Stacy, 5th year master's student in EAPS

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 07:03:18 GMT

Stacy is a 5th year master's student in EAPS. Her thesis work focuses on assessing the economic value of seasonal hurricane forecasts based on insurance and reinsurance company interactions and information asymmetries. Her advisor is Kerry Emanuel.

In this interview she shares a little about life as an undergraduate major in EAPS.

Video by Helen Hill(2012)

Master's student Megan Lickley measures the risks of climate change on coastal energy infrastructure

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:33:48 GMT

A Masters student in the Technology and Policy Program, Megan Lickley studies the impact of climate change on coastal energy infrastructure. In particular, she is looking at how sea level rise and hurricanes will change over time, and how these changes will affect petroleum refineries, offshore wind facilities, or nuclear power plants located along the eastern US coast.

Prior to joining the Joint Program, Megan used her background in mathematics and modeling to study ocean dynamics and tidal power in her native Canada. Now in the preliminary stages of her work, she is using different models to anticipate how hurricane frequency and intensity will change over the coming century in order to analyze the amount of potential storm surge that could threaten energy infrastructure along the coast.

"It is an interesting problem when you're looking at economics too," explains Megan. "We must not only look at existing infrastructure, but we also need to consider future developments to understand what infrastructure could be in harm's way in the next 50, 100 years. Information on the impacts of climate change will be useful for the Department of Energy as they make decisions on where to invest in future developments and to what extent they should be investing in flood protection from sea level rise and storm surge."

Megan became interested in her project when she visited the Joint Program. "This is a very stimulating group to be a part of," notes Megan. "There is a variety of work going on surrounding emissions scenarios and policy and their resulting impacts on climate change. These are the big questions of the future that we should be addressing now and I am excited to be surrounded by people looking to address these questions."

U.S.-Cuba Relations: The Beginning of a Long Thaw?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:00:00 GMT

09/23/2009 4:30 PM Wong AuditoriumJulia Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow For Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; Wayne Smith, Senior Fellow and Director of the Cuba Program, Center for International PolicyDescription: To the dismay of these seasoned Cuba specialists, the Obama administration is not pursuing a rapid thaw in relations with the Castro regime. While there appears no speedy end to 50 years of icy antipathy toward Cuba, the speakers detect a few hopeful signs of warming in recent times. Wayne Smith has seen opportunities for a real bilateral relationship come and go. He first went to Cuba in 1958, just before the U.S. broke off diplomatic relations. He was among the first to go back in 1977 when Jimmy Carter attempted to reopen channels for discussion. Smith left the foreign service in 1982 after Reagan was elected, and had great hopes that Clinton would soften the U.S. stance following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Cuban exiles in the U.S. succeeded in retaining a hard"line policy against Cuba. Smith says, "Here we are again: another opportunity." It's in the best interest of the U.S., says Smith, to begin "a mature relationship" with Cuba. He thinks the window is open a crack now. He knows many Cuban"Americans whose families lost property, or had relatives imprisoned, and "50 years later have come around to say, it's time to begin talking." We may be entering "an interesting period of change" following a half century of "abnormal, unnatural relations," says Julia Sweig. A few years ago, on the heels of Fidel Castro's illness, Cuba initiated a "significant reform agenda." In a record"short (34 minute) inaugural speech, Castro's appointed successor, brother Raul, "implied awareness of the intense unhappiness on the island," announcing proposed internal travel freedoms, and discussing agrarian and currency reform. "He sounded often more like Margaret Thatcher than Karl Marx," says Sweig. But this fledgling effort to expand opportunities for Cubans was derailed in 2008 by three devastating hurricanes, the collapse of world commodity and financial markets, and Fidel Castro's recovery (he's "notoriously allergic to the market," Sweig says). There is some reason for optimism beyond Cuba. Sweig perceives a major shift in public opinion among Cuban"Americans, especially the young cohort that helped vote in Obama. There's a prevailing sense that the embargo has failed, and that America should completely lift its travel ban. And the Obama administration has indicated a slight softening toward Cuba, permitting family remittances, and signaling that it might allow American telecom companies to do business in Cuba. Sweig believes "this glacial, almost like walking through peanut butter pace of change that we have in bilateral relations suits each government just fine." She concludes with a genuine bright spot: the September '09 Havana concert by Colombian musician Juanes, which demonstrated that the U.S. and Cuba can have meaningful contact with each other "without governments getting in the way." About the Speaker(s): Julia E. Sweig is the author of Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2009), and Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti"American Century,/i> (PublicAffairs, 2006), as well as numerous publications on Latin America and American foreign policy. She has directed several Council on Foreign Relations reports on Latin America. Sweig's Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Harvard University Press, 2002) received the American Historical Association's Herbert Feis Award for best book of the year by an independent scholar. Sweig serves on the International Advisory Board of the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), on the editorial board of Foreign Affairs Latinoam_rica, and from 1999"2008, served as a consultant on Latin American affairs for The Aspen Institute's Congressional Program. She frequently provides commentary for the major television, radio, and print media, speaking in both English and Spanish. She holds a B.A. from the University of California and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Wayne Smith is also a visiting professor of Latin American Studies and Director of the University of Havana exchange Program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is a former Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. During his twenty"five years with the State Department (1957"82), he served as executive secretary of President Kennedy's Latin American Task Force and chief of mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. In addition, he served in Argentina, Brazil and the Soviet Union. Smith's most recent book is The Russians Aren't Coming: New Soviet Policy in Latin America (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), of which he is the editor. His other works include Portrait of Cuba (Turner Publishing, 1991); Toward Resolution: The Falklands/Malvinas Dispute (Lynne Rienner, 1991), again as an editor; and The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of the Castro Years (W.W. Norton of New York City, 1987). He was also the co"editor, along with Esteban Morales, of Subject to Solution: Problems in Cuban"U.S. Relations (Lynne Rienner, 1988), which won the Critic award in 1989 as one of the best academic books reviewed that year. He received his university education at La Universidad de las Americas in Mexico City from which he holds a B.A. and an M.A. (summa cum laude), at Columbia University in New York City, from which he holds another M.A., and at George Washington University in Washington D.C., where he received a third M.A. and a Ph.D. In 1990, Smith received the Henry L. Cain Most Distinguished Alumnus award from La Universidad de las Americas. Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Center for International Studies

