Adapting to climate change in Europe
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #31 - Adapting to climate change in Europe
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:16:01
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:16:03 - 00:00:47:15
Abigail Acton
Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery, with me, Abigail Acton. September 2023 was roughly 1.75 degrees warmer compared to the pre-industrial period. It was also 0.93 degrees C warmer than the 1991 2020 baseline, which is used as a practical tool for climate sensitive sectors like agriculture. According to the World Meteorological Organization, climate change is here. So what are we doing to meet the challenges in Europe ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP23?
00:00:47:19 - 00:01:10:12
Abigail Acton
We will be hearing from four cutting edge researchers who are working to get us ready to deal with the coming changes to our environment. Tracking mosquitoes carry diseases more often associated with the global South. Protecting our woodlands and forests from the impact of destructive beetles and other factors. Examining the impact of extreme storms on our architecture and working out how to keep people safe from waves that are higher than ever.
00:01:10:13 - 00:01:41:13
Abigail Acton
Overtopping coastal defenses that were designed in another era. This episode is on adapting to climate change in Europe. Here to talk us through these ideas are our guests whose work has been funded by the European Union. João Encarnação is the CEO of Irideon. He has an MSc in biochemical engineering and a Ph.D. in sensors. He is particularly interested in the development of IoT (Internet of Things), sensors for insects with impact on public health, food safety and biodiversity.
00:01:41:13 - 00:01:42:05
Abigail Acton
Welcome, Joao.
00:01:42:11 - 00:01:43:21
João Encarnação
Hi, Abigail. Pleasure to be here.
00:01:43:23 - 00:02:01:07
Abigail Acton
Pleasure to have you. Guillaume Marie is an independent researcher, mainly working in ecological modeling with a strong focus on natural disturbance in interaction with human activities. He is an active developer of ORCHIDEE, the French land surface model used by the UN to predict climate change. Welcome, Guillaume.
00:02:01:09 - 00:02:02:11
Guillaume Marie
Thank you very much.
00:02:02:13 - 00:02:14:19
Abigail Acton
Lovely to have you. Marie Pia Repetto is Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Genoa in Italy. Her main interest is in wind engineering, analyzing the impact of wind on urban and natural environments. Welcome, Marie.
00:02:14:21 - 00:02:17:16
Marie Pia Repetto
Hello, everybody. Thank you for inviting me.
00:02:17:18 - 00:02:37:03
Abigail Acton
You're welcome. Corrado Altomare is a postdoc researcher at the Maritime Engineering Laboratory of UPC in Barcelona and is actively involved in mounting Europe's response to the problem of wave overtopping. Corrado is particularly interested in studying the effect of sea waves on coastal structures and wave energy devices. Hi, Corrado.
00:02:37:05 - 00:02:40:21
Corrado Altomare
Hi. Hi, everybody. Very happy to be here.
00:02:40:23 - 00:03:03:19
Abigail Acton
And we're happy to have you. Joao, the VECKRACK project wanted to find a new way of obtaining high quality field information about the presence of mosquitoes that could be vectors of West Nile fever in Europe. Can you tell us what the impact of a warming planet is having on disease carrying mosquitoes, please? West Nile fever isn't something normally that one would associate with the European Union.
00:03:03:21 - 00:03:07:20
Abigail Acton
How is that affecting Europe now and how might it affect it in the future?
00:03:08:01 - 00:03:36:00
João Encarnação
Well, actually, the West Nile virus is becoming increasingly common in the European Union. Unfortunately, it's not the virus that is transmitted by the autochthonous mosquito in Europe. The whole experience and the issue is that besides the West Nile virus, there's a danger that Europe will starting pulling arboviruses that usually occur on the southern hemisphere of the planet, like dengue fever, the Zika virus.
00:03:36:02 - 00:04:05:13
João Encarnação
And those are carried by invasive mosquitoes like the albopictus mosquitoes, the famous tiger mosquito that came from Asia. And due to the increase of the temperature, the climate is becoming more and more suitable for those mosquitoes that come from the south hemisphere. So it's a no brainer. If the average temperature increases, we are creating the perfect conditions for mosquitoes to colonize the territory.
00:04:05:19 - 00:04:07:23
João Encarnação
And it's what is happening all over Europe.
00:04:08:02 - 00:04:20:11
Abigail Acton
Okay, you say it's happening already. I mean, it's not something that, again, as I said before, it's not something that one necessarily associates with Europe. So are there cases of people catching these diseases from mosquitoes natively in Europe right now?
00:04:20:11 - 00:04:45:16
João Encarnação
I can tell you a couple of. Some of the latest cases. We have reports of tourists getting dengue in Ibiza. There were also cases of dengue in France, if I'm not mistaken. And you have cases of malaria in Greece. The issue is that this is the kind of information that is available publicly if you consult the Web page of the European Center for Disease Control.
00:04:45:18 - 00:05:04:00
João Encarnação
But it's something that the general public doesn't do, of course. So you may say that this is the kind of information that circulates among people that handle this kind of problem, public health technicians or people like me interested in developing technology to help solve this problem.
00:05:04:02 - 00:05:11:16
Abigail Acton
Right. So that makes your work and your project very, very timely. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that VECTRACK has developed to counter this threat?
00:05:11:22 - 00:05:39:01
João Encarnação
The biggest challenge that you have when you have infectors that are capable of carrying diseases is that to stop the transmission, which is paramount, to stop the outbreak, you have to monitor and control the vector. Let's look at the coronavirus. Humans are the vector. How did the World Health Organization and all the public health agencies in the world decided to stop the vector everybody locked down at their homes?
00:05:39:03 - 00:06:02:23
João Encarnação
You cannot do that with a mosquito. The mosquito roams freely out there, meaning that people are exposed to that vector. So that's quite a high risk situation because if you have an outbreak of a disease carried by a mosquito, as it happens normally in southern hemisphere countries like for instance, I don't know the capitals, Brazil, Brasilia, you get to go to work, have a coffee and you can be bitten and get dengue.
00:06:03:00 - 00:06:28:13
João Encarnação
Here in Europe that's unthinkable. However, people there, they still live there and try to do their normal life here. The issue is that in the last 100 years, the technology to monitor mosquitoes hasn't changed a lot. So basically what entomologists do is that they deploy traps that capture mosquitoes. And with that, they have an idea of the abundance and the type of mosquitoes that are being captured.
00:06:28:15 - 00:07:14:13
João Encarnação
Everything is done manually, everything. So the idea that we have was what if traps could be smart enough to acquire the information automatically and send it to a computer? That way, entomologists would acquire information automatically and basically in real time, and that would increase not only their type of response, but also save a lot of money in field work and since the technologies end up saving time and acquiring data as fast as possible, that means that with that we can improve the a lot the way public health agency of vector control technicians can fight the vector to prevent the outbreak of the disease with current state of the art.
00:07:14:18 - 00:07:58:06
João Encarnação
And we actually timed this if you have an increase of a certain vector, let's say six people that can transmit the West Nile virus for a standard public health agency with a standard lab where everything is collected manually and then the samples are taken to lab and they're put there and they put the samples in a freezer, and then they have to find the time to inspect or something can tell you that if today we have an explosion of species anywhere in Barcelona or in Lisbon or in Berlin or in Paris, whatever, and we'll have agency in charge of monitoring those vectors, probably know that it was happening 15 days later.
00:07:58:12 - 00:08:05:03
João Encarnação
Wow. With our technology, we know when it's happening. While it's happening in real time. In real time.
