The Adaptation-at-Scale initiative (AS-MIT) of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change seeks evidence-based solutions to growing risks amidst a globally changing society and environment.

How society will cope and confront risks across the natural, managed, and built environments amidst a changing world will become one of the defining moments of this century. To achieve evidence-based adaptive solutions toward global sustainability and resilience, we explore risks and rewards using a system-of-systems prediction framework of society and the environment.

Our Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework combines the Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA), the MIT Earth-System Model (MESM), as well as a suite of resource, infrastructure assessment models.  We target, diagnose and project the changing risks to life-sustaining resources under impending societal and environmental stressors. We identify the risk-reducing actions and responses within these systems that achieve sustainable and resilient futures.  

To undertake these important challenges, our researchers:

• Capture the full range of all possible climate and socio-economic futures.
• Generate projections with appropriate spatial granularity to identify asset exposure.
• Target and refine projections of changes in damaging and destructive events.
• Evaluate assets and their management to assess awareness and actions taken to reduce the chance of catastrophic loss.

2020 Adaptation Workshop - Agenda  News Story