vulnerable groups who lack the resources and infrastructure to withstand adverse climate shocks. We believe that it will be important to develop solutions such that relatively privileged groups do not perceive them as punitive or zero-sum, but rather as long-term solutions for collective benefit that are both sound and just. More

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      in Environment

      Conversations at the front line of climate

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      The climate crisis is a novel and developing chapter in human and planetary history. As a species, humankind is still very much learning how to face this crisis, and the world’s frontline communities — those being most affected by climate change — are struggling to make their voices heard. How can communities imperiled by climate change convey the urgency of their situation to countries and organizations with the means to make a difference? And how can governments and other powerful groups provide resources to these vulnerable frontline communities?The MIT Civic Design Initiative (CDI), an interdisciplinary confluence of media studies and design expertise, emerged in 2020 to tackle just these kinds of questions. It brings together the MIT Design Lab, a program originally founded in the School of Architecture and Planning with its research practices in design, and the Comparative Media Studies program (CMS/W) with its focus on the fundamentals of human connection and communication. Drawing on these complementary sources of scholarly perspective and expertise, CDI is a suitably broad umbrella for the range of climate-related issues that humanistic research and design can potentially address. Based in the CMS/W program of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, the initiative is responding to the climate crises with a spirit of inquiry, listening, and solid data. Reflecting on the mission, James Paradis, the Robert M. Metcalfe Professor of CMS/W and CDI faculty director, says the core idea is to address global issues by combining new and emerging technologies with an equally keen focus on the social and cultural contexts — the human dimensions of the issue — with many of their nuances.  Working closely with Paradis on this vision are the two CDI co-directors: Yihyun Lim, an architect, urban designer, and MIT researcher; and Eric Gordon, a visiting professor of civic media in MIT CMS/W. Prior to CDI, when she was leading the MIT Design Lab research group, Lim says “At MIT Design Lab, I was working within the realm of applied research with industry partnerships, how we can apply user-centered design methods in creating connected experiences. Eric, Jim, and I wanted to shift the focus into a more civic realm, where we could bring all our collective expertise together to address tricky problems.”

      Deep listeningThe initiative’s flagship project, the Deep Listening Project, is currently working with an initial group of frontline communities in Nepal and Indigenous tribes in the United States and Canada. The work is a direct application of communication protocols: understanding how people are communicating with and often without technologies — and how technologies can be better used to help people get the help they need, when they need it, in the face of the climate crisis.

      The CDI team describes deep listening as “a form of institutional and community intake that considers diversity, tensions, and frictions, and that incorporates communities’ values in creating solutions.”

      Globally, the majority of climate response funding currently goes toward mitigation efforts — such as reducing emissions or using more eco-friendly materials. It is only in recent years that more substantial funding has been focused on climate adaptation: making adjustments that can help a community adapt to present changes and impacts and also prepare for future climate-related crises. For the millions of people in frontline communities, such adaptation can be crucial to protecting and sustaining their communities.Gordon describes the scope of the situation: “We know that over the next 10 years, climate change will drive over 100 million people to adapt where and how they live, regardless of the success of mitigation efforts. And in order for those adaptations to succeed, there must be a concerted collaborative effort between frontline communities and institutions with the resources to facilitate adaptation.“Communication between institutions and their constituents is a fundamental planning problem in any context,” Gordon continues. “In the case of climate adaptation, there will not be a surplus of time to get things right. Putting communication mechanisms in place to connect affected communities with institutional resources is already imperative.“This situation requires that we figure out, quickly, how to listen to the people who will rely on [those institutions] for their lives and livelihoods. We want to understand how institutions — from governments to universities to NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] — are adopting and adapting technologies, and how that is benefiting or hurting their constituencies.  People with direct frontline experience need to be supported in their speech and ideas, and institutions need to be able to take in the data from these communities, listen carefully to discern its significance, and then act upon it.” Sensemaking: infrastructure for connection

