GW4 AI and Data Science: AI, Climate and Health

This event will provide an insight into how AI has become an integral part of tackling climate and health solutions.

Audience: Beginner level - open to all interested in data science and AI – registration essential. 

*This event starts with a free lunch - to attend the lunch, you must book your place here as well as registering for this event.

Co-hosted by the Jean Golding Institute, University of Bristol, Institute for Data Science and AI (IDSAI), University of Exeter and CAMERA at the University of Bath, this event will boast speakers across all three institutions who will delve into how AI intersects with their climate and health research.

It will explore the use of Machine Learning (ML) and AI across a variety of research including extreme weather-human health research, prediction and simulation of climate and health systems and future pandemics, and urban flood prevention.

It will also provide ‘Net positive’ solutions to the well-established negative impacts of the climate crisis, associated environmental changes in human health, and how we can tackle inequalities.

Objectives:

• Foster interdisciplinary collaboration – Bring together researchers from the University of Bristol, University of Exeter and University of Bath to explore synergies in AI, climate, and health studies, encouraging joint projects and partnerships.
• Exchange cutting-edge research and insights – Share ongoing studies and innovative applications of AI in climate and health dynamics, creating opportunities for cross-institutional knowledge sharing and future collaborations.
• Strengthen ethical and practical AI Applications – Facilitate discussions on the challenges and real-world applications of AI in climate and health solutions, with a focus on developing responsible solutions through collaborative research.

*This event is also part of Bristol Data Week - please view the https://www.bristol.ac.uk/golding/events/data-week/.

Event schedule:

12:30: Arrival and JGI Networking Lunch: Climate and AI - to attend the lunch, you must book your place here as well as registering for this event.

13:30: Welcome: Leon Danon, Director of the Jean Golding Institute

13:35: GW4 overview: Katie Lidster, Research Development Manager, GW4

13:40: Talks (see full details below):-

• Topic: Extreme weather and health research and its potential use of AI
• Topic: Enabling accessible flood prevention using explainable machine learning

14:20: Panel discussion led by Guy Howard, Global Research Chair in Environmental and Infrastructure Resilience, University of Bristol

14:35: Break 

15:00: PhD Lightning talks

15:25: Panel discussion led by Guy Howard, Global Research Chair in Environmental and Infrastructure Resilience, University of Bristol

15:40: Talks (see full details below):-

• Topic: Emulation and uncertainty in climate and health systems
• Topic: Introducing the Centre for Net Positive Health and Climate Solutions

16:20: Panel discussion led by Rachael Gooberman-Hill, Professor of Health and Anthropology, University of Bristol

16:35: Event close, Isabelle Lawrie-Halton, Turing Liaison

16:40: Drinks and networking

Talks:

Dr Eunice Lo, Research Fellow in Climate Change and Health, Cabot Institute for the Environment

Topic: Extreme weather and health research and its potential use of AI

In this talk, I will showcase key research that my team and I do on the topic of extreme temperatures and human health. Examples will include attributing heatwave deaths to human-induced climate change using a novel method, and collecting heatwave lived experience to reveal impacts that health records do not capture. Studying weather extremes requires large amounts of climate data, be it observations or model simulations. Examining the health impacts of these extremes require lots of high-quality health data, be it quantitative or descriptive. I will end this talk by discussing the use of machine learning and AI in extreme weather-health research.

Dr Thomas Kjeldsen, Reader, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Bath

Topic: Enabling accessible flood prevention using explainable machine learning

Current approaches to urban flood prevention rely on the manual identification and clearance of blocked waterways. This process is not only reactive but also requires teams of environmental engineers to enter dangerous flood waters putting themselves in danger. Recently machine learning has been shown to effectively identify potential blockages before they cause floods using CCTV cameras, however such models require large corpuses of labelled data, limiting their applicability to data and resource-scarce regions. In this talk we will explore new ways of enabling access to these techniques through the use of data augmentation and model comparison solutions.

Dr James Salter, Lecturer in Mathematics and Statistics, University of Exeter

Topic: Emulation and uncertainty in climate and health systems

‘Emulators’ have been used for a long time as low-cost surrogates of expensive simulation models in both climate and health, as a tool for cheaply exploring millions of scenarios and calibrating large numbers of unknown inputs to data. With advances in ML and AI, both the emulator and underlying simulation model are improving. Whether considering a physics-based model, or a complex AI model trained directly on observations, the question of quantifying uncertainty remains (whether due to poorly tuned inputs to the model or unknowns about the underlying system), and it’s important to account for this when making decisions. In particular, when predicting out-of-sample, e.g., on climate timescales.

Properly quantifying and understanding uncertainty in predictions made by any model, whether physics-based or AI-based, is key. We’ll consider examples related to forecasting future CO2 uptake by the land surface, and simulating future pandemics.

Dr. Helen Macintyre (UKHSA) and Professor Ben Wheeler (University of Exeter), Net+ Centre Deputy Directors.

Topic: Introducing the Centre for Net Positive Health and Climate Solutions

In this talk, we will introduce the Centre for Net Positive Health and Climate Solutions (Net+ Centre), a new UKRI cross-council-funded centre delivering research, impact and capacity-building on climate change and its impacts on health, and addressing climate-environment-health inequalities. The centre is led by the University of Exeter, with the UK Health Security Agency, the National Trust and Forest Research, as well as other collaborating organisations across public health, environment and education sectors. Net+ will identify ‘net positive’ solutions to the well-established negative impacts of the climate crisis and associated environmental changes in human health, especially identifying and evaluating opportunities for mitigation and adaptation actions to deliver health gain and tackle inequalities. We will describe the aims and planned activities of Net+, how we will seek the engagement and involvement of additional colleagues and organisations, and invite discussion on priorities and opportunities.