GoGreenNext is an EU funded Horizon Europe project with the ambition of supporting cities and regions to achieve their climate targets by implementing novel nature-based approaches. For this effort, the Urban Systems Lab team is developing a digital ‘serious game’ to serve as an educational tool for communicating climate change impacts, urban resilience concepts, where the player(s) get to understand decision-making in urban planning by interacting with Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). The game mechanics will be inspired by the labs multiplayer board game Ekos.

Learn more: https://gogreennext.eu/

The project is co-funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe research framework under grant agreement no. 101137209 and led by a team at Maynooth University.

The USL is co-leading a National Science Foundation planning effort as part of the Catalyzing Human-Centered Solutions Through Research and Innovation in Science, the Environment and Society (CRISES program). The team is developing a plan for a new Civic-Led Urban Adaptation Research Center (CIVIC-UARC), which will foster new collaborations between an interdisciplinary team of urban experts and diverse institutions, work closely with civil society and public sector stakeholders, and use New York City as an urban laboratory. Our objective is to develop a model for coproduction of knowledge and solutions to address climate risks in cities, with special attention to environmental justice concerns.The work of the Center will train the next generation of climate adaptation scientists and scholars, build climate resilience capacities of local partners, and be a guide for other cities in the U.S. and around the world.

ClimateIQ is an AI driven, multi-hazard risk and vulnerability tool leveraging Machine Learning, Big Data, and multiple climate hazard model environments to reveal high resolution hotspots of overlapping climate risks in cities and urbanized regions.

The aim of the tool is to help city planners and communities prioritize local adaptations to climate hazards, using advanced climate models and machine learning to identify the areas most at risk.

Our Approach:

ClimateIQ is based on an innovative, integrated multi-hazard modeling environment, which generates predictions for high resolution urban heat and extreme flood hazard exposure information. ClimateIQ uses advanced physics-based models to simulate climate hazard exposure. Machine learning models learn to reproduce the outputs of the physics-based models, speeding up climate hazard simulation time. To make hazard information available to users, ClimateIQ partners with Climasens to provide a user-friendly dashboard and APIs for easy integration into existing workflows.

Team:

The ClimateIQ team brings extensive experience in climate risk modeling, AI applications, data analysis and visualization, as well as working with diverse stakeholders in cities. Led by Dr. Timon McPhearson, Director of the Urban Systems Lab (USL) at the New School in New York City, the core team includes faculty and researchers at The New School, along with partners at Climasens, Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and George Mason University. Support provided in part by Google.org Impact Challenge on Climate Innovation.

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AI, People & Planet is a research initiative hosted by the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Princeton Institute for International Regional and Studies at Princeton University, The Urban Systems Lab at The New School and, the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.

The USL is exploring advances in urban data science, availability of real-time data, advanced spatial modeling, machine learning, cloud-based GPU processing, and cutting-edge visualization of urban social and infrastructure systems to ask new questions to be asked about key climate change risks and opportunities to advance adaptation in cities. Our interdisciplinary team includes scientists, planners, NGOs, industry, and other stakeholders working around the world to plan and envision positive urban futures, assessing heat and flood risk, and analyzing nature-based solutions and other strategies for building SETS resilience in cities.

City of Atlanta Power Infrastructure

City of New York Synthetic Power Infrastructure

This initiative brings together researchers at the Urban Systems Lab, Arizona State University (ASU) and Georgia State University (GSU) to co-develop synthetic infrastructure models for Phoenix, New York City and Atlanta that will simulate critical failure in energy distribution systems and potential cascading impacts on other power, water, and transportation infrastructure during extreme events to optimize solutions, and improve reliability and robustness. The custom coded synthetic infrastructure modeling environment (SyNF model) links multiple data sources to ultimately generate new synthetic energy network data that attempts to mimic real-world energy networks and therefore not only fills energy network data gaps, but provides the novel ability to examine failure scenarios and their cascading impacts to other energy dependent infrastructure networks.

The effort will seek to answer the following research questions:

• How can new and emerging data and modeling approaches, such as synthetic infrastructure modeling, be used to diagnose energy system vulnerabilities, reveal potential for cascading failure that impacts energy and connected power, water, and transportation infrastructure?

• Additionally, how vulnerable are critical energy infrastructure components from internal or external disruptions such as extreme weather and climate? How can these new modeling approaches generate new knowledge to drive development of more adaptive urban energy infrastructure design?

Download Final Report Executive Summary

Support provided by the Sloan Foundation.

The Milwaukee Flood and Health Vulnerability Assessment (FHVA) is a collaborative effort between Groundwork Milwaukee and The New School’s Urban Systems Lab to develop an assessment tool which identifies communities across Milwaukee where exposure to urban flooding and pre-existing health, housing and socioeconomic conditions intersect and create disproportionate vulnerabilities to the impacts caused by extreme flooding. The aim of the project is to provide critical information on both flood exposure and social vulnerability to support community-based advocacy and future planning to mitigate potential flood and health risks. 

