Plenary Keynote: Carlo Jager @ Digital Future Science Match 2018

The Digital Future Science Match is an international computer science conference held every spring in Berlin. The Digital Future Science Match has a distinguished record in bringing together many speakers with excellent scientific credentials. On 14 May 2018, up to 55 leading academics were presenting the latest research findings and their visions for a digital future at the conference in keynote speeches and 5-minute short presentations.


(Digital Future Science Match 2018, Verlag Der Tagesspiegel // Fotograf: Dominik Lindner)

GCF Chairman, Prof. Carlo Jaeger, held a Plenary Keynote (Title: Digital Decision Support in the Face of Systemic Risks) for the session on Digital Decision Support.

A short video interview with Prof. Jaeger on the subject of fast decisions can be accessed here.

 

(Digital Future Science Match 2018, Verlag Der Tagesspiegel // Fotograf: Dominik Lindner)

Large scale coastal protection is cost-efficient for most of the global coastal population.

Large scale investment in coastal protection is cost-efficient for 90 percent of today’s global floodplain population. This is the result of a global scale cost-benefit analysis of large-scale coastal protection performed by researchers from Global Climate Forum and published in the journal Global Environmental Change.

“Sea-level rise is occurring in many areas of the world and supposed to continue and possibly accelerate during 21st century.  Our study illustrates that large scale protection, as it is already implemented in the Netherlands and the North of Germany, is generally economically efficient for densely populated coastal areas” explains lead author Daniel Lincke from the Global Climate Forum (GCF). “This holds true for a wide range of possible future sea-level rise scenarios (30cm – 190cm in 2100), a wide range of scenarios for social and economic development (from a poor and overpopulated world to a rich and sustainable managed world) and varying assumption on intergenerational climate change cost sharing. ”

The scientists conducted local cost-benefit analysis of coastal protection for over 12,000 coastal segments covering the complete coastline of the world. For each analysis 125 combinations of sea-level rise, socio-economic development and intergenerational climate change cost sharing scenarios have been considered. While only for 13 percent of the global coastline it was found that, under every scenario combination considered, investment in coastal protection costs less then the damages resulting from not protecting the coast, this small fraction of the global coastline accounts for 90 percent of today’s global floodplain population and for 96 percent of today’s global floodplain assets. Opposite that for 65 percent of the global coastline covering only 0.2 percent of global floodplain population and 0.2 percent of global floodplain assets investment in coastal protection costs more then the damages resulting from not protecting the coast under every scenario combination considered.

“Our results shows that the majority of coastal inhabitants lives in densely-populated and urban coastal areas, and is likely to (continue to) protect itself even under high-end sea-level rise. This is due to the high benefit-cost ratios of coastal protection in these areas. On the other hand, poorer rural areas will struggle to maintain safe human settlements and are likely to eventually retreat from the coast” adds co-author Jochen Hinkel from GCF. “Nevertheless, our study shows that there is a considerable opportunity to bridge the 21st century coastal adaptation finance gap for a large part of the world’s coastal population.”

Article: Daniel Lincke, Jochen Hinkel (2018): Economically robust protection against 21st century sea-level rise. Global Environmental Change 51, July 2018, Pages 67–73.

[DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.05.003]

Report: Digitalisation of the energy transition

To achieve the desired decarbonisation of the German economy, a stronger integration of the electricity, heat and transport sectors is needed.
Digitalisation can play a key role in this process, e.g. in the fields of energy efficiency and the integration of renewables. The legal framework for the digitalization of the energy transition, is currently being developed. This short study of GCF and GeSI gives an overview of the current status of legislation and policy that link the digital and the energy world. In addition, the study assesses where the legal framework is already well developed and where adjustments are necessary.

Weblink to the study: https://globalclimateforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Gruene-Digitalisierung-FINAL-12.4.pdf