00:08:06:01 - 00:08:34:20
Abigail Acton
This is fantastic information because we have 15 days with the population increasing and exposure and all the rest of it. So this is a really remarkable difference in timeframe. So now I need you to tell me a little bit more about actually what you've developed. So I know that it's optical thermo sensors and so on, but please tell us more because frankly, the idea of a sensor that can identify not just the species but also the gender, you're only interested in the females, that's just blows my mind.
00:08:34:20 - 00:08:38:10
Abigail Acton
So please tell me a little bit more about these sensors and how does it all come together.
00:08:38:13 - 00:09:08:08
João Encarnação
The sensor is what we call an extinction sensor. Basically what we measure is how much light is blocked by a mosquito. When the mosquito crosses a field of near infrared light with the sensor, we analyze not only the morphology of the insect, but we also track the kinetics, how the insect moves. That generates a spectrum that is like a fingerprint that has all the information about things.
00:09:08:10 - 00:09:30:03
João Encarnação
And then using machine learning techniques, we teach a model to interpret that data. And every time the model sees a specific mosquito, he will tell, I've seen this one before. This is that. The sensor can say, look, you have a fair amount of females of this species that is dangerous that were captured at trap number 59.
00:09:30:05 - 00:09:55:11
João Encarnação
You go there and take a sample immediately. And when you get the information that day, we start having this equation of disease that can also be included in the models. So then besides having models that tell you how mosquitoes are spreading, you can include information about viruses, and then you start having models that tell you what is the risk of viral circulation in the mosquito population and how that can impact on human population.
00:09:55:12 - 00:09:56:09
Abigail Acton
Now, that's fantastic.
00:09:56:10 - 00:10:02:01
João Encarnação
This has never been done before and this is actually ongoing work that is happening after the conclusion of VECTRACK.
00:10:02:03 - 00:10:09:24
Abigail Acton
I know that you run some pilot studies involving public health authorities to stress test and to prove the technology. And in fact, you had excellent results, didn't you?
00:10:10:03 - 00:10:41:09
João Encarnação
Yes, indeed. We've looked at trials with public health entities in Spain, in Portugal, also in Brazil. And we have ongoing pilots happening in other countries. We've managed to prove that our technology can automatically differentiate these mosquitoes from other insects and can tell the species and the sex with average accuracy that are above 85% thanks to VECTRACK, we have recently found out two very interesting things.
00:10:41:11 - 00:11:03:04
João Encarnação
We have recently found that we can determine the age of the mosquitoes and tell if they are young mosquitoes. Less than five days or more than five days, meaning that if there are females with less than five days, they are not a high risk female to transmit diseases. But after five days, those females start getting more and more competent for infecting humans.
00:11:03:06 - 00:11:14:10
João Encarnação
And they have to also tell you that we've doubled the beat with Can the sensor also tell the difference between females infected with Zika virus or not? And that is also something that will be published.
00:11:14:10 - 00:11:16:06
Abigail Acton
So that's amazing.
00:11:16:07 - 00:11:22:10
João Encarnação
I was a bit skeptical, but the results were quite intriguing. Let's leave it at that.
00:11:22:12 - 00:11:34:20
Abigail Acton
okay. That's a teaser, isn't it? Well, that would be amazing. That would just be, given the spread of Zika, that would just be amazing. This is excellent work you're doing, Joao. Does anyone have any questions For Joao, Yes, Guillaume.
00:11:34:22 - 00:11:46:12
Guillaume Marie
Joao, the sensory you develop, do you think they can be adapted to bark beetles, flying insect or in general in other flying insects?
00:11:46:14 - 00:12:02:06
João Encarnação
If it's a flying insect, our tech will detected it. The secret is we developed the sensor, but then we have to have a trapping system that is designed for the particular species because trapping insects is not the trivial thing. Incredibly, if it flies.
00:12:02:07 - 00:12:03:08
Abigail Acton
It can be identified.
00:12:03:08 - 00:12:07:17
João Encarnação
We can develop a model to identify it automatically.
00:12:07:20 - 00:12:10:13
Abigail Acton
That would be particularly useful for the flies and leishmania.
00:12:10:17 - 00:12:25:16
João Encarnação
That's one of the things that people are very interested in. We know that the mosquito traps those kind of flies that transmit leishmania also fall in our trap and we can see them in our data. That's, that's basically. Abigail Those are episodes for the next season.
00:12:25:18 - 00:12:30:16
Abigail Acton
Yes. Yeah. Well, I could just talk with you all day. But listen, thank you very, very much for your time.
00:12:30:16 - 00:12:31:10
João Encarnação
Thank you, Abigail.
00:12:31:11 - 00:12:50:02
Abigail Acton
You're very welcome. Guillaume I'm going to turn to you now. The CLIMPRO project asks whether a new generation of forest management is needed in the face of coming challenges. And one of these is the hugely destructive pest known as the bark beetle. So, Guillaume you're also interested in how climate change will affect insect populations.
00:12:50:04 - 00:13:18:09
Guillaume Marie
Thank you. Two things. First, it's like bark beetles are not a natural situation. They are not really destructive. They are part of the dynamics of the forest. So it's not something we can intend to bark beetles. It's really something we can. The cause is really the human. And for two things. The first thing is that bark beetles they like heat.
00:13:18:11 - 00:14:09:09
Guillaume Marie
And because of our impact on the temperature bark beetles can increase the number of generation and they can they can do in one year. The second point, it's more about the fact that forestry they really plant like spruce nowhere spruce in region where it's not a it was not naturally occur especially in the lowland. So normally spruce is for a high mountain and very north Europe but because of that, because of these two things, we put a fertile ground for the bark beetles because now they can really proliferate and attack a lot of forest in Europe.
00:14:09:15 - 00:14:21:17
Abigail Acton
So basically we're providing well not providing, we're creating the higher temperature that favors proliferation, as you say. And then we're also changing the habitat because we're bringing these trees into places that are not indigenous for them.
00:14:21:19 - 00:14:22:16
Guillaume Marie
Yes, exactly.
00:14:22:20 - 00:14:23:14
Abigail Acton
Right. Okay.
00:14:23:16 - 00:14:50:16
Guillaume Marie
Just if you some number, it's like if you have, let's say, one, tree that it’s attacked by, let's say 500 beetle bark beetles, they will kill it. But these 500 bark beetles, they will produce 20,000 bark beetles. And after that, the spread can go very fast, especially if instead of one generation per year, you produce three generations like it occured now in Europe.
00:14:50:20 - 00:14:51:22
Abigail Acton
And that's happening already.
00:14:51:22 - 00:15:16:20
Guillaume Marie
Yeah, already It's already there in terms of ecology, the bark beetle is not a huge threat because yes, some trees will die, but you will have dynamic of regeneration, aeration and regrowth and you will have a new forest, etc.. The problem is economic because the wood and especially the spruce wood, it's a very valuable wood market.
00:15:16:22 - 00:15:39:21
Guillaume Marie
And when this bark beetle outbreak happen, you suddenly have a lot of wood available on the market because they have to cut it, they have to sell it, and also because you have to store and stock it and all these things, they cost a lot for the manager. And here we are talking about an economic disaster, not a natural disaster.
00:15:39:21 - 00:15:44:18
Guillaume Marie
It's something very different. And I want to highlight that.
00:15:44:22 - 00:15:52:22
Abigail Acton
Yeah, no, indeed. I mean, it's an important difference. Absolutely. And so what did your project try to do to counter this? What was CLIMPRO's approach?
