Summer School on Sustainable Climate Risk Management

As a central part of its educational and research mission, SCRiM hosted a series of annual summer schools to foster opportunities for collaboration and to provide a solid foundation in the broad, multidisciplinary knowledge, tools, and methods of the diverse fields participating in the network.

A key focus of the workshop was to develop a common vocabulary to help foster enhanced cross-disciplinary communication, enabling the possibility for future research and decision support collaborations. Participants also gained hands-on experience with key methods and tools including robust decisionmaking, use of simple models, and analysis of relevant datasets.

The program was targeted at postdocs, advanced graduate students, and early-career professionals in the decisionmaking and policy communities working on issues related to climate risk, mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. Thanks to the generous support of NSF, all participant costs (travel, lodging, meals, registration) were covered by the summer school, removing barriers to participation while encouraging the recruitment of diverse and highly qualified cohorts.

A total of seven summer schools were held on Penn State’s University Park campus over the period 2013-2019. The final two summer schools were co-supported by the NOAA Mid-Atlantic RISA (MARISA).

Examples of Summer School Sessions and Instructors

• Introduction to Climate Risk Management (Klaus Keller, Robert Nicholas)
• Anthropogenic Climate Change (Alan Robock, Chris Forest)
• Climate and the Built Environment (Lisa Iulo)
• Climate-Ecosystem Dynamics (Erica Smithwick)
• Coupled Ethical-Epistemic Analysis (Nancy Tuana)
• Earth System Modeling (Alan Robock, Chris Forest)
• Geoengineering (Alan Robock)
• Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change (Chris Caldwell, Kyle Whyte, Ann Marie Chischilly)
• Integrated Assessment Modeling (David Anthoff, Karen Fisher-Vanden, Ken Gillingham, Klaus Keller, Christian Traeger)
• Policy Analysis and Robust Decisionmaking (Robert Lempert, Jordan Fischbach)
• RISA Program Overview (Robert Nicholas, Lisa Dilling)
• Risk Analysis (Klaus Keller)
• Stakeholder Engagement and Negotiation (Lara Fowler)
• Strategies for Climate Change Communication (Pamela Braff, Lara Fowler)
• Tools for Sensitivity and Trade-Off Analysis (Greg Garner, Klaus Keller, Giacomo Marangoni, Vivek Srikrishnan)
• Uncertainty Quantification (Klaus Keller, Murali Haran)

Topics in bold text indicate core sessions that were held all years of the summer school.

To learn more about the Summer School for Sustainable Climate Risk Management, please contact Robert Nicholas (ren10@psu.edu).