New Energy Series

"Should We Stay or Should We Leave? Multi-objective tradeoffs in identifying robust beach nourishment and managed retreat strategies"

In some low-lying coastal areas around the world, decision-makers are beginning to consider "managed retreat" of human populations to adapt to sea-level rise. One of the main challenges in designing a managed retreat strategy is determining when to trigger retreat. Decision-makers lack tools and scientific understanding to evaluate whether the benefits of interim response strategies, like beach nourishment, outweigh the costs of waiting longer to trigger retreat.

In this talk, Hegde will contextualize the coastal beach nourishment problem within the umbrella of decision analyses frameworks for climate change adaptation. He will demonstrate how considerations of uncertainty and multiple objectives improve upon existing decision-making practices, drastically changing expected outcomes and the recommended timing of retreat.

A Q&A following the presentation will be moderated by Research Scientist Hunter Snyder.

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About the Speaker(s)

Prabhat Hegde
Engineering PhD Candidate, Dartmouth

Prabhat Hegde is a PhD candidate at Thayer School of Engineering whose interests include climate risk, climate change mitigation and adaptation. His research touches upon various aspects of optimizing energy and transportation systems for effective city-scale planning against climate risks. Professionally, he has had various industrial research-focused experiences in the past from the renewable energy, downstream oil & gas, and automotive sectors. In his short professional career so far, he has had the opportunity to work across India, France, Germany and the United States, mastering intercultural nuances and effectively deploying his multilingual ability to communicate technical content in different languages. He is also an avid data science enthusiast.

Contact

For more information, contact Irving Institute for Energy and Society at irving.institute@dartmouth.edu.