      One important aspect of meaningful, effective communication will be the ability of frontline and Indigenous communities to communicate likely or imagined futures, based on their own knowledge and desires. One potential tool is what the initiative calls “sensemaking:” producing and sharing data visualizations that can communicate to governments the experiences of frontline communities. The initiative also hopes to develop additional elements of the “deep listening infrastructure” — mechanisms to make sure important community voices carry and that important data isn’t lost to noise in the vast question of climate adaptability.“Oftentimes in academia, the paper gets published or the website gets developed, and everybody says, ‘OK, we’ve done our work,’” Paradis observes. “What we’re aiming to do in the CDI is the necessary work that happens after the publication of research — where research is applied to actually improve peoples’ lives.”The Deep Listening Project is also building a network of scholars and practitioners nationwide, including Henry Jenkins, co-founder and former faculty member at MIT CMS/W; Sangita Shresthova SM ’03 at the University of Southern California; and Darren Ranco at the University of Maine. Ranco, an anthropologist, Indigenous activist, and organizational leader, has been instrumental in connecting with Indigenous groups and tribal governments across North America. Meanwhile, Gordon has helped forge connections with groups like the International Red Cross/Red Crescent, the World Bank, and the UN Development. At the root of these connections is the impetus to communicate lived realities from the level of a small community to that of global relief organizations and governmental powers.

      Potential human futures

      Mona Vijaykumar, a second-year student in the SMArchS Architecture and Urbanism program in the Department of Architecture, and among the first student researcher assistants attached to the new initiative, is excited to have the chance to help build CDI from the ground up. “It’s been a great honor to be working with CDI’s amazing team for the last eight months,” she says. With her background in urban design and research interest in climate adaptation processes, Vijaykumar has been engaged in developing the Deep Listening Project’s white paper as part of MIT Climate Grand Challenges. She works alongside the initiative’s two other inaugural research assistants: Tomas Guarna, a master’s student in CMS, and Gabriela Degetau, a master’s student in the SMarchS Urbanism program, with Vijaykumar.“I was involved in analyzing the literature case study on community-based adaptation processes and co-writing the white paper,” Vijaykumar says, “and am currently working on conducting interviews with communities and institutions in India. Going forward, Gabriela and I will be presenting the white paper at gatherings such as the American Association of Geographers’ Conference in New York and the Climate and Social Impact Conference in Vancouver.”“The support and collaboration of the team have been incredibly empowering,” reflects Degetau, who will be co-presenting the white paper with Vijaykumar in New York and Vancouver, British Columbia. “Even when working from different countries and through Zoom, the experience has been unique and cohesive.”Both Degetau and Vijaykumar were selected as the first fellows of the Vuslat Foundation, organized by the MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative. In this one-year fellowship, they are seeking to co-design “climate imaginaries” through the Deep Listening Project. Vijaykumar’s work is also supported by the MIT Human Rights and Technology Fellowship for 2021-22, which guides her personal focus on what she refers to as the “dual sword” of technology and data colonialism in India.As the Deep Listening Project continues to develop a sustainable and balanced communication infrastructure, Lim reflects that a vital part of that is sharing how potential futures are envisioned. Both large institutions and individual communities imagine, separately — and hopefully soon together — how the human world will reshape itself to be viable in profoundly shifting climate conditions. “What are our possible futures?” asks Lim. “What are people dreaming?” 

      Story prepared by MIT SHASS CommunicationsEditorial and design director: Emily HiestandSenior communications associate: Alison Lanier More

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      in Environment

      Courtney Lesoon and Elizabeth Yarina win Fulbright-Hays Scholarships

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      Two MIT doctoral students in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning have received the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Scholarship for Doctoral Dissertation Research Award. Courtney Lesoon and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Yarina are the first awardees from MIT in more than a decade.

      The fellowship provides opportunities for doctoral students to engage in full-time dissertation research abroad. The program, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is designed to contribute to the development and improvement of the study of modern foreign languages and area studies. Applicants anticipate pursuing a teaching career in the United States following completion of their dissertation. There were 138 individuals from 47 institutions named scholars for the 2021 cycle.

      Courtney Lesoon

      Lesoon is a doctoral candidate in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, in the History, Theory and Criticism Section of the Department of Architecture. Lesoon earned her BA from College of the Holy Cross and was a 2012-13 Fulbright U.S. Student grantee to the United Arab Emirates, where her research concerned contemporary art and emerging cultural institutions. Her dissertation is titled “Spatializing Ahl al-ʿIlm: Learning and the Rise of the Early Islamic City.” Losoon’s fieldwork will be done in Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey.

      “Courtney’s project presents an innovative idea that has not, to my knowledge, been investigated before,” says Nasser Rabbat, professor and director of the MIT Aga Khan Program. “How did the emergence and evolution of a particularly Islamic learning system affect the development of the city in the early Islamic period? Her work enriches the thinking about premodern urbanism and education everywhere by theorizing the intricate relationship between traveling, learning, and the city.”