00:15:52:24 - 00:16:25:16
Guillaume Marie
So CLIMPRO it's really I would say modeling project because a what we trying to do it's include these kind of disturbances when we account for carbon balance at large scale. So we are using a model, a land surface model called ORCHIDEE. So it's a model that simulate the surface of the planet. So it's really meant to be large scale and this kind of model, they are coupled with what we call general circulation models.
00:16:25:19 - 00:16:52:15
Guillaume Marie
And with that we can predict what would be the future climate. So it's really a big piece of this kind of prediction. We need to know if like disturbances, drastic disturbances, they have an impact on this kind of release because before that, I would say the classic way of including mortality, tree mortality is by taking a fixed mortality rate, let's say 1% per year.
00:16:52:21 - 00:17:22:10
Guillaume Marie
So every year we remove 1%. As you can understand, it's very smooth. So there is no abrupt event. And what we want to see is when we remove this, this background, this 1%, and replace it by abrupt event of 20-30% mortality. What would happen in the function of this ecosystem and if this drastic event will affect the release of CO2 in the atmosphere.
00:17:22:12 - 00:17:27:04
Abigail Acton
And when you run these simulations, what did you find and how do you hope this information can be used?
00:17:27:09 - 00:17:51:04
Guillaume Marie
When we run the simulation, we start thinking, okay, we will see some effect on everything, but the first things we see, it's like bark beetle they thin the forest and they act as a manager. And again, it was really interesting to see that. So without any referring to economy, you just see, like bark beetles acting as manager.
00:17:51:06 - 00:18:10:08
Guillaume Marie
But when we look at the global net carbon emission over large period of time, we see that not including disturbances can really underestimate the net flux of CO2 into the atmosphere. So we are really convinced right now that we need to include it here.
00:18:10:11 - 00:18:22:23
Abigail Acton
Yeah, sure, sure. So what you're saying is that if you don't actually track what's happening to the forests accurately with regards to the possibility of a large scale sudden impact, you can't assess how much carbon dioxide is going to be trapped by the forests.
00:18:23:00 - 00:18:23:15
Guillaume Marie
Yeah.
00:18:23:17 - 00:18:26:08
Abigail Acton
You're saying released by the forests. That's confusing me slightly.
00:18:26:09 - 00:18:35:08
Guillaume Marie
Not really. Sorry, because we trapped. But what we are interesting it it's the net release so yes. What they keep minus what they release.
00:18:35:11 - 00:18:54:15
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's fascinating. Thank you very much indeed. That's that's excellent. I'm just going to turn now actually to Marie. THUNDERR set out to create a model for thunderstorm outflows and the impact that they have on the urban environment. I've never really thought about the impact of wind on buildings. Marie, can you explain why we should be bearing it in mind?
00:18:54:15 - 00:18:55:07
Abigail Acton
Actually.
00:18:55:09 - 00:19:28:22
Marie Pia Repetto
Yes. Wind is one of the most dangerous and costly natural hazards when loading is always considered as a main action in the design of buildings. But what is new now is the impact of thunderstorm winds which is particularly intense and destructive. Moreover, many studies indicate that there are intense. The intensity and the frequency of this kind of events may grow due to the climate change.
00:19:28:22 - 00:20:05:00
Marie Pia Repetto
The thunderstorms are meteorological phenomena that are generated in a small area and evolve over in a few minutes. And during those events, a bulk of cold air falls down, impinging the ground and the spreading radially. And this is called downbursts because it's something similar to an explosion of air and it generates a large vortex with a strong velocity and a lot of the energy also.
00:20:05:02 - 00:20:13:24
Marie Pia Repetto
So if this downburst hits a building, it can cause serious damages and also dangerous situation.
00:20:14:01 - 00:20:17:20
Abigail Acton
So, Maria, what have people been doing up until now?
00:20:17:22 - 00:20:42:02
Marie Pia Repetto
Thunderstorms are present from ever and ever. But now they are increasing in intensity and in frequency. And we are seeing many, many more damages in buildings, typically low rise buildings or flexible buildings, poles and also bridges.
00:20:42:04 - 00:20:51:01
Abigail Acton
So what were you actually doing with your project? You wanted, I think, to improve the ability to plan for architects, no?
00:20:51:03 - 00:21:09:21
Marie Pia Repetto
The aim of our project is to bring together experts from different sectors, like a meteorology like engineering or atmospheric physics, to study together the problem and to produce model that can be used from architects and engineers.
00:21:09:21 - 00:21:14:13
Abigail Acton
And how did you go about producing these models? What sort of tools and techniques did you use?
00:21:14:17 - 00:21:50:02
Marie Pia Repetto
So, you know, air is something invisible and why low waves and vortexes can be seen and observed in water and sea the same phenomena can happen in the air but cannot be seen. So our first aim was to improve the capability to detect the downbursts, then the thunderstorm development. So we managed to use a variety of sensors to detect that the wind, the strength, the direction and to catch out the downbursts move.
00:21:50:04 - 00:22:04:02
Marie Pia Repetto
We installed a very sophisticated glider which is able to measure the way the outflow of the thunderstorm develops and change it during the storms itself.
00:22:04:08 - 00:22:13:21
Abigail Acton
I'm just going to stop you for a second. So LIDAR is a mechanism by which you can look at the surface of a certain structure and see the impact of what's happening on the surface. Is that correct?
00:22:14:01 - 00:22:29:20
Marie Pia Repetto
Yes. This is one of the possible use of a Lidar in the air. We use it to measure the movement of the particles so we can reproduce in some way the wind flow.
00:22:29:23 - 00:22:43:04
Abigail Acton
So basically you're almost making it visible. You know, you were just saying that you could see it in water. Yeah. So it's a way of making air and the vortexes and the downbursts visible. So you can actually see what's happening with the thunderstorm. Is that right? Yes, right.
00:22:43:10 - 00:23:05:07
Marie Pia Repetto
This is exactly the idea to see the phenomena, to see the vortex, and to see how they move inside of the air. The second part was to reproduce this kind of phenomenon by means of experiment in this very special wind tunnel in Canada, and also to reproduce it numerically.
00:23:05:09 - 00:23:11:00
Abigail Acton
This actually sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, I think this is really fun.
00:23:11:19 - 00:23:56:19
Marie Pia Repetto
Yes. And also in this case, we tried to visualize the wind flow in the wind tunnel. And we have a beautiful picture of this primary vortex is called that that the heat the laboratory people also. Okay and also finally we detected the impact on structure and we tried to develop a model. And in this case we were inspired by a method adopted there in the earthquake or blast the fact because in some way revolution of the thunderstorm action is something similar, very rapid and very energetic about short in time.
00:23:57:16 - 00:24:27:00
Abigail Acton
Thank you very much. I think that's absolutely fascinating. Corrado, your project considered the fact that low lying coastal areas are very vulnerable to rising sea levels, as we appreciate, and the towering waves produced by storms as they get perhaps potentially more aggressive, if one can use that word dark. We've wanted to develop models again, models to reflect the situation as it is now, and that will evolve to help people estimate the vulnerability of coastal zones to climate change.
00:24:27:02 - 00:24:30:16
Abigail Acton
CORRADO What inspired you to get involved with this area of research?
00:24:30:18 - 00:25:08:14
Corrado Altomare
Well, Abigail you know, I'm from a coastal town from the Adriatic Sea, so while I live along the sea and I was always fascinated by all these kinds of processes, I'm still the one that is running to the coast or the harbor to, to see when there is a storm and what happens there. So, yeah, these phenomena that are called like overtopping as well, when the water passes over a structure and can generate flooding and can generate a lot of problems and damages and also can represent a risk scenarios for some people, for pedestrians or people living there.
