Aired on 5/21/2015
The concept of resilience has been evolving as a way to address the current and future challenges cities face from a changing climate. Social, ecological, and technological domains with different but intersecting perspectives underlie the concept of resilience. Understanding how to accommodate these perspectives is critical to maintaining or even re-envisioning urban environments that can persist through extreme weather events and longer-term shifts in climate, while maintaining quality of life and ensuring equal access to the benefits or the protection from harm for all segments of the population. In two earlier webinars, Arizona State University lead discussions of pair of systems to frame urban resilience. In reality the systems operate independently so all three, social, ecological and technological, need to be addressed together to select actions that improve resiliency and minimize unintended consequences. In this third session in the series, ASU faculty and other leaders examine the SETS approach to do this. The concept of resilience has been evolving as a way to address the current and future challenges cities face from a changing climate. Social, ecological, and technological domains with different but intersecting perspectives underlie the concept of resilience. Understanding how to accommodate these perspectives is critical to maintaining or even re-envisioning urban environments that can persist through extreme weather events and longer-term shifts in climate, while maintaining quality of life and ensuring equal access to the benefits or the protection from harm for all segments of the population.
Integrating Urban Resilience Systems – The SETS Approach from Security & Sustainability Forum on Vimeo.
Moderator Dr. Ann Kinzig is Chief Research Strategist and Director of Research Development for the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability; Senior Sustainability Scientist, Juile Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability; and Professor, School of Life Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She leads the Sustainability Scientists working groups and the leadership training program for the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. Kinzig studies ecosystem services, conservation-development interactions, and the resilience of natural-resource systems. Dr. Kinzig studies ecosystem services, conservation-development interactions, and the resilience of natural-resource systems. She is currently involved in three major research projects: (1) examining the trade-offs between conservation and development goals in developing nations; (2) studying the resilience of pre-historic landscapes in the American Southwest; and (3) assessing ecosystem services, their valuation, and mechanisms for ensuring their continued delivery. Dr. Kinzig teaches courses in undergraduate research training, biodiversity and ecosystem services, urban ecology, and current environmental issues).
Kristin Baja is the Climate and Resilience Planner with the Office of Sustainability at Baltimore City. She is responsible for development and implementation of the City’s Disaster Preparedness Project and Plan (DP3) which integrates climate adaptation with hazard mitigation efforts. She is also responsible for climate change communication and outreach, Community Rating System certification, resiliency planning, and STAR Communities certification. She is an active member of the Climate Communications Consortium of Maryland, American Society of Adaptation Professionals, and the Baltimore City Forestry Board. Before joining Baltimore City, Kristin worked for the City of Ann Arbor developing their Climate Action Plan and Sustainability Framework. She has been involved in climate and resilience planning with various cities throughout the United States. Kristin holds a Master of Urban Planning degree and a Master of Science degree from the University of Michigan. Kristin is an avid cyclist and loves to explore the city by bike. She is a certified master composter, gardener, and coaches youth soccer in Patterson Park.
Dr. Clark Miller is a Senior Sustainability Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global and Institute of Sustainability Associate Professor at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. Dr. Miller’s research and teaching focus on the governance challenges posed by global environmental change, and other policy issues of global scope and significance. He has written extensively on the role of knowledge and expertise in global environmental governance, and his current work expands this research beyond the environment to other domains of human security and insecurity. As part of the ASU LightWorks leadership team, he coordinates social science, humanities, and policy research on energy transitions, seeking to understand the social dynamics and societal implications of large-scale changes in energy systems. His interests include science and technology policy, the democratic governance of science and technology, and models of knowledge, reason, and rationality, especially as they intersect with democratic theory and environmental policy. Dr. Miller teaches courses on science and democracy, knowledge and decision-making, international governance, science and technology studies, and the human and social dimensions of science and technology.
Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson’s research focuses on urban sustainability governance. She is currently exploring the role of knowledge systems and social networks in decision-making and governance, the visions and imaginaries underlying sustainability plans and actions, and how the social organization of stewardship and innovation shape urban transition strategies. Tischa recently developed the knowledge-action systems analysis (KASA) tool to assess how the networks of actors interacting, formally or informally, in the production, sharing, and use of knowledge for sustainability work and shape the governance of social-ecological systems, and how these may be improved or better designed to contribute to innovative and adaptive capacities towards sustainability. In addition to scientific research, she is actively involved in developing transdisciplinary platforms and tools to facilitate collaborative knowledge production, development of future scenarios, and exploration of transition strategies among diverse research and policy stakeholders. As Program Manager of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry’s Urban Field Station and San Juan ULTRA program, Principal Investigator of a USAID grant on climate adaptation in the Dominican Republic, and now as Co-PI of the UREx-SRN, Tischa is working to establish linkages between sustainability and social-ecological scientists across cities in the Caribbean and Latin America region.
