RENCI Director Dan Reed will join Ed Seidel, director of the Center for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University, and University of Illinois atmospheric scientist Bob Wilhelmson for a live virtual discussion of how advance technology can aid in understanding hurricanes and other severe storms.
The hour-long panel discussion, moderated by Ed Kieser, chief meteorologist at WILL TV in Champaign, IL, will take place Thursday, Sept. 28 at 2 p.m. Eastern time. Called Inside the Digital Storm: Using Computers to Understand and Predict Dangerous Weather, it will be offered live over the Access Grid multicast system and as a webcast at http://www.katrinasummit.uiuc.edu.
Panelists will look at how advanced modeling and visualization techniques and on-demand high-performance computing can improve scientists’ abilities to accurately predict and respond to weather-related disasters. They also will discuss how data from Hurricane Katrina is being used to develop a better understanding of hurricanes, storm surges, flooding and other phenomena related to major storm systems.
The discussion is part of a three-day virtual summit that examines the impacts of Hurricane Katrina and the lessons learned from Katrina about public policy, social justice and equity, the importance of community, and the role of technology in dealing with disasters and in maintaining community. Called Katrina: After the Storm – Civic Engagement Through the Arts, Humanities and Technology, the summit will include performances by New Orleans’s area artists, reminiscences of Katrina survivors, and grid and webcast discussions of public health, educational and social justice issues. The summit will conclude with a live Town Hall meeting that will include participants from Louisiana, Champaign, and other locations.
Sponsored by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Katrina: After the Storm is the first in a series of events supported by HASTAC, the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, as part of the organization’s “inFormation Year.” HASTAC inFormation Year events will highlight the human and humane dimensions of advanced technology.
