̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Asaf Tzachor

Death tolls from climate disasters will ‘balloon’ without investment in Africa’s weather stations

fpjl2 — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 09:43:37 +0000

̽��ֱ��climate crisis is increasing the frequency and intensity of floods, droughts and heatwaves, with Africa expected to be among the global regions hit hardest.

Yet the systems and technologies across the continent that monitor and forecast weather events and changes to water levels are “missing, outmoded or malfunctioning” – leaving African populations even more exposed to climate change.

This is according to a team of risk experts and climatologists from the UK and Africa led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who warn that without major and rapid upgrades to 'hydromet infrastructure', the damage and death toll caused by climate-related disasters across Africa will “balloon”.

Writing in the journal Nature, the authors point to latest research showing that – over the last two decades – the average number of deaths caused by a flooding event in Africa is four times higher than the European and North American average per flood.

When investigating this disparity, the team looked at World Meteorological Organization (WMO) data and found the entire continent of Africa has just 6% of the number of radar stations as the US and Europe’s combined total, despite having a comparable population size and a third more land.*

Radar stations detect weather fluctuations and rainfall as well as long-term climate trends, and are vital for the forewarning of impending floods and other meteorological events. ̽��ֱ��African continent has just 37 such stations.

Moreover, WMO data shows that more than 50% of the radar stations that do currently operate across Africa are unable to produce accurate enough data to predict weather patterns for the coming days or even hours.

̽��ֱ��research team call on the international community to boost funding for systems that mitigate risks to life from climate disasters. Currently, just US $0.47 of every $100 spent on global development aid goes towards disaster risk reduction of any kind.

“ ̽��ֱ��vast gaps in Africa’s disaster reduction systems are in danger of rendering other aid investments redundant,” said Dr Asaf Tzachor, co-lead author and research affiliate at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).

“For example, there is little point investing in smallholder farms if floods are simply going to wash away seeds, agrochemicals, and machinery.”

“We need to offer all Africans a chance to reduce their exposure to climate risks by fixing this glaring hydro-meteorological blind spot, before ever more lives are lost to the effects of global heating.”

To illustrate their point, the team compare two recent category 4 storms: Tropical Cyclone Idai hit southeast Africa in 2019, and Hurricane Ida swept the eastern US in 2021. Both had wind speeds of over 200km/hour.

US populations received evacuation alerts before Ida hit land, but the limited ‘hydromet’ capabilities meant Idai caught African nations by surprise. ̽��ֱ��US death toll was under a hundred, while over a thousand Africans lost their lives.

“Multilayered hydromet systems, including weather monitoring, forecasting and early warning, are taken for granted by the Global North, and have been for decades,” said co-lead author Dr Catherine Richards, also from CSER at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

“Meanwhile, the most foundational layer on which the others depend is often missing, outmoded or malfunctioning across Africa – more so than any other global region.”

“Well-funded hydromet systems must become a priority to help at-risk populations mitigate and adapt to weather-related hazards as the effects of climate change take hold,” Richards said.

̽��ֱ��team outline a series of recommendations for plugging Africa’s weather-warning gap.

Firstly, identify the most at-risk areas. “Types of climate hazard vary wildly across the continent – from the cyclones in Madagascar to the protracted droughts of east Africa,” said Tzachor.

“ ̽��ֱ��need for more weather stations across Africa is undeniable, but this must go hand-in-hand with improved satellite monitoring and major training initiatives to increase the number of skilled African meteorologists.”

̽��ֱ��latest computational techniques must be adopted, say the authors, including automated AI approaches that combine weather data with social media activity to predict disaster dynamics.

Early warning systems need to be expanded, and provide clear directions to evacuate in local dialects. “Over 80% of Africans have access to a mobile network, so text messages could be a powerful way to deliver targeted warnings,” said Richards.

Finally, major investment will be vital – and pay dividends. “ ̽��ֱ��World Bank has estimated a $1.5 billion price tag for continent-wide hydromet systems, but it would save African countries from $13 billion in asset losses and $22 billion in livelihood losses annually,” said Tzachor. “A nearly nine-to-one return on investment is surely a no-brainer.”

* In Europe and the US, there are 636 radar stations for a total population of 1.1 billion and a landmass of 20 million km². In Africa, there are just 37 for a comparable population of 1.2 billion and landmass of 30 million km².

