PopTech

On International Women's Day, I'm sending a note of appreciation for the 1000s of women who have shaped my life and generated so much good in the PopTech community I've had the honor of sustaining for nearly two decades. This would be a very long post if I tried to mention everyone, and worse yet, I would likely miss a few mentions. That said, you know who you are. I extend my gratitude to you every day! ??

I've recently embarked on an exciting new chapter as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Dalberg Catalyst. Through this residency, I am orchestrating “Adaptive Cities”, a bold collaborative effort started by three former Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center residents and developed through last year’s 17 Rooms process with Rockefeller Foundation and Brookings. The ambition of Adaptive Cities is to ignite a global effort to harness innovation in data and AI for urban adaptation to climate change. Our initial focus is at the nexus of extreme heat and its consequences for health and social justice.??This new role has challenged me to think deeply about how to equip cities to be more resilient, sustainable and inclusive—in a word,?thrivable—and empowered to contribute widely to positive outcomes across the SDGs.?It has also left me incredibly excited about the potential to help set in motion a process that could fundamentally reshape the relationship between cities, their inhabitants, and the natural world. Last month, with seed funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, our Adaptive Cities journey kicked off in Santiago, Chile, where we will be working with the Governor, the Chief Heat Officer—a role supported through partnership with the Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center—and local communities.??We’re heading back in March for a rapid-fire series of community-focused workshops to co-design solutions around priorities such as early warning, urban greening, and water management. At the heart of Adaptive Cities is digital twin technology. A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical system, constructed out of real-time data, that may be used to simulate the behavior of the system under specific conditions. Digital twins first appeared in manufacturing, but it’s now also become possible to twin an entire city.??At the??UN, my team created a twin of Cox’s Bazar refugee camp to simulate responses to COVID19. Today, a growing number of cities around the world are twinning themselves.??Yet challenges abound.??In many cases, the models cover only physical aspects of the city and its environs, are dependent on proprietary software, and are used only by municipal officials. The collective intent around Adaptive Cities is to tap the potential of citizen science, digital data, and emerging technologies to lay the groundwork for modeling social, economic and environmental dynamics, democratize digital twins as immersive, collaborative digital public infrastructure, and empower communities to reimagine and reshape the places they live.???More on this shortly. As we embark on this journey, we would be grateful for your guidance on: 1.????Whom we should partner with to get this effort off the ground 2.????What tools, research, or examples we should know about 3.????How we should be thinking about risks related to privacy, bias, and misuse #AdaptiveCities?#DigitalTwins?#UrbanInnovation?#ClimateAdaptation #AI #PublicHealth?#SDGs?#SmartCities #ExtremeHeat

?? Spaceship Earth used to have 6 trillion trees but half have since fallen to deforestation. Thankfully, there’s a lot of momentum to reforest the planet at scale. ?? My new colleague Marta Bernardino is taking a neat new approach with her Trovador, a hexapod-tree-planting robot! The ultimate goal is for Trovador to carry 300 baby trees per load and plant them within an hour. ??♀? Marta is an inspiring, 18-year old roboticist and entrepreneur from Portugal. What I like about her approach is that it recognizes our world is not flat! Mountains, rough terrains and cliffs make up around 30% of Earth’s surface. She wants to make sure that global reforestation efforts don’t ignore a third of the planet just because these areas are less accessible. ?? I’m excited that Marta has joined the “Women in Climate Robotics” initiative at the Climate Robotics Network where she’s already connected with a prospective mentor. I’m also excited to lend my support as she moves forward with her startup. So please get in touch with her if you want to contribute your engineering expertise and/or business acumen. ?? We’re actively looking for grant opportunities to fund the next phase of her R&D. We’re also keen to find strategic partners who want to innovate with Marta, and first-mover clients who want to jointly field-test her climate robot. Thanks a lot for spreading the word! ?? ?? Marta’s website: https://lnkd.in/eifJmuXt ?? Marta’s talk: https://lnkd.in/eVr-iqdY #Climate #Robotics #Reforestation #Startups