The Challenge: Meeting Global Energy Demands Sustainably

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 04:00:00 GMT

10/18/2006 6:00 PM MuseumErnest Moniz, Director, MIT Energy Initiative; Kerry Emanuel, '76, PhD '78, Professor of Atmospheric ScienceDescription: Despite their calm demeanors, Kerry Emanuel and Ernie Moniz impart grave and pressing concerns about global warming to this Museum gathering. Emanuel admits that he was still a skeptic 20 years ago, but that detailed analysis of the earth's climate record, and sophisticated modeling have convinced him and a vast majority of his colleagues that we're witnessing a rapidly changing environment due to greenhouse gas emissions. The world is in the process of doubling its carbon dioxide emissions over the pre-industrial value of 280 parts per million. Experts project a 2-5 degree increase in the Earth's temperature, in our children's lifetimes. -What keeps some of us awake at night and in my mind drives us to take seriously why we have to deal with energy, is surprises. Things that we're worried about that might happen, that we don't know enough to rule out. These are low probability but high impact events that anyone with children worries about," says Emanuel. One such surprise might be the rapid melting of the Greenland ice cap (which vanished once before, in the distant past, amazingly fast). If all this ice melts into the world's oceans, says Emanuel, -you're talking about seven meters of sea level rise: say goodbye to Cape Cod, southern Florida, a lot of Manhattan." Emanuel, a hurricane specialist, also foresees much greater intensity of hurricanes, as the world warms up. This clear and present danger of climate change must force nations to control fossil fuel use, says Ernie Moniz. If we do nothing at all, carbon dioxide emissions will double over their pre-industrial values in 50 years -- a point of no return. Yet the task of completely altering our energy infrastructure in this timeframe -certainly violates no law of physics," says Moniz. We must be much more efficient in use of energy, especially in our residential and commercial buildings; we must find alternative transportation fuels; and we must achieve carbon-free or carbon-light electricity. There is no single -silver bullet" to wean us from fossil fuel addiction, and going from small-scale to large-scale production of energy alternatives will prove tricky. Just as important, says Moniz, to get going on this new portfolio of technologies will require political will: -There must be a policy put in place relatively soon that one way or another attaches a price to greenhouse gas emissions,' and encourage the market introductions of new forms of energy. Moniz believes that for the U.S., reengineering the economy toward energy independence plays to our technological strengths, and aligns environment and security interests. About the Speaker(s): Kerry Emanuel has been on the faculty of MIT since 1981. He was previously at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on tropical meteorology and climate, with a specialty in hurricane physics. His interests also include cumulus convection, and advanced methods of sampling the atmosphere in aid of numerical weather prediction. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and two books, including Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes, (2005, Oxford University Press). Emanuel received his S.B. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from MIT, and earned a Ph.D. in Meteorology from MIT in 1978. Ernest J. Moniz has served on the MIT faculty since 1973. He was Under Secretary of the Department of Energy from October 1997 until January 2001. He also served from 1995 to 1997 as Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President. At MIT, Moniz was Head of the Department of Physics and Director of the Bates Linear Accelerator Center. His principal research contributions have been in theoretical nuclear physics, particularly in advancing nuclear reaction theory at high energy. Moniz received a B.S. degree in physics from Boston College, a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Athens and the University of Erlangen-Nurenburg. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Humboldt Foundation, and the American Physical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Moniz received the 1998 Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award for vision and leadership in advancing scientific simulation. Host(s): Office of the Provost, MIT Museum