00:25:08:16 - 00:25:38:11
Corrado Altomare
So yeah, just imagine that 40% of the population in the world live along the coastline now making a number in Europe, this means 80 million people. And the trend is increasing. And beside that we have climate change, sea level rise, as Maria said. Also more storms, more unpredictable, sometimes storms. So all this combination makes that we have to look more in deep to what is this kind of worldwide topic that is very common but at the same time very diverse.
00:25:38:11 - 00:25:40:06
Corrado Altomare
A very different from side to side.
00:25:40:08 - 00:25:56:07
Abigail Acton
Yeah, that's fascinating, isn't it? Because I mean, it sounds relatively simple. Wave overtopping, very, very large wave out of control, coming into land and overtopping something. But of course, it must be entirely context dependent. I mean, it's not only the context of the particular storm and the particular wind direction, but also the infrastructure and so on and so on.
00:25:56:07 - 00:26:09:07
Abigail Acton
So must be difficult to model something that has so many different types of criteria. Could you tell me a little bit more about that process? What did DURCWAVE want to do? You've explained why a little bit, but perhaps you could tell me how. A little bit.
00:26:09:09 - 00:26:34:20
Corrado Altomare
Yeah, well, look, we wanted to contribute, let's say, to announce the design of coastal defensive, but especially as you mentioned in the introduction, both coastal defenses in urbanized coastal areas. So to do that, to do that walkways and then to combine different tools. So for one side we have again modeling experimental modeling lab tests in a wave flow.
00:26:34:22 - 00:26:54:20
Corrado Altomare
Usually I say if I have to explain to my daughter what I do for work, I say I play doing waves. And it's true. We do waves in a flow and we we measure certain results and then we do numerically. So we do we do some sort of that in particular in DURCWAVE was a particle based solver.
00:26:54:20 - 00:26:58:23
Abigail Acton
And what does that mean? Sorry Corrado I'm stepping in here. What do you mean, particle based solver? What is it?
00:26:59:07 - 00:27:32:01
Corrado Altomare
We have two kinds of lets say approaches: one is a more traditional one that where you discretize an element that can be your flow, your water to say in a set of points. And then you calculate what is happening to like like you are measuring one point in space what is happening, just to explain simply. And then you have this kind of the Lagrangian approach is where actually your water is is made with sort of a set of particles that are free to move is very easy from an intuitive point of view, is very easy to understand this.
00:27:32:01 - 00:27:53:13
Corrado Altomare
If you look at some video or some animation or simulation of it. So in that sense, a more of this kind of method and model I have used a particular one in particular model that is called dualistic which is being used to reproduce wave overtopping for specific coastal layouts.
00:27:53:15 - 00:28:04:16
Abigail Acton
Okay I get it. So basically using just like a point concept is is a little bit too reductive and a little bit too simplistic. And what you actually want to do is simulate the movement of a body of water.
00:28:04:18 - 00:28:05:06
Corrado Altomare
Correct.
00:28:05:12 - 00:28:15:09
Abigail Acton
And that body of water is made up of a multiplicity of particles. And so you look at the whole thing and how it moves together rather than just, for example, plotting peaks and troughs. And so on.
00:28:15:11 - 00:28:27:18
Corrado Altomare
And the point of having these kind of points of particle that are moving, it means that it cannot be in a currently easy to model very busy violent phenomena.
00:28:27:21 - 00:28:34:12
Abigail Acton
Is this the whole time that a storm in the project DURCWAVE that the whole time that a storm was simulated from start to finish.
00:28:34:14 - 00:28:55:20
Corrado Altomare
In a particle maze method, as I mentioned before? Yes. Yes. Actually, what we did was to simulate an old storm. Or when I see an old storm, it means like a storm lasting 1000 waves 3 hours in reality, something like that. So this was the first The first time. Yes.
00:28:55:20 - 00:29:01:03
Abigail Acton
And what sort of things are your simulations showing us? What are you learning? What do we need to know?
00:29:01:05 - 00:29:31:16
Corrado Altomare
Yeah, all these all we have done experimentally and numerically was meant to gain further insights into what we call overtopping flow properties. That, in a nutshell, means the velocity of these flows and let's say the quantity of water, or if you like, the high of these flow where is is flooded. Why that? Because the combination of velocity and slow, high or slow that is like is very important for the safety of the people.
00:29:31:16 - 00:29:49:00
Corrado Altomare
So people stability you can feel a flow where it's where it is, where you are, your feet into it, whether it is faster, whether it is bigger etc so I can also cause casualties, but also can be related to the security of infrastructure and the amenities along the coastline.
00:29:49:00 - 00:29:58:09
Abigail Acton
Are you starting to see that architects and planners are taking into consideration the kind of models that you're producing? Or is there interest in in that kind of sector?
00:29:58:15 - 00:30:29:11
Corrado Altomare
Well, I'm happy to say yes. You know, when I was carrying out the project, just a big a big storm hit the southern coast of France and the Mediterranean coast of Spain. We have several damages and some local authorities started to implement the outcomes but also the methods of DURCWAVE project in order both to study what happened actually during this storm, it was called Gloria, or like a piece of structure just north of Barcelona here in Spain, where I am.
00:30:29:17 - 00:30:39:09
Corrado Altomare
So I have seen that that little by little, this kind of methods and outcomes are becoming more and more popular and used by local authorities.
00:30:39:09 - 00:31:01:00
Abigail Acton
Yeah, planners may be okay. Super. Thank you very much, Corrado. And I must just mention that I love your surname in connection to your work because it means high seas. Yeah. How appropriate is that? How appropriate is that? Well, thank you very much indeed for spending time with me today to discuss your important work. And it is indeed important, given the fact that we are in all probability due for more of these changes in the near future.
00:31:01:02 - 00:31:03:07
Abigail Acton
So thanks for spending your time with me today.
00:31:03:07 - 00:31:04:12
João Encarnação
Thanks.
00:31:04:14 - 00:31:05:05
Marie Pia Repetto
Thank you.
00:31:05:06 - 00:31:05:23
Guillaume Marie
Thank you.
00:31:06:00 - 00:31:09:04
João Encarnação
Thank you so much.
00:31:09:06 - 00:31:30:10
Abigail Acton
If you've enjoyed this podcast and are interested in the latest scientific research coming out of the EU. Have a listen to previous episodes. Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and check out the podcast homepage on the Cordis website. We've considered how chemicals produced in our gut can impact on our brain cells and how plant roots communicate with the bacteria around them.
00:31:30:12 - 00:31:57:03
Abigail Acton
In our last 30 episodes, there will be something that to tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you're interested in knowing how other EU funded projects are working to help us adapt to climate change. The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe that are working in this area. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects from photons to neurons.
00:31:57:04 - 00:32:14:13
Abigail Acton
There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line. Editorial at Cordis dot Europa dot EU.
00:32:14:16 - 00:32:16:03
Abigail Acton
Until next time.
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:16:01
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:16:03 - 00:00:47:15
Abigail Acton
Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery, with me, Abigail Acton. September 2023 was roughly 1.75 degrees warmer compared to the pre-industrial period. It was also 0.93 degrees C warmer than the 1991 2020 baseline, which is used as a practical tool for climate sensitive sectors like agriculture. According to the World Meteorological Organization, climate change is here. So what are we doing to meet the challenges in Europe ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP23?
00:00:47:19 - 00:01:10:12
Abigail Acton
We will be hearing from four cutting edge researchers who are working to get us ready to deal with the coming changes to our environment. Tracking mosquitoes carry diseases more often associated with the global South. Protecting our woodlands and forests from the impact of destructive beetles and other factors. Examining the impact of extreme storms on our architecture and working out how to keep people safe from waves that are higher than ever.