      “I’ll be working in different manuscripts collections in Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey to investigate where and how scholars were learning inside of the early Islamic city before the formal institutionalization of higher education,” says Lesoon. “I’m interested in how learning — as a set of social practices — informed urban life. My project speaks to two different fields; Islamic urbanism and Islamic intellectual history. I’m really excited about my time on Fulbright-Hays; it will be a really fruitful time for my research and writing.”

      Before arriving at MIT, Lesoon worked as a research assistant in the Art of the Middle East Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Recently, she was awarded the 2021 Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize for “the best unpublished essay written by a junior scholar” for her paper “The Sphero-conical as Apothecary Vessel: An Argument for Dedicated Use.” Lesoon earned her MA from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where her thesis investigated an 18th-century “Damascus Room” and its acquisition as a collected interior in the United States.

      Lizzie Yarina

      Yarina is a doctoral candidate in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and a research fellow at the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. She is presently co-editing a volume on the relationship between climate models and the built environment with a multidisciplinary team of editors and contributors. Yarina was a research scientist at the MIT Urban Risk Lab, where she was part of a team examining alternatives to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s post-disaster housing systems; she also conducted research on disaster preparedness in Japan. Her award supports her doctoral research under the title “Modeling the Mekong: Climate Adaptation Imaginaries in Delta Regions,” which will include fieldwork in Vietnam, the Netherlands, Thailand, and Cambodia.

      “Lizzie’s research brings together three dimensions critical to global well-being and sustainability: adapting to the inevitability of changing ecosystems wrought by the climate crisis; questioning the equity, appropriateness, and relationality of adaptation planning models spanning the global North and the global South; and understanding how to develop durable and just climate futures,” says Christopher Zegras, professor of mobility and urban planning and department head for DUSP. “Her work will be an important contribution toward the long-term health of our planet and of communities working to justly adapt to climate change.”

      Previously, Yarina was awarded a U.S. Scholarship Fulbright to New Zealand to research spatial mapping and policy implications of Pacific Islander migration to New Zealand.

      “My dissertation project looks at climate adaptation planning in delta regions,” she says. “My focus is on Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta, but I’m also looking at how models that are used in delta adaptation planning move between different deltas, including the Netherlands Rhine Delta and the Mississippi Delta.”

      Working on her masters at MIT, Yarina had a teaching fellowship in Singapore, where she conducted research on climate adaptation plans in four major cities in Southeast Asia.

      “Through that process I learned about the role of Dutch experts and Dutch models in shaping how climate adaptation planning was taking place in Southeast Asia,” she says. “This project expands on that work from looking at a single city to examining a regional plan at the scale of a delta.”

      Yarina holds a joint masters in architecture and masters of city planning from MIT, and a BS in architecture from the University of Michigan. More

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      in Energy

      Timber or steel? Study helps builders reduce carbon footprint of truss structures

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      Buildings are a big contributor to global warming, not just in their ongoing operations but in the materials used in their construction. Truss structures — those crisscross arrays of diagonal struts used throughout modern construction, in everything from antenna towers to support beams for large buildings — are typically made of steel or wood or a combination of both. But little quantitative research has been done on how to pick the right materials to minimize these structures’ contribution global warming.

      The “embodied carbon” in a construction material includes the fuel used in the material’s production (for mining and smelting steel, for example, or for felling and processing trees) and in transporting the materials to a site. It also includes the equipment used for the construction itself.

      Now, researchers at MIT have done a detailed analysis and created a set of computational tools to enable architects and engineers to design truss structures in a way that can minimize their embodied carbon while maintaining all needed properties for a given building application. While in general wood produces a much lower carbon footprint, using steel in places where its properties can provide maximum benefit can provide an optimized result, they say.

      The analysis is described in a paper published today in the journal Engineering Structures, by graduate student Ernest Ching and MIT assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering Josephine Carstensen.

      “Construction is a huge greenhouse gas emitter that has kind of been flying under the radar for the past decades,” says Carstensen. But in recent years building designers “are starting to be more focused on how to not just reduce the operating energy associated with building use, but also the important carbon associated with the structure itself.” And that’s where this new analysis comes in.

      The two main options in reducing the carbon emissions associated with truss structures, she says, are substituting materials or changing the structure. However, there has been “surprisingly little work” on tools to help designers figure out emissions-minimizing strategies for a given situation, she says.