Link to Storymap

Link to Report (PDF)

Milwaukee Flood and Health Vulnerability Assessment Storymap

The Climate Ready Uptown Plan (CRUP) is a guide and map to help Northern Manhattan community members understand their individual risk to climate related disasters – specifically extreme heat, coastal and inland flooding – and provides pertinent information to help prepare themselves and their families. Designed by WE ACT for Environmental Justice in partnership with East Harlem COAD, Harlem Emergency Network and Urban Systems Lab, the Plan is tailored to residents of Northern Manhattan to better understand their flood risk. From the onset, CRUP was designed with community at the forefront. WE ACT’s Climate Justice Working Group helped with the initial planning, research and layout of the tool, and scenario planning meetings as well as focus groups with Northern Manhattan residents helped WE ACT refine the messaging and language included in the plan to make it as effective and relatable as possible.

DOWNLOAD MAP

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Project Team: Timon McPhearson, Daniel Sauter, Jen Ventrella, Luis Ortiz, Ahmed Mustafa, Elizabeth Cook, Mikhail Chester, Nancy Grimm, Tischa Muñoz-Erickson, David M. Iwaniec, Daniel Childers, Nathan Johnson

The Converging Social, Ecological, and Technological Infrastructure Systems (SETS) for Urban Resilience project is a 5 year initiative to accelerate advances in convergent urban systems science capable of providing cities with the knowledge and methods for building integrated SETS resilience strategies to extreme events, supported by cutting-edge modeling, simulation, and visualization of infrastructure systems. The project will develop and refine an urban resilience conceptual framework to guide an emerging, convergent urban systems science for cities to test and deploy in San Juan (PR), Atlanta, New York, and Phoenix.

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SETS Convergence: Phase 1 Accomplishments

The Environmental Justice of Urban Flood Risk and Green Infrastructure Solutions project aims to better understand the environmental justice impacts of climate change related flooding on minority and low-income communities and assess social equity in green infrastructure planning for reducing urban flood risks. Through data visualization and modeling future flood risk, the project will address two central questions concerning flood risk, and green infrastructure development: (1) Who is more exposed to flooding? And (2) who benefits most by current green infrastructure plans or developments?

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Recent Work and Products

Climate Ready Uptown Plan

The Climate Ready Uptown Plan (CRUP) is a physical pamphlet that helps Northern Manhattan community members understand their individual risk to climate related disasters – specifically extreme heat, coastal and stormwater (pulluvial) flooding – and provides pertinent information to help prepare themselves and their families. Designed by WE ACT for Environmental Justice in partnership with East Harlem COAD, Harlem Emergency Network and Urban Systems Lab, the Plan is tailored to residents of Northern Manhattan to better understand their flood risk. From the onset, CRUP was designed with community at the forefront. WE ACT’s Climate Justice Working Group helped with the initial planning, research and layout of the tool, and scenario planning meetings as well as focus groups with Northern Manhattan residents helped WE ACT refine the messaging and language included in the plan to make it as effective and relatable as possible.

Learn more

Saw Mill River Watershed Flood Vulnerability Modeling Project

This effort was a collaboration with Groundwork Hudson Valley and the Saw Mill River Coalition to assses flood exposure along the Saw Mill River Watershed near Yonkers, NY. The effort involved an extensive hydrological modeling assessment to address a key priority of the Coalition’s 5-year Watershed Action Plan, developed in 2020 with support from the New York State Hudson River Estuary Program (HREP). This project aims to help the watershed community prepare for the increasing risks of flooding and extreme weather driven by a warming climate.

Milwaukee Flood Health Vulnerability Assessment

The Milwaukee Flood and Health Vulnerability Assessment (FHVA) is a collaborative effort between Groundwork Milwaukee and The New School’s Urban Systems Lab to develop an assessment tool which identifies communities across Milwaukee where exposure to urban flooding and pre-existing health, housing and socioeconomic conditions intersect and create disproportionate vulnerabilities to the impacts caused by extreme flooding.

Project Team: Pablo Herreros Cantis, Timon McPhearson, Chris Kennedy, Anna Kramer, Elizabeth Cook, Claudia Tomateo

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Project Team: Timon McPhearson, Nancy Grimm, Elizabeth Cook, Chris Kennedy, Yeowon Kim, Tessa Martinez

The Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene (NATURA) project links networks in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, North and Latin America, and globally to enhance connectivity among the world's scholars and practitioners and improve the prospects for global urban sustainability. NATURA exchanges knowledge, shares data, and enhances communication among research disciplines and across the research-practice divide to advance urban resilience in face of growing threats of extreme weather events.

NATURA encompasses nine thematic working groups, including the NATURA Global Roadmap for Urban Nature-Based Solutions, co-led by Loan Diep and Timon McPhearson. This initiative will culminate in a 2025 release of a comprehensive series of reports, providing insights into the knowledge, challenges, and opportunities for innovation in urban nature-based solutions within and across global regions.

NATURA also supports the Early Career Network (ECN) - a platform to support early-career researchers, practitioners and students in advancing research on nature-based solutions. The ECN is building a community that fosters networking opportunities, sharing of information, and peer to peer support. In 2021, NATURA launched an Early Career Fellowship program, linking early career researchers with institutions across the NATURA network.  

Support for NATURA is provided by the National Science Foundation.