00:01:10:13 - 00:01:41:13
Abigail Acton
Overtopping coastal defenses that were designed in another era. This episode is on adapting to climate change in Europe. Here to talk us through these ideas are our guests whose work has been funded by the European Union. João Encarnação is the CEO of Irideon. He has an MSc in biochemical engineering and a Ph.D. in sensors. He is particularly interested in the development of IoT (Internet of Things), sensors for insects with impact on public health, food safety and biodiversity.
00:01:41:13 - 00:01:42:05
Abigail Acton
Welcome, Joao.
00:01:42:11 - 00:01:43:21
João Encarnação
Hi, Abigail. Pleasure to be here.
00:01:43:23 - 00:02:01:07
Abigail Acton
Pleasure to have you. Guillaume Marie is an independent researcher, mainly working in ecological modeling with a strong focus on natural disturbance in interaction with human activities. He is an active developer of ORCHIDEE, the French land surface model used by the UN to predict climate change. Welcome, Guillaume.
00:02:01:09 - 00:02:02:11
Guillaume Marie
Thank you very much.
00:02:02:13 - 00:02:14:19
Abigail Acton
Lovely to have you. Marie Pia Repetto is Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Genoa in Italy. Her main interest is in wind engineering, analyzing the impact of wind on urban and natural environments. Welcome, Marie.
00:02:14:21 - 00:02:17:16
Marie Pia Repetto
Hello, everybody. Thank you for inviting me.
00:02:17:18 - 00:02:37:03
Abigail Acton
You're welcome. Corrado Altomare is a postdoc researcher at the Maritime Engineering Laboratory of UPC in Barcelona and is actively involved in mounting Europe's response to the problem of wave overtopping. Corrado is particularly interested in studying the effect of sea waves on coastal structures and wave energy devices. Hi, Corrado.
00:02:37:05 - 00:02:40:21
Corrado Altomare
Hi. Hi, everybody. Very happy to be here.
00:02:40:23 - 00:03:03:19
Abigail Acton
And we're happy to have you. Joao, the VECKRACK project wanted to find a new way of obtaining high quality field information about the presence of mosquitoes that could be vectors of West Nile fever in Europe. Can you tell us what the impact of a warming planet is having on disease carrying mosquitoes, please? West Nile fever isn't something normally that one would associate with the European Union.
00:03:03:21 - 00:03:07:20
Abigail Acton
How is that affecting Europe now and how might it affect it in the future?
00:03:08:01 - 00:03:36:00
João Encarnação
Well, actually, the West Nile virus is becoming increasingly common in the European Union. Unfortunately, it's not the virus that is transmitted by the autochthonous mosquito in Europe. The whole experience and the issue is that besides the West Nile virus, there's a danger that Europe will starting pulling arboviruses that usually occur on the southern hemisphere of the planet, like dengue fever, the Zika virus.
00:03:36:02 - 00:04:05:13
João Encarnação
And those are carried by invasive mosquitoes like the albopictus mosquitoes, the famous tiger mosquito that came from Asia. And due to the increase of the temperature, the climate is becoming more and more suitable for those mosquitoes that come from the south hemisphere. So it's a no brainer. If the average temperature increases, we are creating the perfect conditions for mosquitoes to colonize the territory.
00:04:05:19 - 00:04:07:23
João Encarnação
And it's what is happening all over Europe.
00:04:08:02 - 00:04:20:11
Abigail Acton
Okay, you say it's happening already. I mean, it's not something that, again, as I said before, it's not something that one necessarily associates with Europe. So are there cases of people catching these diseases from mosquitoes natively in Europe right now?
00:04:20:11 - 00:04:45:16
João Encarnação
I can tell you a couple of. Some of the latest cases. We have reports of tourists getting dengue in Ibiza. There were also cases of dengue in France, if I'm not mistaken. And you have cases of malaria in Greece. The issue is that this is the kind of information that is available publicly if you consult the Web page of the European Center for Disease Control.
00:04:45:18 - 00:05:04:00
João Encarnação
But it's something that the general public doesn't do, of course. So you may say that this is the kind of information that circulates among people that handle this kind of problem, public health technicians or people like me interested in developing technology to help solve this problem.
00:05:04:02 - 00:05:11:16
Abigail Acton
Right. So that makes your work and your project very, very timely. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that VECTRACK has developed to counter this threat?
00:05:11:22 - 00:05:39:01
João Encarnação
The biggest challenge that you have when you have infectors that are capable of carrying diseases is that to stop the transmission, which is paramount, to stop the outbreak, you have to monitor and control the vector. Let's look at the coronavirus. Humans are the vector. How did the World Health Organization and all the public health agencies in the world decided to stop the vector everybody locked down at their homes?
00:05:39:03 - 00:06:02:23
João Encarnação
You cannot do that with a mosquito. The mosquito roams freely out there, meaning that people are exposed to that vector. So that's quite a high risk situation because if you have an outbreak of a disease carried by a mosquito, as it happens normally in southern hemisphere countries like for instance, I don't know the capitals, Brazil, Brasilia, you get to go to work, have a coffee and you can be bitten and get dengue.
00:06:03:00 - 00:06:28:13
João Encarnação
Here in Europe that's unthinkable. However, people there, they still live there and try to do their normal life here. The issue is that in the last 100 years, the technology to monitor mosquitoes hasn't changed a lot. So basically what entomologists do is that they deploy traps that capture mosquitoes. And with that, they have an idea of the abundance and the type of mosquitoes that are being captured.
00:06:28:15 - 00:07:14:13
João Encarnação
Everything is done manually, everything. So the idea that we have was what if traps could be smart enough to acquire the information automatically and send it to a computer? That way, entomologists would acquire information automatically and basically in real time, and that would increase not only their type of response, but also save a lot of money in field work and since the technologies end up saving time and acquiring data as fast as possible, that means that with that we can improve the a lot the way public health agency of vector control technicians can fight the vector to prevent the outbreak of the disease with current state of the art.
00:07:14:18 - 00:07:58:06
João Encarnação
And we actually timed this if you have an increase of a certain vector, let's say six people that can transmit the West Nile virus for a standard public health agency with a standard lab where everything is collected manually and then the samples are taken to lab and they're put there and they put the samples in a freezer, and then they have to find the time to inspect or something can tell you that if today we have an explosion of species anywhere in Barcelona or in Lisbon or in Berlin or in Paris, whatever, and we'll have agency in charge of monitoring those vectors, probably know that it was happening 15 days later.
00:07:58:12 - 00:08:05:03
João Encarnação
Wow. With our technology, we know when it's happening. While it's happening in real time. In real time.
00:08:06:01 - 00:08:34:20
Abigail Acton
This is fantastic information because we have 15 days with the population increasing and exposure and all the rest of it. So this is a really remarkable difference in timeframe. So now I need you to tell me a little bit more about actually what you've developed. So I know that it's optical thermo sensors and so on, but please tell us more because frankly, the idea of a sensor that can identify not just the species but also the gender, you're only interested in the females, that's just blows my mind.
00:08:34:20 - 00:08:38:10
Abigail Acton
So please tell me a little bit more about these sensors and how does it all come together.
00:08:38:13 - 00:09:08:08
João Encarnação
The sensor is what we call an extinction sensor. Basically what we measure is how much light is blocked by a mosquito. When the mosquito crosses a field of near infrared light with the sensor, we analyze not only the morphology of the insect, but we also track the kinetics, how the insect moves. That generates a spectrum that is like a fingerprint that has all the information about things.