What's So Natural About Natural Disasters?

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 05:00:00 GMT

11/15/2005 5:00 PM Kirsch 32-123Rosalind H. Williams, HM, Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology; David A. Mindell, PhD '96, Frances and David Dibner Associate Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing; ; David S. Jones, Assistant Professor, Program in Science, Technology and Society ; Meg Jacobs, Associate Professor of History, Department of History Description: It seems as if humans conspire to aggravate many of our worst 'natural' disasters. David Mindell brings to mind the massive gridlock on one side of an interstate highway leading out of New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina. In all the planning for a mass evacuation from this flood-prone area, did no one think to use all lanes of this highway? This "glaring omission," along with many others, says Mindell, is typical of a society that's dependent on technologically sophisticated, large-scale systems. Disasters open and expose the workings and vulnerabilities of man-made systems, which normally remain invisible. Mindell notes that the prosaic networks surrounding us, from highways to electrical power, sewers, water, and communication, are all more or less necessary for life as we know it but some are necessary for survival. In earlier times, people saw divine retribution when earthquakes struck or volcanoes erupted. David Jones today sees a predictable phenomenon when disasters "collide with human populations:" the greatest harm nearly always falls on the poor and disenfranchised. This was true with last summer's crop of hurricanes. It's also true for heat waves, blizzards and tornadoes, which "like their more violent cousins have a preferential impact on the poor." Earthquakes "are slightly more egalitarian," Jones says, but in wealthier countries, our urban structures can better resist the shocks, whereas in poor nations like Turkey and Kashmir, little is left standing. Some epidemics have natural origins, then spiral out of control when they begin to circulate among humans, particularly those residing in the developing world. Jones believes we "could drastically reduce the mortality of disasters 'simply by implementing policy based on current knowledge." Meg Jacobs sees a grim logic to the Bush administration's "unnatural" response to natural disaster. "What might appear as a political gaffe is the result of a quarter-century effort to purge the idea that government should respond to disaster," she claims. Look back to the energy crisis of the 1970s for the origins of this policy, because that's when those in power today, Rumsfeld and Cheney included, "first cut their political teeth." When the Arab oil boycott lowered American access to energy, leading to gas lines and a dramatic downturn in the economy, some politicians sought ways to soften the impact on people. Richard Nixon advocated energy conservation, but he also implemented a conservative free market approach to the energy crisis. From Nixon through current times, believes Jacobs, powerful people have "sought to undermine the legitimacy of state action from within government." Jacobs says the Bush administration has used the crisis of Katrina "to advance a conservative agenda," including the suspension of fair wage laws, reliance on individual charity and on corporations like Walmart. Host(s): Office of the President, Office of the PresidentTape #: T20606

What Does Current Scientific Research Have to Say About the Present and Future Risks Associated with Hurricanes?

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 05:00:00 GMT

Kerry Emanuel, '76, PhD '78, Professor of Atmospheric Science

Description: As the costs of Hurricane Katrina continue to spiral higher — to date, $125 billion in damages and 1,200 deaths — there's keen interest in perfecting the science of hurricane forecasting. The insurance industry in particular has a big stake in learning where and how the next big one is likely to hit. The problem is that traditional methods of statistical analysis, relying on previous landfalling storms, only go so far in generating useful risk assessments. "We have a bad time predicting in real time when and where hurricanes will develop," says Emanuel. "It's not even easy to state over a long period of time what the probability is."