Project theme

Nature-Based Solutions

Ocellus XR is a mixed reality application that leverages the Urban Systems Lab’s (USL) Data Visualization Platform to present users with unique interactive geospatial information of heat, flood risk and other climate indicators in New York City. Integrating environmental studies and data visualization into place-based research on social vulnerability and equity, the app provides a novel experience to understand climate risk, allowing users to explore first-person 3D visualizations of social, ecological, and technological data by projecting interactive maps and implemented resilience interventions onto physical surfaces and experiment with augmented reality layers. The Ocellus XR project builds on the USL’s expertise in advancing spatial agent-based modeling, machine learning, social media data, and cutting-edge visualization of urban social, ecological, and infrastructure systems to ask new questions about key climate change risks and opportunities to advance adaptation in cities.

Acknowledgements

Ocellus XR is developed by members of the Urban Systems Lab at The New School. The current Ocellus XR team includes Urban Systems Lab associate diretor Daniel Sauter; USL director Timon McPhearson; Joe Steele, MS Data Visualization ’18; Xinyue Elena Peng, BFA Design & Technology ’22; and Schools of Public Engagement research fellow Claudia Tomateo; and Urban Systems Lab Associate Director Chris Kennedy. Support for OcellusXR is provided in part by the Architecture League of New York’s 2022 Independent Project Grant which is made possible through support from the New York State Council on the Arts.

The graphics, text and information included in the “What can I do?” section of Ocellus XR was developed by WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the East Harlem COAD and Harlem Emergency Network as part of the Climate Ready Uptown Plan (CRUP) project. CRUP is a physical pamphlet that helps Northern Manhattan community members understand their individual risk to climate related disasters and provides pertinent information to help prepare themselves and their families.

project theme

Data Visualization and Design

Project Team: Timon McPhearson, Bianca Lopez, Elizabeth Cook

The MillionTreesNYC Afforestation Study is a multiyear ecological research project focused on succession, soil-plant interactions, and native-invasive species dynamics in 10 parks across New York City. The purpose is to assess the short- and long-term impacts of the MillionTreesNYC tree-planting strategy on the structure and functions of new forest ecosystems.

Led by USL in collaboration with Columbia University and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the study involves collecting data on soils, plants, and microbes at 38 permanent afforestation plots since 2008. It also includes evaluating forest-management practices for realizing the long-term goals of MillionTreesNYC.

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project theme

Urban Ecology · Nature Based Solutions

Project Team: Timon McPhearson, Emily Maxwell, Michael Treglia, Cecilia de Corral

We are collaborating with The Nature Conservancy and Columbia University to produce the most comprehensive assessment of New York City’s green roofs to date. Projects such as Aucher Serr’s Envisioning a New Urban Jungle explore the future of New York’s green roofs through data analysis and visualization.

Our research on green roofs is closely linked with teaching and outreach. The New School’s Green Roof Ecology course — a collaboration with local partners at Brooklyn Grange — gives students a chance to study actual sites and develop related design projects. As part of the Green Roof Researchers Alliance since its inception, USL cosponsored the organization’s State of Green Roofs in NYC Conference with the Audubon Society.

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Project theme

Urban Ecology · Community Engagement · Urban Policy & Planning · Big Data & Artificial Intelligence

Project Team: Timon McPhearson, Z Grabowski, Pauline Munga

Green infrastructure (GI) is usually assumed to be a benefit everywhere and for everybody in a city. Is this assumption correct? Or are there differences in where and who is served or burdened by GI? This project is a collaboration with the Cary Institute examining green infrastructure plans in 20 U.S. cities with the goal of understanding how best to improve the equity of green infrastructure through policy and practice. The project includes an interactive website and toolkit for city planners, researchers and others to use in considering the equity dimensions of future green infrastructure planning.

Project themes

Environmental Justice & Equity · Urban Policy & Planning

Project Team: Erik Andersson, Timon McPhearson, Daniel Sauter

SMARTer Greener Cities aims to develop and test novel tools and processes for explicitly converging social, ecological, and technological approaches. The convergence of these approaches will promote resilient and equitable urban futures in Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, and generate new opportunities for transformative change and increasing resilience to extreme events in other Nordic cities. The comprehensive integration of emerging science and practice connected to each of the three couplings (social-ecological (S-E), ecological-technological (E-T), and social-technological (S-T)) into a combined SETS framework is essential for the development of “smarter” (through systems) solutions for resilience and equity. We believe, despite the challenge of systems oriented research and practice, that we must cut across silos in disciplines, approaches, and knowledge systems by bringing technology, people, and nature together.

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PROJECT THemes

Urban Climate Resilience · Environmental Justice and Equity

Project Team: Timon McPhearson

The Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project is a collaboration with the Stockholm Resilience Centre funded initially through Future Earth. Our aim is to counterbalance dystopian visions of the future that may be inhibiting the ability to cooperate effectively on problem solving.

USL is working with project participants to solicit, explore, and develop a suite of alternative, plausible “good anthropocenes” — future scenarios that are socially and environmentally desirable, just, and sustainable.

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Project themes

Community Engagement · Environmental Justice & Equity