{"id":1858,"date":"2010-08-24T01:57:11","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T05:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/?p=1858"},"modified":"2010-08-24T01:58:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-24T05:58:42","slug":"climate-change-a-software-grand-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/2010\/08\/climate-change-a-software-grand-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change: A Software Grand Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great news – I’ve had my paper accepted for the 2010 FSE\/SDP Workshop on the Future of Software Engineering Research<\/a>, in Santa Fe, in November! The workshop sounds very interesting – 2 days intensive discussion on where we as a research community should be going. Here’s my contribution:<\/p>\n

Climate Change: A Grand Software Challenge<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Abstract<\/em><\/p>\n

Software is a critical enabling technology in nearly all aspects of climate change, from the computational models used\u00a0by climate scientists to improve our understanding of the impact of human activities on earth systems, through to the\u00a0information and control systems needed to build an effective carbon-neutral society. Accordingly, we, as software\u00a0researchers and software practitioners, have a major role to\u00a0play in responding to the climate crisis. In this paper we\u00a0map out the space in which our contributions are likely to\u00a0be needed, and suggest a possible research agenda.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/em><\/p>\n

Climate change is likely to be the de\ufb01ning issue of the 21st\u00a0century. The science is unequivocal – concentrations of greenhouse gases are rising faster than at any previous era in the\u00a0earth\u2019s history, and the impacts are already evident [1]. Future impacts are likely to include a reduction of global food\u00a0and water supplies, more frequent extreme weather events,\u00a0sea level rise, ocean acidification, and mass extinctions [10].\u00a0In the next few decades, serious impacts are expected on human health from heat stress and vector-borne diseases [2].<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the scale of the systems involved makes the\u00a0problem hard to understand, and hard to solve. For example, the additional carbon in greenhouse gases tends to\u00a0remain in atmosphere-ocean circulation for centuries, which\u00a0means past emissions commit us to further warming throughout this century, even if new emissions are dramatically\u00a0reduced [12]. The human response is also very slow – it\u00a0will take decades to complete a worldwide switch to carbon-neutral energy sources, during which time atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise. These\u00a0lags in the system mean that further warming is inevitable,\u00a0and catastrophic climate disruption is likely on the business-as-usual\u00a0scenario.<\/p>\n

Hence, we face a triple challenge: mitigation to avoid the\u00a0worst climate change e\ufb00ects by rapidly transitioning the\u00a0world to a low-carbon economy; adaptation to re-engineer\u00a0the infrastructure of modern society so that we can survive\u00a0and \ufb02ourish on a hotter planet; and education to improve\u00a0public understanding of the inter-relationships of the planetary climate system and human activity systems, and of the\u00a0scale and urgency of the problem.<\/p>\n

These challenges are global in nature, and pervade all aspects of society. To address them, researchers, engineers,\u00a0policymakers, and educators from many di\ufb00erent disciplines\u00a0need to come to the table and ask what they can contribute.\u00a0In the short term, we need to deploy, as rapidly as possible,\u00a0existing technology to produce renewable energy[8] and design government policies and international treaties to bring\u00a0greenhouse gas emissions under control. In the longer term,\u00a0we need to complete the transition to a global carbon-neutral\u00a0society by the latter half of this century [1]. Meeting these\u00a0challenges will demand the mobilization of entire communities of expertise.<\/p>\n

Software plays a ma jor role, both as part of the problem and\u00a0as part of the solution. A large part of the massive growth\u00a0of energy consumption in the past few decades is due to the\u00a0manufacture and use of computing and communication technologies, and the technological advances they make possible.\u00a0Energy e\ufb03ciency has never been a key requirement in the\u00a0development of software-intensive technologies, and so there\u00a0is a very large potential for e\ufb03ciency improvements [16].<\/p>\n

But software also provides the critical infrastructure that\u00a0supports the scienti\ufb01c study of climate change, and the use\u00a0of that science by society. Software allows us to process vast\u00a0amounts of geoscienti\ufb01c data, to simulate earth system processes, to assess the implications, and to explore possible\u00a0policy responses. Software models allow scientists, activists\u00a0and policymakers to share data, explore scenarios, and validate assumptions. The extent of this infrastructure is often\u00a0invisible, both to those who rely on it, and to the general\u00a0public [6]. Yet weaknesses in this software (whether real\u00a0or imaginary) will impede our ability to make progress in\u00a0tackling climate change. We need to solve hard problems\u00a0to improve the way that society \ufb01nds, assesses, and uses\u00a0knowledge to support collective decision-making.<\/p>\n

In this paper, we explore the role of the software community in addressing these challenges, and the potential for\u00a0software infrastructure to bridge the gaps between scientific\u00a0disciplines, policymakers, the media, and public opinion. We\u00a0also identify critical weaknesses in our ability to develop and\u00a0validate this software infrastructure, particularly as traditional software engineering methods are poorly adapted to\u00a0the construction of such a vast, evolving knowledge-intensive\u00a0software infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Now read the <\/em>full paper here<\/em><\/a> (don’t worry, it’s only four pages, and you’ve now already read the first one!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, and many thanks to everyone who read drafts of this and sent me comments!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Great news – I’ve had my paper accepted for the 2010 FSE\/SDP Workshop on the Future of Software Engineering Research, in Santa Fe, in November! The workshop sounds very interesting – 2 days intensive discussion on where we as a research community should be going. Here’s my contribution: Climate Change: A Grand Software Challenge Abstract […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,52],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1858"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1860,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions\/1860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}