Greenhouse 2011 Conference

CRICHTONA — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 01:12:56 +0000

The Greenhouse 2011 Conference was held from the 4-8 April in Cairns, Queensland. A total of 474 delegates attended, with Kyla Finlay attending on behalf of the CRCNPB.

The conference featured 29 keynote speakers/panelists, 150 presentations, 90 climate science posters and 11 exhibitors. PDF copies of all the presentations have been made available by the conference organisers (http://www.greenhouse2011.com/presentations).

The conference theme focused on the latest findings in the science of climate change and many of the key note presentations detailed the most up-to-date information including:

the earth’s warming impact on sea level rise
climatic uncertainties such as clouds, aerosols, water vapour and feedbacks
where we stand with national climate change projections, and
an update on Professor Garnaut’s Climate Change review.

Relevant up-to-date information is necessary for incorporation into our studies on the impacts of climate change on pests and diseases; research that is part of the CRCs Preparedness and Prevention Research Program.

An integral part of our climate change research involves optimizing surveillance strategies and determining potential new invasions pathways for emergency pests and pathogens. Part of this is analysis of extreme weather events in association with climate change, which was a strong focus in the conference, including presentations on tropical cyclones in the Atlantic and Australian regions, extreme precipitation events and storm surges.

Many papers were presented on the impact of climate change on Pacific Islands and the risks and opportunities faced by these small island nations. Examination of some of the drivers and potential impacts of climate change on these islands are very relevant to pest and disease incursion research and biosecurity contingency planning.

The Asia Pacific Network (APN) for Global Change Research was an exhibitor at the conference, which gave me the opportunity to showcase our collaborative work with India and Bangladesh under the APN program and the involvement of the CRCNPB in this research. A poster entitled “The effects of climate change on potato late blight in India, Bangladesh and Australia” was displayed throughout the conference.

Interestingly, it has recently been recognised that even though the scientific evidence is overwhelming, there is more skepticism regarding the cause and impact for climate change. Several sessions explored this disconnect between the science and the practitioners who use the information to develop adaptation strategies and the reasons behind it. One of the stated objectives of the CRCNPB's project is the development of tools to inform industry and government and enhance contingency planning for pest and disease responses to climate change. These lessons are invaluable for creating effective policy from the climate change research.

This conference was an excellent opportunity to network with Australian and international researchers. Discussions were held with potential collaborators from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research and the WMO Expert Team on Climate Change Impacts of Tropical Cyclones on increased biosecurity incursion risks due to these extreme weather events and climate impacts on small island nations.

The next Greenhouse Conference will be held in 2013.

Modelling and Simulation with Mathematical and Computational Sciences

VANMEURSA — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:56:43 +0000

Modelling and Simulation with Mathematical and Computational Sciences (MODSIM) is uniquely a multi-disciplinary gathering of modellers – from a range of modelling disciplines (statistics, mathematics, computer science, economics, etc) and a diverse range of applications. This provided Dr Low Choy a useful venue for soliciting feedback on her recent research into encoding expert judgements, since expert elicitation is a highly multi-disciplinary and a small but emerging field. Dr Low Choy’s involvement in MODSIM provided useful experience: as session organiser for two strands—on Bayesian statistics and on expert elicitation (including coordinating refereeing of conference papers); presenter of an oral presentation; co-author of two other presentations; and main presenter of a workshop on Expert Elicitation by Design (based on a recent paper, Low-Choy et al, 2009, Ecology).

Dr Low Choy presented a (12 minute) paper on Expert elicitation and its interface with technology: a review with a view to designing Elicitator. Interesting feedback on the talk mostly came from novices to the elicitation field interested in trialling the software. Because of this feedback, Dr Low Choy realised that the workshop planned for the final day, which was originally pitched to elicitation practitioners needed to be modified to target beginners. The workshop provided interesting insights: that researcher interest is growing across many fields (from vulcanology to materials science and planning emergency response), and that software and courses for beginners are lacking.

In 2009, the conference streams were deliberately constructed to encourage multi-disciplinary cross-fertilisation, with no adjacent talks sharing the same modelling discipline. This meant Dr Low Choy was exposed to interesting new approaches. For instance: game theory was used to assess whether small changes in decisions really make a difference in the end-game; to help recover a re-introduced native bird population that was not progressing past fledgling stage, a risk assessment utilised model-based estimates of the probability of survival based on different scientific hypotheses, weighted by expert support for said hypotheses. This has influenced Dr Low Choy’s thinking on decision-theory, a framework for evaluating performance of statistical designs (such as those used for pest surveillance), and on model selection within the Bayesian framework.

CRC for Plant Biosecurity - Cairns

Greenhouse 2011 Conference

Modelling and Simulation with Mathematical and Computational Sciences