Investment in ‘hydromet systems’ using technologies from AI to SMS would provide a nine-to-one ROI in saved lives and assets across African nations.

Well-funded hydromet systems must become a priority to help at-risk populations mitigate and adapt to weather-related hazards as the effects of climate change take hold

Catherine Richards

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Drone shot in front of a spinning weather station, Free State, South Africa

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Risks of using AI to grow our food are substantial and must not be ignored, warn researchers

jg533 — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 16:13:23 +0000

Imagine a field of wheat that extends to the horizon, being grown for flour that will be made into bread to feed cities’ worth of people. Imagine that all authority for tilling, planting, fertilising, monitoring and harvesting this field has been delegated to artificial intelligence: algorithms that control drip-irrigation systems, self-driving tractors and combine harvesters, clever enough to respond to the weather and the exact needs of the crop. Then imagine a hacker messes things up.

A new risk analysis, published today in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, warns that the future use of artificial intelligence in agriculture comes with substantial potential risks for farms, farmers and food security that are poorly understood and under-appreciated.

“ ̽��ֱ��idea of intelligent machines running farms is not science fiction. Large companies are already pioneering the next generation of autonomous ag-bots and decision support systems that will replace humans in the field,” said Dr Asaf Tzachor in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), first author of the paper.

“But so far no-one seems to have asked the question ‘are there any risks associated with a rapid deployment of agricultural AI?’” he added.

Despite the huge promise of AI for improving crop management and agricultural productivity, potential risks must be addressed responsibly and new technologies properly tested in experimental settings to ensure they are safe, and secure against accidental failures, unintended consequences, and cyber-attacks, the authors say.

In their research, the authors have come up with a catalogue of risks that must be considered in the responsible development of AI for agriculture – and ways to address them. In it, they raise the alarm about cyber-attackers potentially causing disruption to commercial farms using AI, by poisoning datasets or by shutting down sprayers, autonomous drones, and robotic harvesters. To guard against this they suggest that ‘white hat hackers’ help companies uncover any security failings during the development phase, so that systems can be safeguarded against real hackers.

In a scenario associated with accidental failure, the authors suggest that an AI system programmed only to deliver the best crop yield in the short term might ignore the environmental consequences of achieving this, leading to overuse of fertilisers and soil erosion in the long term. Over-application of pesticides in pursuit of high yields could poison ecosystems; over-application of nitrogen fertiliser would pollute the soil and surrounding waterways. ̽��ֱ��authors suggest involving applied ecologists in the technology design process to ensure these scenarios are avoided.

Autonomous machines could improve the working conditions of farmers, relieving them of manual labour. But without inclusive technology design, socioeconomic inequalities that are currently entrenched in global agriculture - including gender, class, and ethnic discriminations - will remain.

“Expert AI farming systems that don’t consider the complexities of labour inputs will ignore, and potentially sustain, the exploitation of disadvantaged communities," warned Tzachor.

Various ag-bots and advanced machinery, such as drones and sensors, are already used to gather information on crops and support farmers’ decision-making: detecting diseases or insufficient irrigation, for example. And self-driving combine harvesters can bring in a crop without the need for a human operator. Such automated systems aim to make farming more efficient, saving labour costs, optimising for production, and minimising loss and waste. This leads to increasing revenues for farmers as well as to greater reliance on agricultural AI.

However, small-scale growers who cultivate the majority of farms worldwide and feed large swaths of the so-called Global South are likely to be excluded from AI-related benefits. Marginalisation, poor internet penetration rates, and the digital divide might prevent smallholders from using advanced technologies, widening the gaps between commercial and subsistence farmers.

With an estimated two billion people afflicted by food insecurity, including some 690 million malnourished and 340 million children suffering micronutrient deficiencies, artificial intelligence technologies and precision agriculture promise substantial benefits for food and nutritional security in the face of climate change and a growing global population.

“AI is being hailed as the way to revolutionise agriculture. As we deploy this technology on a large scale, we should closely consider potential risks, and aim to mitigate those early on in the technology design,” said Dr Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Executive Director of CSER and co-author of the new research.

This research was funded by Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.

