Julia Kumari Drapkin On Crowdsourcing Climate Data

There’s one thing all adaptation professionals agree on — we need more climate data. And better climate data. And climate data people can trust.

But needing is one thing. Getting is another.

Julia Kumari Drapkin is pioneering a new way of collecting and analyzing climate risk data with her company ISeeChange. The startup gathers crowdsourced images and data from residents directly impacted by floods, storms, heat waves and the like, and transforms the pixels and bits into actionable information with its AI-powered software.

In this episode, she explains how this fusion of human- and AI-powered data yields insights that can inform the development of climate-resilient infrastructure and help finetune local climate risk responses.

Julia also opines on the importance of community engagement when it comes to climate-proofing neighborhoods, and how to build trust in climate risk communications.

Listen below, download from the Podcasts page on Climate Proof, or tune in via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

We talk about:

👉 How Julia grew ISeeChange out of a first-of-its-kind media project on climate impacts

👉 How AI is enabling rich insights to be mined from disparate data sources

👉 Why human-sourced data still has an edge on geospatial and remote sensor data

👉 The “compound stresses” testing city infrastructure, and how climate change is adding to these

👉 How good data, community engagement, and trust are essential to local climate risk response efforts

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Thanks for listening!

Louie Woodall
Editor