      The new system makes use of a technique called topology optimization, which allows for the input of basic parameters, such as the amount of load to be supported and the dimensions of the structure, and can be used to produce designs optimized for different characteristics, such as weight, cost, or, in this case, global warming impact.

      Wood performs very well under forces of compression, but not as well as steel when it comes to tension — that is, a tendency to pull the structure apart. Carstensen says that in general, wood is far better than steel in terms of embedded carbon, so “especially if you have a structure that doesn’t have any tension, then you should definitely only use timber” in order to minimize emissions. One tradeoff is that “the weight of the structure is going to be bigger than it would be with steel,” she says.

      The tools they developed, which were the basis for Ching’s master’s thesis, can be applied at different stages, either in the early planning phase of a structure, or later on in the final stages of a design.

      As an exercise, the team developed a proposal for reengineering several trusses using these optimization tools, and demonstrated that a significant savings in embodied greenhouse gas emissions could be achieved with no loss of performance. While they have shown improvements of at least 10 percent can be achieved, she says those estimates are “not exactly apples to apples” and likely savings could actually be two to three times that.

      “It’s about choosing materials more smartly,” she says, for the specifics of a given application. Often in existing buildings “you will have timber where there’s compression, and where that makes sense, and then it will have really skinny steel members, in tension, where that makes sense. And that’s also what we see in our design solutions that are suggested, but perhaps we can see it even more clearly.” The tools are not ready for commercial use though, she says, because they haven’t yet added a user interface.

      Carstensen sees a trend to increasing use of timber in large construction, which represents an important potential for reducing the world’s overall carbon emissions. “There’s a big interest in the construction industry in mass timber structures, and this speaks right into that area. So, the hope is that this would make inroads into the construction business and actually make a dent in that very large contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.” More

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      in Energy

      MIT Energy Initiative awards seven Seed Fund grants for early-stage energy research

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      The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) has awarded seven Seed Fund grants to support novel, early-stage energy research by faculty and researchers at MIT. The awardees hail from a range of disciplines, but all strive to bring their backgrounds and expertise to address the global climate crisis by improving the efficiency, scalability, and adoption of clean energy technologies.

      “Solving climate change is truly an interdisciplinary challenge,” says MITEI Director Robert C. Armstrong. “The Seed Fund grants foster collaboration and innovation from across all five of MIT’s schools and one college, encouraging an ‘all hands on deck approach’ to developing the energy solutions that will prove critical in combatting this global crisis.”

      This year, MITEI’s Seed Fund grant program received 70 proposals from 86 different principal investigators (PIs) across 25 departments, labs, and centers. Of these proposals, 31 involved collaborations between two or more PIs, including 24 that involved multiple departments.

      The winning projects reflect this collaborative nature with topics addressing the optimization of low-energy thermal cooling in buildings; the design of safe, robust, and resilient distributed power systems; and how to design and site wind farms with consideration of wind resource uncertainty due to climate change.

      Increasing public support for low-carbon technologies

      One winning team aims to leverage work done in the behavioral sciences to motivate sustainable behaviors and promote the adoption of clean energy technologies.

      “Objections to scalable low-carbon technologies such as nuclear energy and carbon sequestration have made it difficult to adopt these technologies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” says Howard Herzog, a senior research scientist at MITEI and co-PI. “These objections tend to neglect the sheer scale of energy generation required and the inability to meet this demand solely with other renewable energy technologies.”

      This interdisciplinary team — which includes researchers from MITEI, the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and the MIT Sloan School of Management — plans to convene industry professionals and academics, as well as behavioral scientists, to identify common objections, design messaging to overcome them, and prove that these messaging campaigns have long-lasting impacts on attitudes toward scalable low-carbon technologies.

      “Our aim is to provide a foundation for shifting the public and policymakers’ views about these low-carbon technologies from something they, at best, tolerate, to something they actually welcome,” says co-PI David Rand, the Erwin H. Schell Professor and professor of management science and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT Sloan School of Management.

      Siting and designing wind farms

      Michael Howland, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, will use his Seed Fund grant to develop a foundational methodology for wind farm siting and design that accounts for the uncertainty of wind resources resulting from climate change.

      “The optimal wind farm design and its resulting cost of energy is inherently dependent on the wind resource at the location of the farm,” says Howland. “But wind farms are currently sited and designed based on short-term climate records that do not account for the future effects of climate change on wind patterns.”

