Seminar

Abstract

The Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC) is a five-year initiative sponsored by the Department of Energy's Urban Integrated Field Laboratory program. BSEC is a people-centered, transdisciplinary effort that aims to create a new paradigm for urban climate research. The work of BSEC begins with participatory identification of community priorities (human health and safety, affordable energy, transportation equity, and others) and city government priorities (clean waterways, decarbonization, functioning infrastructure). The priorities inform the design of observation networks and models to deliver the climate science capable of supporting those priorities. This means that BSEC takes the form of an iterative collaborative cycle, in which an initial observation and modeling strategy is continuously updated in conversation with community partners. The guiding objective of this cycle is to produce the urban climate science needed to inform community-guided “potential equitable pathways” for climate action. In doing so, we address a number of fundamental urban science questions from across natural science and social science disciplines.

---

Dr. Benjamin Zaitchik is a professor at the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore Maryland. His research interest focuses on understanding, managing, and coping with climatic and hydrologic variability. In each of these areas of research he employs a combination of observation, both in situ and remotely sensed, and numerical modeling techniques. Dr. Benjamin Zaitchik is the lead PI of the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collective (BSEC) Urban Integrated Field Laboratory designed to produce the urban climate science needed to inform community-guided "potential equitable pathways" for climate action.