00:09:08:10 - 00:09:30:03
João Encarnação
And then using machine learning techniques, we teach a model to interpret that data. And every time the model sees a specific mosquito, he will tell, I've seen this one before. This is that. The sensor can say, look, you have a fair amount of females of this species that is dangerous that were captured at trap number 59.
00:09:30:05 - 00:09:55:11
João Encarnação
You go there and take a sample immediately. And when you get the information that day, we start having this equation of disease that can also be included in the models. So then besides having models that tell you how mosquitoes are spreading, you can include information about viruses, and then you start having models that tell you what is the risk of viral circulation in the mosquito population and how that can impact on human population.
00:09:55:12 - 00:09:56:09
Abigail Acton
Now, that's fantastic.
00:09:56:10 - 00:10:02:01
João Encarnação
This has never been done before and this is actually ongoing work that is happening after the conclusion of VECTRACK.
00:10:02:03 - 00:10:09:24
Abigail Acton
I know that you run some pilot studies involving public health authorities to stress test and to prove the technology. And in fact, you had excellent results, didn't you?
00:10:10:03 - 00:10:41:09
João Encarnação
Yes, indeed. We've looked at trials with public health entities in Spain, in Portugal, also in Brazil. And we have ongoing pilots happening in other countries. We've managed to prove that our technology can automatically differentiate these mosquitoes from other insects and can tell the species and the sex with average accuracy that are above 85% thanks to VECTRACK, we have recently found out two very interesting things.
00:10:41:11 - 00:11:03:04
João Encarnação
We have recently found that we can determine the age of the mosquitoes and tell if they are young mosquitoes. Less than five days or more than five days, meaning that if there are females with less than five days, they are not a high risk female to transmit diseases. But after five days, those females start getting more and more competent for infecting humans.
00:11:03:06 - 00:11:14:10
João Encarnação
And they have to also tell you that we've doubled the beat with Can the sensor also tell the difference between females infected with Zika virus or not? And that is also something that will be published.
00:11:14:10 - 00:11:16:06
Abigail Acton
So that's amazing.
00:11:16:07 - 00:11:22:10
João Encarnação
I was a bit skeptical, but the results were quite intriguing. Let's leave it at that.
00:11:22:12 - 00:11:34:20
Abigail Acton
okay. That's a teaser, isn't it? Well, that would be amazing. That would just be, given the spread of Zika, that would just be amazing. This is excellent work you're doing, Joao. Does anyone have any questions For Joao, Yes, Guillaume.
00:11:34:22 - 00:11:46:12
Guillaume Marie
Joao, the sensory you develop, do you think they can be adapted to bark beetles, flying insect or in general in other flying insects?
00:11:46:14 - 00:12:02:06
João Encarnação
If it's a flying insect, our tech will detected it. The secret is we developed the sensor, but then we have to have a trapping system that is designed for the particular species because trapping insects is not the trivial thing. Incredibly, if it flies.
00:12:02:07 - 00:12:03:08
Abigail Acton
It can be identified.
00:12:03:08 - 00:12:07:17
João Encarnação
We can develop a model to identify it automatically.
00:12:07:20 - 00:12:10:13
Abigail Acton
That would be particularly useful for the flies and leishmania.
00:12:10:17 - 00:12:25:16
João Encarnação
That's one of the things that people are very interested in. We know that the mosquito traps those kind of flies that transmit leishmania also fall in our trap and we can see them in our data. That's, that's basically. Abigail Those are episodes for the next season.
00:12:25:18 - 00:12:30:16
Abigail Acton
Yes. Yeah. Well, I could just talk with you all day. But listen, thank you very, very much for your time.
00:12:30:16 - 00:12:31:10
João Encarnação
Thank you, Abigail.
00:12:31:11 - 00:12:50:02
Abigail Acton
You're very welcome. Guillaume I'm going to turn to you now. The CLIMPRO project asks whether a new generation of forest management is needed in the face of coming challenges. And one of these is the hugely destructive pest known as the bark beetle. So, Guillaume you're also interested in how climate change will affect insect populations.
00:12:50:04 - 00:13:18:09
Guillaume Marie
Thank you. Two things. First, it's like bark beetles are not a natural situation. They are not really destructive. They are part of the dynamics of the forest. So it's not something we can intend to bark beetles. It's really something we can. The cause is really the human. And for two things. The first thing is that bark beetles they like heat.
00:13:18:11 - 00:14:09:09
Guillaume Marie
And because of our impact on the temperature bark beetles can increase the number of generation and they can they can do in one year. The second point, it's more about the fact that forestry they really plant like spruce nowhere spruce in region where it's not a it was not naturally occur especially in the lowland. So normally spruce is for a high mountain and very north Europe but because of that, because of these two things, we put a fertile ground for the bark beetles because now they can really proliferate and attack a lot of forest in Europe.
00:14:09:15 - 00:14:21:17
Abigail Acton
So basically we're providing well not providing, we're creating the higher temperature that favors proliferation, as you say. And then we're also changing the habitat because we're bringing these trees into places that are not indigenous for them.
00:14:21:19 - 00:14:22:16
Guillaume Marie
Yes, exactly.
00:14:22:20 - 00:14:23:14
Abigail Acton
Right. Okay.
00:14:23:16 - 00:14:50:16
Guillaume Marie
Just if you some number, it's like if you have, let's say, one, tree that it’s attacked by, let's say 500 beetle bark beetles, they will kill it. But these 500 bark beetles, they will produce 20,000 bark beetles. And after that, the spread can go very fast, especially if instead of one generation per year, you produce three generations like it occured now in Europe.
00:14:50:20 - 00:14:51:22
Abigail Acton
And that's happening already.
00:14:51:22 - 00:15:16:20
Guillaume Marie
Yeah, already It's already there in terms of ecology, the bark beetle is not a huge threat because yes, some trees will die, but you will have dynamic of regeneration, aeration and regrowth and you will have a new forest, etc.. The problem is economic because the wood and especially the spruce wood, it's a very valuable wood market.
00:15:16:22 - 00:15:39:21
Guillaume Marie
And when this bark beetle outbreak happen, you suddenly have a lot of wood available on the market because they have to cut it, they have to sell it, and also because you have to store and stock it and all these things, they cost a lot for the manager. And here we are talking about an economic disaster, not a natural disaster.
00:15:39:21 - 00:15:44:18
Guillaume Marie
It's something very different. And I want to highlight that.
00:15:44:22 - 00:15:52:22
Abigail Acton
Yeah, no, indeed. I mean, it's an important difference. Absolutely. And so what did your project try to do to counter this? What was CLIMPRO's approach?
00:15:52:24 - 00:16:25:16
Guillaume Marie
So CLIMPRO it's really I would say modeling project because a what we trying to do it's include these kind of disturbances when we account for carbon balance at large scale. So we are using a model, a land surface model called ORCHIDEE. So it's a model that simulate the surface of the planet. So it's really meant to be large scale and this kind of model, they are coupled with what we call general circulation models.
00:16:25:19 - 00:16:52:15
Guillaume Marie
And with that we can predict what would be the future climate. So it's really a big piece of this kind of prediction. We need to know if like disturbances, drastic disturbances, they have an impact on this kind of release because before that, I would say the classic way of including mortality, tree mortality is by taking a fixed mortality rate, let's say 1% per year.
00:16:52:21 - 00:17:22:10
Guillaume Marie
So every year we remove 1%. As you can understand, it's very smooth. So there is no abrupt event. And what we want to see is when we remove this, this background, this 1%, and replace it by abrupt event of 20-30% mortality. What would happen in the function of this ecosystem and if this drastic event will affect the release of CO2 in the atmosphere.