      Wind farms are capital-intensive infrastructure that cannot be relocated and often have lifespans exceeding 20 years — all of which make it especially important that developers choose the right locations and designs based not only on wind patterns in the historical climate record, but also based on future predictions. The new siting and design methodology has the potential to replace current industry standards to enable a more accurate risk analysis of wind farm development and energy grid expansion under climate change-driven energy resource uncertainty.

      Membraneless electrolyzers for hydrogen production

      Producing hydrogen from renewable energy-powered water electrolyzers is central to realizing a sustainable and low-carbon hydrogen economy, says Kripa Varanasi, a professor of mechanical engineering and a Seed Fund award recipient. The idea of using hydrogen as a fuel has existed for decades, but it has yet to be widely realized at a considerable scale. Varanasi hopes to change that with his Seed Fund grant.

      “The critical economic hurdle for successful electrolyzers to overcome is the minimization of the capital costs associated with their deployment,” says Varanasi. “So, an immediate task at hand to enable electrochemical hydrogen production at scale will be to maximize the effectiveness of the most mature, least complex, and least expensive water electrolyzer technologies.”

      To do this, he aims to combine the advantages of existing low-temperature alkaline electrolyzer designs with a novel membraneless electrolyzer technology that harnesses a gas management system architecture to minimize complexity and costs, while also improving efficiency. Varanasi hopes his project will demonstrate scalable concepts for cost-effective electrolyzer technology design to help realize a decarbonized hydrogen economy.

      Since its establishment in 2008, the MITEI Seed Fund Program has supported 194 energy-focused seed projects through grants totaling more than $26 million. This funding comes primarily from MITEI’s founding and sustaining members, supplemented by gifts from generous donors.

      Recipients of the 2021 MITEI Seed Fund grants are:

      “Design automation of safe, robust, and resilient distributed power systems” — Chuchu Fan of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
      “Advanced MHD topping cycles: For fission, fusion, solar power plants” — Jeffrey Freidberg of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Dennis Whyte of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center
      “Robust wind farm siting and design under climate-change‐driven wind resource uncertainty” — Michael Howland of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
      “Low-energy thermal comfort for buildings in the Global South: Optimal design of integrated structural-thermal systems” — Leslie Norford of the Department of Architecture and Caitlin Mueller of the departments of Architecture and Civil and Environmental Engineering
      “New low-cost, high energy-density boron-based redox electrolytes for nonaqueous flow batteries” — Alexander Radosevich of the Department of Chemistry
      “Increasing public support for scalable low-carbon energy technologies using behavorial science insights” — David Rand of the MIT Sloan School of Management, Koroush Shirvan of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Howard Herzog of the MIT Energy Initiative, and Jacopo Buongiorno of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
      “Membraneless electrolyzers for efficient hydrogen production using nanoengineered 3D gas capture electrode architectures” — Kripa Varanasi of the Department of Mechanical Engineering More

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      in Environment

      For campus “porosity hunters,” climate resilience is the goal

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      At MIT, it’s not uncommon to see groups navigating campus with smartphones and measuring devices in hand, using the Institute as a test bed for research. During one week this summer more than a dozen students, researchers, and faculty, plus an altimeter, could be seen doing just that as they traveled across MIT to measure the points of entry into campus buildings — including windows, doors, and vents — known as a building’s porosity.

      Why measure campus building porosity?

      The group was part of the MIT Porosity Hunt, a citizen-science effort that is using the MIT campus as a place to test emerging methodologies, instruments, and data collection processes to better understand the potential impact of a changing climate — and specifically storm scenarios resulting from it — on infrastructure. The hunt is a collaborative effort between the Urban Risk Lab, led by director and associate professor of architecture and urbanism Miho Mazereeuw, and the Office of Sustainability (MITOS), aimed at supporting an MIT that is resilient to the impacts of climate change, including flooding and extreme heat events. Working over three days, members of the hunt catalogued openings in dozens of buildings across campus to better support flood mapping and resiliency planning at MIT.

      For Mazereeuw, the data collection project lies at the nexus of her work with the Urban Risk Lab and as a member of MIT’s Climate Resiliency Committee. While the lab’s mission is to “develop methods, prototypes, and technologies to embed risk reduction and preparedness into the design of cities and regions to increase resilience,” the Climate Resiliency Committee — made up of faculty, staff, and researchers — is focused on assessing, planning, and operationalizing a climate-resilient MIT. The work of both the lab and the committee is embedded in the recently released MIT Climate Resiliency Dashboard, a visualization tool that allows users to understand potential flooding impacts of a number of storm scenarios and drive decision-making.

