2024 Lau Grants for Just Climate Futures awarded
This year’s projects focus on neighborhood energy-sharing strategies, flood adaptation in unincorporated areas, and heat and pollution in urbanizing towns.
The College of Environmental Design has awarded accelerator Lau Grants for Just Climate Futures to Professor of Architecture Luisa Caldas, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning Lu Liang, and Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning Danielle Zoe Rivera. Cross-disciplinary teams will work over the next six months to develop scalable, place-based solutions to the climate crisis.
Established in 2023, the Lau grant program supports projects led by CED faculty that aim to reduce the impacts of climate change, incorporate community engagement, and emphasize equitable, actionable solutions.
This year's projects focus on neighborhood energy-sharing strategies, flood adaptation in unincorporated areas, and heat and pollution in urbanizing towns. A team led by Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design and Urban Design Kristina Hill that received a two-year translational grant last year will continue its work this summer, building an air quality digital twin.
Building resilience and community power through neighborhood energy sharing
From increasing urban growth to extreme weather events — such as wildfires, heat waves, and freezes — “traditional energy systems have proven vulnerable” says Luisa Caldas, professor of architecture. Her research focuses on sustainable design and building, using computational tools to support energy efficiency.
—Luisa Caldas, Professor of Architecture
“The crux of the project is to reconceptualize energy dynamics,” says Caldas. “How can design interventions and decentralized energy systems enhance resilience against extreme weather within existing urban fabrics?”
Caldas’s Just Climate Futures project, Energy Sharing Neighborhood: Community-Driven Energy Resilience with Decentralized Networks, aims to establish an energy-sharing network in San Francisco as a case study. Working with constituents in communities that are most vulnerable to energy instability, Caldas and her team of graduate students plan to develop a comprehensive understanding of specific needs and model energy input and output.
The goal is to show that community-centered energy sharing can empower community autonomy, enhance energy resilience, and promote sustainable urban growth. “Our project is set to make a stride toward sustainable and resilient urban energy landscapes,” Caldas says.
Urban heat — using climate research to inform local policy
Lu Liang, associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning, is a geospatial scientist whose research uses data and models to study how environmental conditions, such as air pollution, impact the daily lives of individuals in cities. Since uneven distribution of thermal discomfort and pollution in a city leads to environmental inequality, she notes, “conducting research at a neighborhood-scale is essential for policy making.”
For their Just Climate Futures project, Heat and Haze at the Edge: Comparative Studies at Two of America’s Hottest Cities, Liang and her co-PI, Nader Afzalan, Raymond Lifchez Chair of Social Justice and Visiting Professor of Practice in the Department of City & Regional Planning, are investigating patterns of UHI-UPI (urban heat island and urban pollution island) using ground sensors, 2D and 3D metrics and other statistical modeling, and comparative analysis.
The project focuses on cities that are experiencing significant growth, with extensive urban-rural fringe areas. Denton City, Texas, is a socioeconomically diverse college town with increasing commercial, residential, and industrial urbanization. Stockton, California, located in the Central Valley and known for summer heat, faces increased pollution from traffic; its low-income population, which is 45% Latino, faces severe environmental health issues.
Liang and Afazalen’s interdisciplinary research into human-environmental issues aims to inform effective and targeted environmental policies. “Localized consequences of poor air quality and heat manifest at the neighborhood level, demanding responsive municipal and city level policies” says Liang.
Looking at flood adaptation in unincorporated areas
Danielle Zoe Rivera, assistant professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning and director of the Just Environments Lab, is expanding her research into the effects of disasters on marginalized and unincorporated communities. Her Climate Futures project, Redesigning to Adapt to Floods in Unincorporated Areas: Insights for Integrating Nature-Based Solutions and Real Vulnerabilities, focuses on the Pájaro Valley, a predominantly agricultural region spanning southern Santa Cruz and northern Monterey counties.
“Unincorporated areas are particularly vulnerable to flooding because they often lack adequate local hazard mitigation plans,” says Rivera.
Working with Anna Serra-Llobe, lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, and graduate student researchers, Rivera will synthesize past technical reports, historical maps, and other archival data with new research to influence the redesign of the Pájaro River levee system.
Their research into the natural processes of floods and social vulnerability aims to inform the US Army Corps of Engineers current planning and design of levee setbacks along the Pájaro River by suggesting sustainable practices that incorporate nature-based solutions and bring more flexibility in adapting to climate change. “There is now a window of opportunity to influence this important project,” Rivera says.
Developing an air quality digital twin
Last year, a two-year translational grant went to an interdisciplinary team led by Kristina Hill, director of the Institute of Urban & Regional Development, for the Bay Area Air Quality Map project. In year two of the grant, Hill and her 12-person team will develop a public version of their air quality digital twin.
“Berkeley is now one of the first universities to work with ESRI's new Velocity software for making digital twins,” says Hill. This online tool will allow people to see how much of a dangerous air pollutant, PM2.5, they have been exposed to in particular locations throughout the day.
Burning fossil fuels is the primary urban source of PM2.5, along with wildfires and volatile organic compounds. “The World Health Organization and EPA have recently revised their safety standards for PM2.5 to acknowledge its role in everything — from heart disease to Type 2 diabetes to low infant birth weights,” says Hill.
The goal for this second year of the Just Climate Futures translational grant is to identify and support policies that would actually reduce air pollution in areas where school populations are exposed to a higher burden of PM2.5. The team is working directly with communities and partners who represent neighborhoods that are directly affected by high air pollution levels near highways, airports, and refineries.