00:17:22:12 - 00:17:27:04
Abigail Acton
And when you run these simulations, what did you find and how do you hope this information can be used?
00:17:27:09 - 00:17:51:04
Guillaume Marie
When we run the simulation, we start thinking, okay, we will see some effect on everything, but the first things we see, it's like bark beetle they thin the forest and they act as a manager. And again, it was really interesting to see that. So without any referring to economy, you just see, like bark beetles acting as manager.
00:17:51:06 - 00:18:10:08
Guillaume Marie
But when we look at the global net carbon emission over large period of time, we see that not including disturbances can really underestimate the net flux of CO2 into the atmosphere. So we are really convinced right now that we need to include it here.
00:18:10:11 - 00:18:22:23
Abigail Acton
Yeah, sure, sure. So what you're saying is that if you don't actually track what's happening to the forests accurately with regards to the possibility of a large scale sudden impact, you can't assess how much carbon dioxide is going to be trapped by the forests.
00:18:23:00 - 00:18:23:15
Guillaume Marie
Yeah.
00:18:23:17 - 00:18:26:08
Abigail Acton
You're saying released by the forests. That's confusing me slightly.
00:18:26:09 - 00:18:35:08
Guillaume Marie
Not really. Sorry, because we trapped. But what we are interesting it it's the net release so yes. What they keep minus what they release.
00:18:35:11 - 00:18:54:15
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's fascinating. Thank you very much indeed. That's that's excellent. I'm just going to turn now actually to Marie. THUNDERR set out to create a model for thunderstorm outflows and the impact that they have on the urban environment. I've never really thought about the impact of wind on buildings. Marie, can you explain why we should be bearing it in mind?
00:18:54:15 - 00:18:55:07
Abigail Acton
Actually.
00:18:55:09 - 00:19:28:22
Marie Pia Repetto
Yes. Wind is one of the most dangerous and costly natural hazards when loading is always considered as a main action in the design of buildings. But what is new now is the impact of thunderstorm winds which is particularly intense and destructive. Moreover, many studies indicate that there are intense. The intensity and the frequency of this kind of events may grow due to the climate change.
00:19:28:22 - 00:20:05:00
Marie Pia Repetto
The thunderstorms are meteorological phenomena that are generated in a small area and evolve over in a few minutes. And during those events, a bulk of cold air falls down, impinging the ground and the spreading radially. And this is called downbursts because it's something similar to an explosion of air and it generates a large vortex with a strong velocity and a lot of the energy also.
00:20:05:02 - 00:20:13:24
Marie Pia Repetto
So if this downburst hits a building, it can cause serious damages and also dangerous situation.
00:20:14:01 - 00:20:17:20
Abigail Acton
So, Maria, what have people been doing up until now?
00:20:17:22 - 00:20:42:02
Marie Pia Repetto
Thunderstorms are present from ever and ever. But now they are increasing in intensity and in frequency. And we are seeing many, many more damages in buildings, typically low rise buildings or flexible buildings, poles and also bridges.
00:20:42:04 - 00:20:51:01
Abigail Acton
So what were you actually doing with your project? You wanted, I think, to improve the ability to plan for architects, no?
00:20:51:03 - 00:21:09:21
Marie Pia Repetto
The aim of our project is to bring together experts from different sectors, like a meteorology like engineering or atmospheric physics, to study together the problem and to produce model that can be used from architects and engineers.
00:21:09:21 - 00:21:14:13
Abigail Acton
And how did you go about producing these models? What sort of tools and techniques did you use?
00:21:14:17 - 00:21:50:02
Marie Pia Repetto
So, you know, air is something invisible and why low waves and vortexes can be seen and observed in water and sea the same phenomena can happen in the air but cannot be seen. So our first aim was to improve the capability to detect the downbursts, then the thunderstorm development. So we managed to use a variety of sensors to detect that the wind, the strength, the direction and to catch out the downbursts move.
00:21:50:04 - 00:22:04:02
Marie Pia Repetto
We installed a very sophisticated glider which is able to measure the way the outflow of the thunderstorm develops and change it during the storms itself.
00:22:04:08 - 00:22:13:21
Abigail Acton
I'm just going to stop you for a second. So LIDAR is a mechanism by which you can look at the surface of a certain structure and see the impact of what's happening on the surface. Is that correct?
00:22:14:01 - 00:22:29:20
Marie Pia Repetto
Yes. This is one of the possible use of a Lidar in the air. We use it to measure the movement of the particles so we can reproduce in some way the wind flow.
00:22:29:23 - 00:22:43:04
Abigail Acton
So basically you're almost making it visible. You know, you were just saying that you could see it in water. Yeah. So it's a way of making air and the vortexes and the downbursts visible. So you can actually see what's happening with the thunderstorm. Is that right? Yes, right.
00:22:43:10 - 00:23:05:07
Marie Pia Repetto
This is exactly the idea to see the phenomena, to see the vortex, and to see how they move inside of the air. The second part was to reproduce this kind of phenomenon by means of experiment in this very special wind tunnel in Canada, and also to reproduce it numerically.
00:23:05:09 - 00:23:11:00
Abigail Acton
This actually sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, I think this is really fun.
00:23:11:19 - 00:23:56:19
Marie Pia Repetto
Yes. And also in this case, we tried to visualize the wind flow in the wind tunnel. And we have a beautiful picture of this primary vortex is called that that the heat the laboratory people also. Okay and also finally we detected the impact on structure and we tried to develop a model. And in this case we were inspired by a method adopted there in the earthquake or blast the fact because in some way revolution of the thunderstorm action is something similar, very rapid and very energetic about short in time.
00:23:57:16 - 00:24:27:00
Abigail Acton
Thank you very much. I think that's absolutely fascinating. Corrado, your project considered the fact that low lying coastal areas are very vulnerable to rising sea levels, as we appreciate, and the towering waves produced by storms as they get perhaps potentially more aggressive, if one can use that word dark. We've wanted to develop models again, models to reflect the situation as it is now, and that will evolve to help people estimate the vulnerability of coastal zones to climate change.
00:24:27:02 - 00:24:30:16
Abigail Acton
CORRADO What inspired you to get involved with this area of research?
00:24:30:18 - 00:25:08:14
Corrado Altomare
Well, Abigail you know, I'm from a coastal town from the Adriatic Sea, so while I live along the sea and I was always fascinated by all these kinds of processes, I'm still the one that is running to the coast or the harbor to, to see when there is a storm and what happens there. So, yeah, these phenomena that are called like overtopping as well, when the water passes over a structure and can generate flooding and can generate a lot of problems and damages and also can represent a risk scenarios for some people, for pedestrians or people living there.
00:25:08:16 - 00:25:38:11
Corrado Altomare
So yeah, just imagine that 40% of the population in the world live along the coastline now making a number in Europe, this means 80 million people. And the trend is increasing. And beside that we have climate change, sea level rise, as Maria said. Also more storms, more unpredictable, sometimes storms. So all this combination makes that we have to look more in deep to what is this kind of worldwide topic that is very common but at the same time very diverse.
00:25:38:11 - 00:25:40:06
Corrado Altomare
A very different from side to side.
00:25:40:08 - 00:25:56:07
Abigail Acton
Yeah, that's fascinating, isn't it? Because I mean, it sounds relatively simple. Wave overtopping, very, very large wave out of control, coming into land and overtopping something. But of course, it must be entirely context dependent. I mean, it's not only the context of the particular storm and the particular wind direction, but also the infrastructure and so on and so on.
