B5605 - CLIMATE CHANGE MODELLING, MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION

Learning outcomes

Students of this course will learn how to generate future climatic and weather scenarios that may be used to support the design of civil structures and infrastructures that are exposed to the impact of climate change. Furthermore, civil engineering solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation will be examined, by focusing on renewable energy, low carbon management of climate hazards, and innovative strategies and interventions for the mitigation of climate change impact. Risk based adaptation design and decision theory will be considered as effective and transparent means to evaluate competitive solutions and assign priorities, while uncertainty assessment will provide the basis for a pragmatic design and a successful communication with stakeholders. The joint analysis and modeling of solutions and societal systems will be the driving concept of the course, with an evolving educational path that will focus on the most recent research developments and will make use of open access information.

Course contents

The course focuses on no-regret and sustainable solutions to adjust to current or expected effects of climate change. A special focus is dedicated to wind, storm, geological and water related impacts and the disaster and the marine and land environments.

The course is highly multidisciplinary and directed to a wide audience with the aim to expand beyond engineering with an innovative vision.

The teacher will make extensive use of interaction with students. For example, students will be given the optional opportunity of delivering presentations to the class and the public, developing software, preparing open source contributions. Students may propose additional ideas for interaction.

Lectures will be recorded and made freely available on the web. Tutorial documents will be provided in the form of open web pages under CC license, and therefore may be freely re-used by students. Tutorial are already available on the web site of the teacher.

The lectures include: (1) an introduction to the climate change problem (see a preliminary version of the lecture at https://www.albertomontanari.it/climatechangeproblem/). (2) Climate modelling (https://www.albertomontanari.it/climatemodelling/). (3) Climate change and extreme events (https://www.albertomontanari.it/climatechange/) (4) Models for estimating climate change impact. (5) risk based adaptation design (https://www.albertomontanari.it/node/188). (6) decision theory (https://www.albertomontanari.it/decisiontheory), (7) Solutions for climate change mitigation, (8) Solutions for climate change adaptation.

Part of the course will be delivered online to propose to the students an innovative and web based approach to education. Examples of online resources are given at https://www.albertomontanari.it/ebookdroughts and https://www.albertomontanari.it/node/186.

Readings/Bibliography

The teacher will prepare dynamic documents to support the learning process, which will be made available in the form of an open e-book, which may be open to interactive contribution by students.

Teaching methods

The course is taught through lectures. Part of them are dedicated to simple data analysis and solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation. These lectures will be developed at the computer.

Particular focus will be dedicated to coding, with open source software currently applied in civil engineering.

Assessment methods

The preparation of the student will be assessed through a quiz with 30 multiple choice questions without penalty and a duration of 30 minutes. After the quiz a short oral examination will follow, with duration of about 5 minutes.

Students may be asked to solve a short exercise during the quiz and/or the oral part of the exam. The exam is passed if the student proves to be prepared on the theoretical principles and analytical derivations that were taught during the lectures. The teacher will explicitly mention to students during the lectures what are the basic questions that one needs to rigorously address in order to pass the exam. The speaking capability will also be evaluated. The laude is reserved to students who are excellently prepared and prove to have integrated their preparation with personal in-depth analysis.

Teaching tools

The teacher will made available notes on his personal web-site. Scientific papers will be distributed during the lectures as well as summaries of recent research outcomes.

Lectures will be delivered with the physical presence of the teacher and will also be made available via online streaming.

Moreover, the teacher makes available videos of the lectures (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzpKSIoIBFCMyQTjxsbbA58wLdXVEF8RI).

Links to further information

https://www.albertomontanari.it

Office hours

See the website of Alberto Montanari

See the website of Serena Ceola