Researchers to examine how climate change may affect humans, societies

A new grant to awarded George Mason University's Center for Social Complexity will allow researchers to examine how climate change may affect humans and societies over the next 100 years.

The center, directed by Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, will look at two key areas of the world. The first, Sub-Saharan Africa, is where the largest number of people are currently at risk of displacement, diseases, or death due to climate change. The team will also look at the Circum-boreal regions-which includes Europe, the United States, and Canada-where the largest economies and most wealth are at risk due to the greatest physical changes in the biosphere.

"The Center for Social Complexity has investigated a range of topics that include terrorism and conflict, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and financial and economic market dynamics. This project examining the societal impacts of climate change is a perfect extension to our ongoing and previous work on complex crises," says Cioffi-Revilla.

The center was awarded $1.6 million from the National Science Foundation. The four-year project is in its first year and is a joint effort with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Cioffi-Revilla, along with Mason climate scientist Paul Schopf, Mason computer scientist Sean Luke and Smithsonian anthropologist Daniel Rogers, will use advanced computational simulation models based on a toolkit and computation library developed at Mason by Luke. A series of increasingly advanced simulation models will be developed, tested and analyzed using a set of scenarios combining climate models and different social dynamics-infrastructure, government relations, economy, etc.-for each region. The project will examine the past 100 years and model for the next 100 years.

"What will happen to societies as the planet gets warmer? What infrastructures-roads, hospitals, cities and bridges-will be most at risk as the land they were built on gets warmer and changes? What people are most at risk for disease and displacement? These are some of the questions we hope to answer," says Cioffi-Revilla.

Results from this project are expected to contribute to the fundamental scientific understanding of these complex dynamics as well as provide a basis for new insights in policy analysis. The team also hopes to provide new analytical tools for the policy analysis community working on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, including the U.S. Department of State's Humanitarian Information Unit.

The grant will also fund a team of graduate student research assistants working closely with faculty at both Mason and the Smithsonian.