00:25:56:07 - 00:26:09:07
Abigail Acton
So must be difficult to model something that has so many different types of criteria. Could you tell me a little bit more about that process? What did DURCWAVE want to do? You've explained why a little bit, but perhaps you could tell me how. A little bit.
00:26:09:09 - 00:26:34:20
Corrado Altomare
Yeah, well, look, we wanted to contribute, let's say, to announce the design of coastal defensive, but especially as you mentioned in the introduction, both coastal defenses in urbanized coastal areas. So to do that, to do that walkways and then to combine different tools. So for one side we have again modeling experimental modeling lab tests in a wave flow.
00:26:34:22 - 00:26:54:20
Corrado Altomare
Usually I say if I have to explain to my daughter what I do for work, I say I play doing waves. And it's true. We do waves in a flow and we we measure certain results and then we do numerically. So we do we do some sort of that in particular in DURCWAVE was a particle based solver.
00:26:54:20 - 00:26:58:23
Abigail Acton
And what does that mean? Sorry Corrado I'm stepping in here. What do you mean, particle based solver? What is it?
00:26:59:07 - 00:27:32:01
Corrado Altomare
We have two kinds of lets say approaches: one is a more traditional one that where you discretize an element that can be your flow, your water to say in a set of points. And then you calculate what is happening to like like you are measuring one point in space what is happening, just to explain simply. And then you have this kind of the Lagrangian approach is where actually your water is is made with sort of a set of particles that are free to move is very easy from an intuitive point of view, is very easy to understand this.
00:27:32:01 - 00:27:53:13
Corrado Altomare
If you look at some video or some animation or simulation of it. So in that sense, a more of this kind of method and model I have used a particular one in particular model that is called dualistic which is being used to reproduce wave overtopping for specific coastal layouts.
00:27:53:15 - 00:28:04:16
Abigail Acton
Okay I get it. So basically using just like a point concept is is a little bit too reductive and a little bit too simplistic. And what you actually want to do is simulate the movement of a body of water.
00:28:04:18 - 00:28:05:06
Corrado Altomare
Correct.
00:28:05:12 - 00:28:15:09
Abigail Acton
And that body of water is made up of a multiplicity of particles. And so you look at the whole thing and how it moves together rather than just, for example, plotting peaks and troughs. And so on.
00:28:15:11 - 00:28:27:18
Corrado Altomare
And the point of having these kind of points of particle that are moving, it means that it cannot be in a currently easy to model very busy violent phenomena.
00:28:27:21 - 00:28:34:12
Abigail Acton
Is this the whole time that a storm in the project DURCWAVE that the whole time that a storm was simulated from start to finish.
00:28:34:14 - 00:28:55:20
Corrado Altomare
In a particle maze method, as I mentioned before? Yes. Yes. Actually, what we did was to simulate an old storm. Or when I see an old storm, it means like a storm lasting 1000 waves 3 hours in reality, something like that. So this was the first The first time. Yes.
00:28:55:20 - 00:29:01:03
Abigail Acton
And what sort of things are your simulations showing us? What are you learning? What do we need to know?
00:29:01:05 - 00:29:31:16
Corrado Altomare
Yeah, all these all we have done experimentally and numerically was meant to gain further insights into what we call overtopping flow properties. That, in a nutshell, means the velocity of these flows and let's say the quantity of water, or if you like, the high of these flow where is is flooded. Why that? Because the combination of velocity and slow, high or slow that is like is very important for the safety of the people.
00:29:31:16 - 00:29:49:00
Corrado Altomare
So people stability you can feel a flow where it's where it is, where you are, your feet into it, whether it is faster, whether it is bigger etc so I can also cause casualties, but also can be related to the security of infrastructure and the amenities along the coastline.
00:29:49:00 - 00:29:58:09
Abigail Acton
Are you starting to see that architects and planners are taking into consideration the kind of models that you're producing? Or is there interest in in that kind of sector?
00:29:58:15 - 00:30:29:11
Corrado Altomare
Well, I'm happy to say yes. You know, when I was carrying out the project, just a big a big storm hit the southern coast of France and the Mediterranean coast of Spain. We have several damages and some local authorities started to implement the outcomes but also the methods of DURCWAVE project in order both to study what happened actually during this storm, it was called Gloria, or like a piece of structure just north of Barcelona here in Spain, where I am.
00:30:29:17 - 00:30:39:09
Corrado Altomare
So I have seen that that little by little, this kind of methods and outcomes are becoming more and more popular and used by local authorities.
00:30:39:09 - 00:31:01:00
Abigail Acton
Yeah, planners may be okay. Super. Thank you very much, Corrado. And I must just mention that I love your surname in connection to your work because it means high seas. Yeah. How appropriate is that? How appropriate is that? Well, thank you very much indeed for spending time with me today to discuss your important work. And it is indeed important, given the fact that we are in all probability due for more of these changes in the near future.
00:31:01:02 - 00:31:03:07
Abigail Acton
So thanks for spending your time with me today.
00:31:03:07 - 00:31:04:12
João Encarnação
Thanks.
00:31:04:14 - 00:31:05:05
Marie Pia Repetto
Thank you.
00:31:05:06 - 00:31:05:23
Guillaume Marie
Thank you.
00:31:06:00 - 00:31:09:04
João Encarnação
Thank you so much.
00:31:09:06 - 00:31:30:10
Abigail Acton
If you've enjoyed this podcast and are interested in the latest scientific research coming out of the EU. Have a listen to previous episodes. Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and check out the podcast homepage on the Cordis website. We've considered how chemicals produced in our gut can impact on our brain cells and how plant roots communicate with the bacteria around them.
00:31:30:12 - 00:31:57:03
Abigail Acton
In our last 30 episodes, there will be something that to tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you're interested in knowing how other EU funded projects are working to help us adapt to climate change. The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe that are working in this area. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects from photons to neurons.
00:31:57:04 - 00:32:14:13
Abigail Acton
There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line. Editorial at Cordis dot Europa dot EU.
00:32:14:16 - 00:32:16:03
Abigail Acton
Until next time.
Using the internet of things (IoT) to track mosquitoes that carry diseases more often associated with the global South; protecting our woodlands and forests from the impact of destructive beetles and other factors; examining the impact of extreme storms on our architecture, and working out how to keep people safe from waves that are higher than ever, overtopping coastal defences that were designed in another era – this episode is on adapting to climate change in Europe. Talking us through these and other ideas are: João Encarnação, the CEO of Irideon. He has a MSc in Biochemical Engineering and a PhD in Sensors and led the VECTRACK project. He is particularly interested in the development of IoT sensors for insects with impact on public health, food safety and biodiversity. Guillaume Marie, principal investigator on the CLIMPRO project, is an independent researcher. Marie mainly works in ecological modelling with a strong focus on natural disturbance in interaction with human activities. He is an active developer of ORCHIDEE, the French land surface model used by the UN to predict climate change. Marie Pia Repetto is professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Genoa, Italy. Her main interest is in wind engineering: analysing the impact of wind on urban and natural environments which she explored in the THUNDERR project. Corrado Altomare is a postdoc researcher at the Maritime Engineering Laboratory of UPC in Barcelona and is actively involved in mounting Europe’s response to the problem of wave overtopping. Altomare, who led the DURCWAVE project, is particularly interested in studying the effect of sea waves on coastal structures and wave energy devices.
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If you have any feedback, we’re always happy to hear from you! Send us any comments, questions or suggestions to: editorial@cordis.europa.eu