Environmental Forecasting: From Computational Tools to Scientific Insight FRP
Focused Research Program
Our Focus
The world is undergoing continuous, accelerating change, evidenced by unprecedented wildfires, droughts, floods, and extinction events—many driven by the rapid decline of ecosystems, the planet’s life support systems. Environmental forecasting seeks to accurately predict changes in ecosystems and the services they provide in response to natural and human drivers. The goal of this FRP is to lay foundations to establish BU’s leadership in the convergent area of environmental forecasting by bringing together our expertise across computer science, statistics, data science, ML/AI, biology, and ecology.
Focused Research Program led by:
Michael Dietze, Professor, Earth & Environment
Jonathan Huggins, Assistant Professor, Mathematics & Statistics, Professor of Computing and Data Sciences, and founding member of Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences
Research Thrusts
1. Shared, Scalable Cyberinfrastructure & Methods
This thrust will identify, then begin to address, cyberinfrastructure and methodological bottlenecks that are relevant to a range of environmental forecasting use cases.
Thrust Leaders
Core Faculty
Affiliated Faculty
2. Tropical Infectious Diseases
The goal of this thrust is to improve forecasting of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) – a zoonotic pathogen transmitted among dogs, sandflies, and humans – in Brazil from a “One Health” perspective that accounts for environmental and climatic drivers of disease incidence.
Thrust Leaders
Core Faculty
3. Urban Terrestrial Ecosystems
This thrust will develop and iteratively refine prototype forecasts of urban ecosystems with a focus on trees and microbes.
Thrust Leaders
Core Faculty
4. Coastal and Marine Ecosystems
This thrust aims to develop and then improve forecasting capabilities of complex biogeochemical, ecological, and community population dynamics in the coastal ocean.
Thrust Leaders
Core Faculty
Sponsor
This Focused Research Program is funded by the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering.
How to get involved?
For program specific inquiries and questions, please contact FRP leaders: Michael Dietze and Jonathan Huggins
Faculty interested in submitting a Focused Research Programs proposal are strongly encouraged to discuss their ideas with Yannis Paschalidis, director of the Hariri Institute for Computing.
To learn more details about the Hariri Institute’s Focused Research Programs, visit here.