Welcome to the PlanetLab.org Blog

Humans are changing the planet Earth in ways that are threatening our ability to thrive and survive.  We in the Duke University PlanetLab are working to come up with truly sustainable solutions to these existential problems. Our Mission is; Understanding Earth Systems and Community Resilience to Reduce Suffering due to Global Change. And this is the central question in everything we do:

How can we have sustainable development without damaging the Earth Systems that support our health and well-being?

Let’s break this down:

Sustainable Development.  This encompasses the basics that every human needs to survive and thrive.  As a basis for this, we use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Our soil is being eroded and degraded, surface water is polluted and groundwater is being extracted at unsustainable rates, excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is at levels that exceed those that have allowed for humans to evolve from advanced primates to space travelers and our biosphere is experiencing an alarming rate of extinction.

Earth Systems: 

Cultures around the globe have long recognized four (or five) elements that constitute our universe- earth, water, air and fire (and aether).

Building Our Own System: 

We modify this slightly to consider four critical systems that work in concert to support life on our planet: the geosphere (solid Earth), atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.

These four systems, while keeping us alive, also sometimes work in concert to pose natural hazards.  I got into this business studying the impacts of tsunami- I had to know something about the intersection of the geosphere (earthquakes) and the hydrosphere (the ocean)- a little bit of seismology plus a little bit of fluid dynamics.  In northern Sumatra after the big 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, I quickly realized that the biosphere had a role in this as well, but more on the impact side than the hazard side, in this example.

Health and well-being.  While the sheer magnitude of this event was indeed staggering (we estimated wave heights up to 35 m in some places!), I was more astounded by the impact on people.  Nearly a quarter of a million people died in this event, which occurred when these natural systems collided with vulnerable communities.  But to understand why some communities fare better than others when exposed to hazards, we recognize the role of overlapping systems of infrastructure and ecosystems that support people as well as the knowledge of the environment these people hold.

Every year, countless people die unnecessarily from natural disasters that occur at this intersection between the Earth Systems and what we call Socio-Ecological Systems.  The goal of the PlanetLab is to reduce the negative outcomes associated with disasters including the damage and loss of life, health and well-being and property.  It is critically important to recognize that we, as researchers that work between the natural and social sciences, are not responsible for the actual implementation of solutions.  This we leave to the people that are trained specifically to solve problems- the engineers, policymakers, investors and healthcare providers.

I once asked my father-in-law, an ex-petroleum engineer, what the difference was between science and engineering.  His answer was simple and elegant- Engineering is science with accountability.

We have brought this into our work on disaster risk reduction- Natural and social scientists point out problems, engineers fix them.

Our job is to show that a critical stretch of river has flooded 20 times in the last 100 years, and the last 5 of these floods exceeded the magnitude of all previous events, exposing critical infrastructure, like a hospital, to risk.  One solution would be to build a big dam upstream from the exposed assets.  This would surely reduce the flooding.  However, concrete adds a lot of CO₂ to the atmosphere and damages riparian ecosystems that provide critical and more sustainable services to communities.  While effective, it is not sustainable in the long run.

In order to approach more sustainable solutions, policymakers and investors (which can be a government) must get together with engineers and healthcare providers come up with a plan to, for example, reforest the watershed upstream that suffered from a half-century of intensive logging, reinforce the buttresses of bridges, and consider moving the hospital while preparing for injuries and illnesses that might accompany future floods.  It takes a deliberate, coordinated effort to understand these complex systems in order to inform more lasting, affordable and easier to maintain solutions.

This is a seemingly impossible task.  However, we have little choice but to seek creative and dynamic solutions that do not further damage the Earth’s critical systems while providing shelter for those exposed to natural hazards.  And with the example above, solutions needn’t be purely ecosystem-based, but rather can be combined with traditional engineered solutions.  To deny the effectiveness of proven methods would mean unnecessarily leaving communities at risk.

Here are some examples of the projects we are working on in the PlanetLab that aim to reduce the risk to a diversity of communities around the world-

• Glacial Lake Outburst Floods and mental health in the Himalaya (Aaliya).  Aaliya’s home region was hit by 4 GLOFs in 3 years, and these repeated events take their toll.  Partnering with the University of Liverpool’s Global Mental Health group, we are providing a more detailed understanding of the frequency and magnitude of future events as well as how exposed people are coping so that interventions can be tailored to the communities’ needs.
• Climate change and water, forests, lemur and human health in Madagascar (Parks, Kagiliery, Paietta, DeSisto, Outten-Berrios).  Can forest conservation reduce the occurrence of water-borne pathogens and the rate of viral infections?  How can we ensure that communities that rely on rainforest services benefit from better nutrition, overall health and economies amidst conservation efforts?  This project is in partnership with US-based NGO Health in Harmony.
• Extreme weather and health outcomes in the Southeastern United States and Brazil (Palandurkar, Buckalew, Berlan, Karna, Vissoci, Stanton, Joiner).  Climate change is already wreaking havoc across the SE United states, and the GEMINI group at Duke Global Health wants to know if the health systems are prepared.   This project also includes work on climate related power outages (Kagiliery, Adavor, Young, Bajgain) and insurance for marginalized communities (Young).
• Geothermal heating and cooling potential in North Carolina (Meyer-Arrivillaga, Sethi, Adavor).  A carbon neutral “micro-grid” solution that can save lives in areas exposed to extreme weather and have dilapidated power infrastructure. In collaboration with Duke Facilities, the Pratt School of Engineering, the Town of Enfield, NC, Duke Design Climate, Boston-based non-profit Heet and the Southern Environmental Law Center.
• Air quality, systems dynamics and development in Nepal– (Bajgain, Karna, Roy, Sethi, Shrestha).  Globally, air pollution is estimated to cause 8.1 million deaths annually, making it the second leading risk factor after high blood pressure.  Our South Asian team is working on using this complex issue to explore Systems Dynamics models to help us better understand where solutions-providers might make critical interventions. 

We have a lot to do- Let’s get to work!