Invited Talk

Can Machine Learning Help to Conduct a Planetary Healthcheck?

Emily Shuckburgh

2019 Invited Talk

[ Indexed Video]

Abstract

Our planet is under ever increasing pressure from environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. If as a global society we are to respond to this we need to quantitatively assess the current state and future trends. Today, the planet’s vital signs are monitored extensively from space and from networks of ground-based sensors. In addition, over the past fifty years we have developed sophisticated numerical models of the Earth’s systems based on our understanding of physics, chemistry and biology. However, we are still limited in our ability to accurately predict future change, especially at the local scale that is most relevant for decision-making. In this talk I will outline a set of "grand challenge" problems and discuss various ways in which Machine Learning is starting to be deployed to advance our capacity to address these, in particular by combining our fundamental understanding of the Earth system processes with new knowledge gleaned from the vast planetary datasets.

Speaker

Emily Shuckburgh

Emily Shuckburgh is based at the University of Cambridge where she leads the Environmental Data Science group at the Department of Computer Science and Technology and is Director of Research on Carbon Neutrality. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the British Antarctic Survey, where she spent a decade leading polar oceanography research and conducting research expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic. In the past she has worked at Ecole Normal Superieure in Paris and at MIT. She is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and co-chair of their Climate Science Communications Group. She an associate fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy, a member of the advisory board for the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group and has acted as an advisor to the UK Government on behalf of the Natural Environment Research Council. In 2016 she was awarded an OBE for services to science and the public communication of science. She is co-author with HRH The Prince of Wales and Tony Juniper of the Ladybird Book on Climate Change.

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