Towards more harmonious and resilient human settlements

Human settlements alter the course of rivers, narrow their banks, and eliminate forests and wetlands, ecosystems that retain water and allow its absorption into the soil. For decades or even centuries, it was possible to avoid natural disasters simply by erecting protective barriers to prevent the waters from returning to their natural beds. On the other hand, global warming destabilizes the climate and increases the frequency of extreme weather events such as excessive rainfall and floods. This makes the protections for villages and cities less effective, leading to major climatic disasters as observed in southern Brazil. There is consensus that the frequency and severity of these events will tend to increase in coming years, and therefore, we must consider what kind of planning we should make for the future. Either we continue to build increasingly larger dams, dikes and barriers, or we need to rethink human occupation of territories. In this panel, we discuss how to replan or relocate climate affected settlements, making them more harmonious with nature and resilient to climatic effects, and how data science and artificial intelligence can assist us in this.

More information and a link to Zoom are available on the dedicated webiste; registration is not required.