TEHRAN –Supported by the Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), an Iranian-Chinese workshop is being held on Saturday and Sunday, focusing on emerging ways to boost climate change resilience.

The workshop titled ‘Emerging Technologies and Methods for Climate Resilience’ is organized by Sharif University of Technology and Chongqing University, China. It is being conducted both in person and online in the English language. The main objective of the workshop is to identify the most innovative ways to strengthen urban climate change resilience, IRNA reported.

The workshop is centered around climate-responsive urban design and technologies, climate risk management and new technologies to manage risks, urban energy transitioning, climate resilience, water resilience and integrated system planning, smart governance and social adaptation to climate change, and climate system modeling to assess and predict climate change. 

It also highlights using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data in analyzing and adapting to climate change, sustainable infrastructure, resource management for climate-resilient cities, international cooperation, and the development of joint solutions to enhance urban resilience.

Affecting rainfall patterns, pollination, flowering, and even harvest time, climate change has greatly affected the agriculture sector and food security in many countries, most significantly in Iran, according to the country’s former permanent representative and ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In some parts of the country, the air temperature has increased by 2 degrees while the highest temperature set in the world amounts to 1.5 degrees, IRNA quoted Mohammad-Hossein Emadi as saying.

Studies have shown that for a degree increase in temperature on the planet, the amount of evaporation rises by 23 percent, which negatively affects the agriculture and animal husbandry sectors.

Climate change also alters plant growth patterns, disturbing the nutritional values of crops, he stressed.

In addition, unexpected effects of climate change like drought, flood, and landslide,s have all affected food security.

INSF, NSFC to support implementation of 10 joint  projects

According to a report released in January, Iran and China will support the implementation of 10 out of 136 research projects proposed subsequent to the fourth joint call by the INSF and NSFC.

These projects cover the three fields of energy, regenerative medicine (bioengineering or materials for regenerative medicine), and environment (water and solid waste treatment).

In addition to these research projects, three out of 21 joint workshops on climate change, artificial intelligence, and big data in industrial engineering, advanced materials, and construction have been approved to be conducted.

The proposals were initially discussed in each country, then, specialized working groups evaluated the project in an international committee. Subsequently, the results were exchanged with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

MT/MG