Tag Archives: Weather

The TED Conference On Big Ideas Is Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth IsIs

The big-idea Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) Conference is now backing up its talk on world-changing innovations with big money.

The organizers of the conference known for deep thinking discussions announced Wednesday it has raised $400 million for projects with “the potential to create massive, global change.”

The new initiative known as the Audacious Project will replace the annual $1 million TED prize awards which have been allocated since 2005, with a hefty bump in funding.

TED organizers say the project will fund “collaborative philanthropy for bold ideas” and announced the first awards to organizations working on innovative ideas for health care, justice, agriculture and the environment.

“In some ways, it’s the most ambitious thing TED has ever been involved with,” TED curator Chris Anderson said before taking to the stage to announce the project in Vancouver.

“It’s like trying to recreate what an IPO does, but instead of investing in shares to make money we are investing in dreams to make change.”

Inside TED, they coined the acronym “APO,” for Audacious Project Offering.

Anderson has encouraged TED’s influential community to act on big ideas that win their hearts or minds at annual conferences.

Each year, the project will identify up to five ideas that stand out as “thrillingly bold” with a credible path to execution.

Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of legendary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, took to the TED stage to help unveil the project, saying it could change millions of lives for the better by turning bold ideas for good into action.

“We must dream alongside and amplify those voices,” she told the TED audience.

TED said pledges for the project came from Skoll Foundation, Virgin Unite, Dalio Foundation, The Bridgespan Group and others.

– Oceans to Heavens –

The slate of those being backed by the project consisted of The Environmental Defense Fund; The Bail Project; GirlTrek; Sightsavers, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

US-based Bail Project will manage a nationwide fund to help people post bond to get out of jail while their guilt or innocence is determined.

The Environmental Defense Fund wants to track methane pollution from space with a network of satellites.

“Cutting methane emissions from the global oil and gas industry is the fastest thing we can do right now to put the brakes on climate change,” said EDF president Fred Krupp.

The Woods Hole institution plans to uncover the secrets of a mysterious layer of ocean some 200 to 1,000 meters (600 to 3,000 feet) deep considered integral to the marine food ecosystem and the earth’s climate.

GirlTrek in the US will train activists to improve the health of black women by getting them walking more.

Sightsavers aims to eliminate trachoma, a treatable disease that can blind people and remains a bane in low-income communities.

“We are in a moment where humans more than ever what to change the future,” Anderson said.

“The money is out there; people want to spend it on good ideas.”

– Daring to dream –

Anyone in the world is free to pitch their dreams online at an audaciousproject.org website with a handful picked annually, according to TED.

“We are looking for projects that are capable of impacting at least millions of lives in some way, or at a planetary scale,” Anderson said.

“Almost the single biggest hope is that this process unlocks dreams that entrepreneurs never dared put forward before.”

Since starting as an intimate gathering on the California coast 34 years ago, TED has grown into a global media platform with a stated devotion to “ideas worth spreading.”

TED has a massive following for its trademark presentations in which speakers strive to give “the talk of their lives” in 18 minutes.

The theme of the annual TED conference this week in Vancouver is “Age of Amazement,” but with a keen eye on unintended consequences.

NASA Learns to Predict Mudslide Threats In Real-Time

For the first time, scientists can look at landslide threats anywhere around the world in near real-time, thanks to satellite data and a new model developed by NASA.

The model, developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland estimates potential landslide activity triggered by rainfall. Rainfall is the most widespread trigger of landslides around the world. If conditions beneath Earth’s surface are already unstable, heavy rains act as the last straw that causes mud, rocks or debris – or all combined – to move rapidly down mountains and hillsides.

global-landslide-hazard-assessment-model-for-situational-awareness-lhasa-lg

The model is designed to provide a more indepth understanding of where and when landslide hazards are present and improve estimates of long-term patterns. A global analysis of landslides over the past 15 years using the new open source Landslide Hazard Assessment for Situational Awareness model was published in a study released online on March 22 in the journal Earth’s Future.

“Landslides can cause widespread destruction and fatalities, but we really don’t have a complete sense of where and when landslides may be happening to inform disaster response and mitigation,” said Dalia Kirschbaum, a landslide expert at Goddard and co-author of the study. “This model helps pinpoint the time, location and severity of potential landslide hazards in near real-time all over the globe. Nothing has been done like this before.”

The model estimates potential landslide activity by first identifying areas with heavy, persistent and recent precipitation. Rainfall estimates are provided by a multi-satellite product developed by NASA using the NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, which provides precipitation estimates around the world every 30 minutes. The model considers when GPM data exceeds a critical rainfall threshold looking back at the last seven days.

In places where precipitation is unusually high, the model then uses a susceptibility map to determine if the area is prone to landslides. This global susceptibility map is developed using five features that play an important role in landslide activity: if roads have been built nearby, if trees have been removed or burned, if a major tectonic fault is nearby, if the local bedrock is weak and if the hillsides are steep.

If the susceptibility map shows the area with heavy rainfall is vulnerable, the model produces a “nowcast” identifying the area as having a high or moderate likelihood of landslide activity. The model produces new nowcasts every 30 minutes.

The study shows long-term trends when the model’s output was compared to landslide databases dating back to 2007. The team’s analysis showed a global “landslide season” with a peak in the number of landslides in July and August, most likely associated with the Asian monsoon and tropical cyclone seasons in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

“The model has been able to help us understand immediate potential landslide hazards in a matter of minutes,” said Thomas Stanley, landslide expert with the Universities Space Research Association at Goddard and co-author of the study.

“It also can be used to retroactively look at how potential landslide activity varies on the global scale seasonally, annually or even on decadal scales in a way that hasn’t been possible before.”