      While the debut of the tool signaled a big advancement in resiliency planning at MIT, some, including Mazereeuw, saw an opportunity for enhancement. In working with Ken Strzepek, a MITOS Faculty Fellow and research scientist at the MIT Center for Global Change Science who was also an integral part of this work, Mazereeuw says she was surprised to learn that even the most sophisticated flood modeling treats buildings as solid blocks. With all buildings being treated the same, despite varying porosity, the dashboard is limited in some flood scenario analysis. To address this, Mazereeuw and others got to work to fill in that additional layer of data, with the citizen science efforts a key factor of that work. “Understanding the porosity of the building is important to understanding how much water actually goes in the building in these scenarios,” she explains.

      Though surveyors are often used to collect and map this type of information, Mazereeuw wanted to leverage the MIT community in order to collect data quickly while engaging students, faculty, and researchers as resiliency stewards for the campus. “It’s important for projects like this to encourage awareness,” she explains. “Generally, when something fails, we notice it, but otherwise we don’t. With climate change bringing on more uncertainty in the scale and intensity of events, we need everyone to be more aware and help us understand things like vulnerabilities.”

      To do this, MITOS and the Urban Risk Lab reached out to more than a dozen students, who were joined by faculty, staff, and researchers, to map porosity of 31 campus buildings connected by basements. The buildings were chosen based on this connectivity, understanding that water that reaches one basement could potentially flow to another.

      Urban Risk Lab research scientists Aditya Barve and Mayank Ojha aided the group’s efforts by creating a mapping app and chatbot to support consistency in reporting and ease of use. Each team member used the app to find buildings where porosity points needed to be mapped. As teams arrived at the building exteriors, they entered their location in the app, which then triggered the Facebook and LINE-powered chatbot on their phone. There, students were guided through measuring the opening, adjusting for elevation to correlate to the City of Cambridge base datum, and, based on observable features, noting the materials and quality of the opening on a one-through-three scale. Over just three days, the team, which included Mazereeuw herself, mapped 1,030 porosity points that will aid in resiliency planning and preparation on campus in a number of ways.

      “The goal is to understand various heights for flood waters around porous spots on campus,” says Mazereeuw. “But the impact can be different depending on the space. We hope this data can inform safety as well as understanding potential damage to research or disruption to campus operations from future storms.”

      The porosity data collection is complete for this round — future hunts will likely be conducted to confirm and converge data — but one team member’s work continues at the basement level of MIT. Katarina Boukin, a PhD student in civil and environmental engineering and PhD student fellow with MITOS, has been focused on methods of collecting data beneath buildings at MIT to understand how they would be impacted if flood water were to enter. “We have a number of connected basements on campus, and if one of them floods, potentially all of them do,” explains Boukin. “By looking at absolute elevation and porosity, we’re connecting the outside to the inside and tracking how much and where water may flow.” With the added data from the Porosity Hunt, a complete picture of vulnerabilities and resiliency opportunities can be shared.

      Synthesizing much of this data is where Eva Then ’21 comes in. Then was among the students who worked to capture data points over the three days and is now working in ArcGIS — an online mapping software that also powers the Climate Resiliency Dashboard — to process and visualize the data collected. Once completed, the data will be incorporated into the campus flood model to increase the accuracy of projections on the Climate Resiliency Dashboard. “Over the next decades, the model will serve as an adaptive planning tool to make campus safe and resilient amid growing climate risks,” Then says.

      For Mazereeuw, the Porosity Hunt and data collected additionally serve as a study in scalability, providing valuable insight on how similar research efforts inspired by the MIT test bed approach could be undertaken and inform policy beyond MIT. She also hopes it will inspire students to launch their own hunts in the future, becoming resiliency stewards for their campus and dorms. “Going through measuring and documenting turns on and shows a new set of goggles — you see campus and buildings in a slightly different way,” she says, “Having people look carefully and document change is a powerful tool in climate and resiliency planning.” 

      Mazereeuw also notes that recent devastating flooding events across the country, including those resulting from Hurricane Ida, have put a special focus on this work. “The loss of life that occurred in that storm, including those who died as waters flooded their basement homes  underscores the urgency of this type of research, planning, and readiness.” More