COP25 Side Event
Artificial Intelligence:
Applications in Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
Wednesday 4 December, 2019, 15:30-17:00 - Chile Pavilion
Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data can accelerate some strategies in mitigation, adaptation, and climate science, across areas such as energy, industry, agriculture, forestry, and disaster management. For instance, AI can accelerate scientific discovery (e.g. design better batteries), improve forecasts (e.g. of extreme events and renewable energy production), optimize existing systems (e.g. consolidate freight and reduce food waste), enable remote sensing (e.g. pinpoint deforestation and gather infrastructure data), and provide fast approximations to time-intensive simulations (e.g. electricity scheduling and climate models).
In this session, we will highlight ways that AI can be leveraged to address some of the problems of climate change. We will also invite discussion about practical considerations involved in implementing these applications, which requires input from researchers, local and national governments, international organizations, the private sector, NGOs, and more.
This event is organized by Climate Change AI (CCAI), an initiative to encourage the meaningful application of AI to climate change mitigation and adaptation. CCAI provides resources for those working at the intersection of climate change and AI, and organizes physical and digital events to build teams with diverse expertise. CCAI is led by a multidisciplinary group of volunteers from academia and industry, including the directors of many of the world’s leading AI institutions.
Our session will address the following discussion points:
- What is AI? AI algorithms learn from the data they are given, and can process large amounts of information swiftly to infer patterns and make decisions. We will describe the capabilities of AI in areas such as remote sensing, forecasting, optimization, and physical modeling, which have important applications to climate change.
- Where can AI help address climate change? We will describe specific applications where AI can meaningfully be applied to mitigation, adaptation, and climate science. For instance, AI can provide data-driven insights to inform policy decisions, help businesses improve their energy efficiency, and accelerate the process of scientific innovation and discovery.
- How can AI be deployed effectively and responsibly? Effective solutions require cooperation between AI experts and relevant stakeholders to guide development and deployment. We will invite discussion about how to facilitate cooperation and data-sharing between key players, and the role of the public and private sectors in creating policies and incentives to facilitate impactful work.
Panelists:
- Prof. Dr. Felix Creutzig (MCC Berlin; TU Berlin; lead coordinating author, IPCC AR6 report)
- Ms. Carla Bromberg (AI for Social Good at Google)
- Dr. Jack Kelly (Open Climate Fix)
- Mr. Diego Saez Gil (Pachama)
- Dr. David Rolnick (University of Pennsylvania)
- Dr. Lynn Kaack (ETH Zürich)
- Ms. Priya Donti (Carnegie Mellon University)