Reference
Tzachor, A et al: ‘Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Requires Systemic Understanding of Risks and Externalities.’ Nature Machine Intelligence, February 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s42256-022-00440-4

Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the cusp of driving an agricultural revolution, and helping confront the challenge of feeding our growing global population in a sustainable way. But researchers warn that using new AI technologies at scale holds huge risks that are not being considered.

̽��ֱ��idea of intelligent machines running farms is not science fiction.

Asaf Tzachor

sarawuth702 (iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Drone spraying pesticide on wheat field

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Kelp, maggots and mycoprotein among future foods that must be mass-farmed to combat malnutrition

jg533 — Thu, 13 May 2021 15:46:57 +0000

Researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge say our future global food supply cannot be safeguarded by traditional approaches to improving food production. They suggest state-of-the-art, controlled-environment systems, producing novel foods, should be integrated into the food system to reduce vulnerability to environmental changes, pests and diseases. Their report is published today in the journal Nature Food.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that global malnutrition could be eradicated by farming foods including spirulina, chlorella, larvae of insects such as the house fly, mycoprotein (protein derived from fungi), and macro-algae such as sugar kelp. These foods have already attracted interest as nutritious and more sustainable alternatives to traditional plant and animal-based foods.

̽��ֱ��production of these ‘future foods’ could change the way food systems operate. They can be grown at scale in modular, compact systems suitable for urban settings as well as isolated communities such as those on remote islands. In an approach the researchers call ‘polycentric food networks’, food could be produced locally and consistently by communities - reducing reliance on global supply chains.

To reach their conclusions, the researchers analysed around 500 published scientific papers on different future food production systems. ̽��ֱ��most promising, including microalgae photo-bioreactors (devices that use a light source to grow microorganisms) and insect breeding greenhouses, reduce exposure to the hazards of the natural environment by farming in closed, controlled environments.

“Foods like sugar kelp, flies, mealworm and single-celled algae such as chlorella, have the potential to provide healthy, risk-resilient diets that can address malnutrition around the world,” said Dr Asaf Tzachor, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and first author of the report.

He added: “Our current food system is vulnerable. It’s exposed to a litany of risks - floods and frosts, droughts and dry spells, pathogens and parasites - which marginal improvements in productivity won’t change. To future-proof our food supply we need to integrate completely new ways of farming into the current system.”

̽��ֱ��report argues it is dangerous to rely on food produced through conventional farming and supply systems, which are at risk of serious disruption from a variety of factors beyond human control. ̽��ֱ��COVID-19 pandemic highlighted this vulnerability: government-imposed restrictions on travel disrupted food production and supply chains across the world.

In parallel, recent environmental challenges to food systems include wildfires and droughts in North America, outbreaks of African swine fever affecting pigs in Asia and Europe, and swarms of desert locust in East Africa. Climate change is anticipated to worsen these threats.

“Advances in technology open up many possibilities for alternative food supply systems that are more risk-resilient, and can efficiently supply sustainable nutrition to billions of people,” said Catherine Richards, a doctoral researcher at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and Department of Engineering.

She added: “ ̽��ֱ��coronavirus pandemic is just one example of increasing threats to our globalised food system. Diversifying our diet with these future foods will be important in achieving food security for all.”

̽��ֱ��burden of malnutrition is arguably the most persistent humanitarian crisis: two billion people experience food insecurity, including over 690 million people undernourished and 340 million children suffering micro-nutrient deficiencies.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that reservations about eating novel foods like insects could be overcome by using them as ingredients rather than eating them whole: pasta, burgers and energy bars, for example, can all contain ground insect larvae and processed micro- and macro- algae.

This research was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. ̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this press release are those of the researchers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.

Reference
Tzachor, A., et al. ‘Future Foods for Risk Resilient Diets.’ Nature Food, May 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s43016-021-00269-x

Radical changes to the food system are needed to safeguard our food supply and combat malnutrition in the face of climate change, environmental degradation and epidemics, says new report.

Advances in technology open up many possibilities for alternative food supply systems that more risk-resilient, and can efficiently supply sustainable nutrition to billions of people

Catherine Richards

Vaxa, Iceland

Enclosed, modular photobioreactor cultivating Chlorella, a rich source of essential nutrients including amino acids, iron, zinc and B-vitamins.

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