GAIA: A Project for Exploring Risks and Policy Implications of Climate Change

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is bringing resources together to create a support environment to address the impact of climate change on national interests with the Global Assimilation of Information for Action (GAIA) project. GAIA is meant to explore consequences, gaps, and resolutions for specific issues that arise from consequences of climate change. For looking at national issues, the usual approach is to 'map' a problem space and 'explore' a solution space, often from the perspective of one sponsoring agency. However, a multi-use application such as GAIA is meant to be responsive to all requests from a myriad of potential perspectives. Symposia and seminars are helpful in scoping issues and gathering information from assembled subject matter experts (SMEs). At APL we have been researching the efficacy of collaborative event designs which provide more robust data collection than the typical seminar, involve more diversity within the community of practice and provide quantitative analysis to underpin subjective conclusions. Participants will be asked to incorporate risk mitigation and behavioral economics into derived recommendations. APL has developed unique data capture methodologies that lend themselves to discovering innovative practices and allowing for deliberate selection of beneficial but less than ideal options; this is seen when the ideal solution has low probability of success or is impractical. The result is a balanced strategy developed by an informed cadre. It is through this process that APL intends to generate robust understanding of community requirements for GAIA and inform an application capable of examining climate change solution space.