Harnessing Collective Intelligence to address climate change: The Climate CoLab Presentation to ICT4S February 15, 2013 Robert Laubacher rjl@mit.edu @ClimateCoLab Center for Collective Intelligence MIT Sloan School of Management
Agenda Combining crowds/experts to tackle climate change Overview of Climate CoLab How it works What we ve done so far Current activities Long term hopes 2 2012 Robert Laubacher 2
Combining crowds/experts to address climate change 3 2012 Robert Laubacher 3
A daunting challenge Climate change is a very tough problem Vast scope/complexity Multiple disciplines No one responsible party 4 2012 Robert Laubacher 4
but reason for hope Unprecedented new forms of web-enabled collaboration 5 2012 Robert Laubacher 5
Collective intelligence to address climate change Open source, crowdsourcing-based approach Online community With help from experts Develops proposals on what can be done Anyone can participate 6 2012 Robert Laubacher 6
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How the Climate CoLab works 8 2012 Robert Laubacher 8
Activity structured by online contests Community All users work members, individually or in teams to produce proposals individually or in teams, create proposals Experts Experts select select finalists based on feasibility and finalists uniqueness based on key contest criteria Authors Users work to improve proposals based on expert proposals feedback based on expert feedback Community All users & and experts experts vote to winners select winners, who present to implementers 9 2012 Robert Laubacher 9
Why contests: Plan NYC 2030 example 10 2012 Robert Laubacher 10
Quality of expert vs. crowd ideas 25 ideas expert ideas vs. 244 from ideas (plus 220 crowd ideas discarded inappropriate/redundant) 8 of 10 top ideas from crowd 11 2012 Robert Laubacher 11
Experts first decide on contest focus Advisors from leading universities and research institutes shape contest prompts 12 2012 Robert Laubacher 12
Community members submit proposals Coordinate Core is set of actions to address a key aspect of climate change Also includes: - How actions will be enacted - Whey thy are desirable 13 2012 Robert Laubacher 13
Proposals are made by teams or individuals 14 2012 Robert Laubacher 14
Simulation models show expected outcomes Coordinate Environmental (CO2 concentration, temperature/sea level rise, impact on key ecoystems) Economic (costs of climate policy, costs of damages) 15 2012 Robert Laubacher 15
Community provides input Coordinate 16 2012 Robert Laubacher 16
Judges select finalists Panel of experts review submittals Key selection criteria Novelty Impact Feasibility Presentation 17 2012 Robert Laubacher 17
Winners selected Wisdom of the crowd for Popular choice award and Expert judgment for Judges choice award 18 2012 Robert Laubacher 18
Best ideas presented to potential implementers 19 2012 Robert Laubacher 19
Work to date 20 2012 Robert Laubacher 20
Site traffic Beta test 2009, global contests 2010 and 2011 Over 50,000 unique visitors from 186 countries 4000+ registered members 21 2012 Robert Laubacher 21
2010-11 contests 2010 topic: Climate diplomacy 29 entries, 400+ votes, 3 winners, Presentations to UN Secretary General s Climate Change Support Team and House staffers 2011 topic: Green Economy 64 entries, 1750+ votes, 6 winners Presentations to UNFCCC, Rio+20 organizers, House Natural Resources Committee 22 2012 Robert Laubacher 22
Current activities 23 2012 Robert Laubacher 23
Approach for current contests Break up the problem of climate change... Into a group of more manageable sub-problems Initial framework based on IPCC revised based on review by experts 24 2012 Robert Laubacher 24
Suite of linked contests 25 2012 Robert Laubacher 25
Schedule for current contest Entries close in April Selection of winners in May-June Winners prepare over Summer MIT event September 17-18 Co-organized by MIT Energy Initiative Winners present to potential implementers Policy makers Executives and investors Best overall proposal wins $10,000 grand prize 26 2012 Robert Laubacher 26
What s next? Integrated proposals Integrated proposals in next round National and global level Collaborating with modelers to support integrated proposals 27 2012 Robert Laubacher 27
Our hopes 28 2012 Robert Laubacher 28
Long term vision Climate CoLab will help to develop better solutions than might otherwise have emerged Platform that can solve complex problems in other domains Strategic planning Health care Education 29 2012 Robert Laubacher 29
Join us Get out the word! Help to build platform and models Oversee contests as Advisors or Fellows Interested? http://climatecolab.org @climatecolab rjl@mit.edu 30 2012 Robert Laubacher 30