Emanuel is refining risk assessment by adding physics to the mix. His laptop-run program takes into account not only a century's worth of actual storms, but also the temperature at the ocean's surface, from which a hurricane derives much of its energy, as well as air currents, to generate tens of thousands of potential hurricane tracks. For instance, only 29 hurricanes have landed within 100 kilometers of Miami in the past century — relatively little data to help predict potential future damage. Emanuel can conjure up thousands of possible storms evolving in the Atlantic and pounding that city with winds of a given intensity. The real trick, says Emanuel, will involve factoring in climate change. He's found a correlation between sea surface temperature and wind speed that poses serious consequences for a world that's rapidly heating up, with "a greatly increased hurricane destructive potential," says Emanuel. However, from a "U.S.-centric point of view, on a 50-year timescale, this probably doesn't mean much at all." The likelihood of another superstorm like Katrina or Rita hitting our coast will be a matter of bad luck. But gazing beyond a 50-year horizon, "then you have to worry about global trends," he says.

About the Speaker(s): Kerry Emanuel has been on the faculty of MIT since 1981. He was previously at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on tropical meteorology and climate, with a specialty in hurricane physics. His interests also include cumulus convection, and advanced methods of sampling the atmosphere in aid of numerical weather prediction. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and two books, including Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes, (2005, Oxford University Press).

Emanuel received his SB in Earth and Planetary Sciences from MIT, and earned a PhD in Meteorology from MIT in 1978.

Host(s): Office of the President

Rebuilding New Orleans: An Opportunity to Re-Energize the Planning Profession?

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:00:00 GMT

Kristina Ford, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies, Bowdoin College; Former Executive Director, New Orleans City Planning Commission Description: There's no love lost between Kristina Ford and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin; he made it clear that she was not welcome as the city's main planner when he assumed office. The bone Ford has to pick is not merely with the current mayor and his notion of a casino- and hotel-dominated New Orleans, but with a wrongheaded planning process in her hometown, and elsewhere in U.S. cities. One big issue for Ford: how cities often treat the comprehensive land use plans they generate every few years as if they are realistic blueprints. "People look backwards when creating a vision of the future, and it's often a nostalgic vision of what used to be better in memory than in fact." Ford notes, "I don't know many plans from 15 years ago that contemplated Walmarts, or Home Depots." Over time, zoning decisions diverge from the plan or people simply ignore the plan altogether. In the case of New Orleans, a city Ford reveres for its vibrant, distinctively diverse culture, urban planning never took into account how people actually lived -- in tight-knit neighborhoods, relying on an underground economy and spotty transportation. So after Hurricane Katrina, it is essential, believes Ford, that rebuilding plans embrace reality. Real urban recovery would mean luring back New Orleans residents, currently dispersed all over the country, with jobs. "With big contracts coming in, 25% must go to native New Orleanians," says Ford. "If they don't have skills, they should be taught." When one family member returns, it "creates a toehold for the whole family to return." Ultimately, "words for planning are gimmicks," says Ford. Planners must stop "tinkering at the margins," but step right into the politics of their communities, and "invite ways to measure their own effectiveness." About the Speaker: From 1992 to 2000, Kristina Ford led the New Orleans city planning office. She also headed the New Orleans Business Corp., an agency created to develop city-owned property. Ford was previously a planning director of Missoula, Montana, and author of the 1989 APA book, Planning Small Town America, and other textbooks on community planning issues. Host(s): School of Architecture and Planning, Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Voices from New Orleans: Design and Planning Diaspora

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 04:00:00 GMT

There is general agreement that to call New Orleans home means "living with danger, dangerously," as William Barry put it.

Drawing Lessons from Hurricane Katrina: How Can We Improve Disaster Response?

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:00:00 GMT

Even if the U.S. draws the right lessons from Hurricane Katrina, panelists suggest, the nation may still be caught short in the next disaster. Moderator: Kenneth Oye, Associate Professor of Political Science and Engineering Systems and Director of the MIT-CIS Program on Political Economy and Technology Policy Participants: Richard C. Larson, SB '65, EE, SM, '67, PhD, '69 , Mitsui Professor of Engineering Systems; Yossi Sheffi, SM '77, PhD '78, Director, Engineering Systems Division, and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems, Director, MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics Event date: 09/30/2005

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