SEES Fellows: Developing new models to understand human vulnerability to climate-related hazards at multiple scales

Cuny Baruch College, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

In this Award from the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows Program) Dr. Bryan Jones from the City University of New York, Baruch College will investigate the multi-scale drivers of spatial population change, developing new theories and frameworks to accurately describe population change, and combine this with data on climate change to create estimates of sensitivity/exposure to future climate-related hazards. This award has support from: the Directorate for Geological Sciences and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. The aim of studies like that proposed in this work is to develop a better knowledge base to inform projections of the spatial distribution of population, providing additional tools for urban planners, economists, and governments to estimate the vulnerabilities to climate-related hazards. Dr. Jones will be working with collaborators Prof. Deborah Balk of the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research and Dr. Brian O'Neill of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Dr. Jones will also work with Prof. Mark Montgomery of the Department of Economics at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. This project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. With SEES Fellows support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish themselves in an independent research career related to sustainability.