Fletcher Professor at Climate Policy Lab Led Award-Winning Initiative
At this year’s International System Dynamics Conference, held earlier this month in Boston, a Fletcher professor was honored for his leadership role in an award-winning climate modeling effort called En-ROADS. The En-ROADS project, involving computer modeling, engagement and outreach was a decade-long effort supported by a team of academics, researchers and volunteers. The team won the organization’s Application Award, which recognizes the best real world application of system dynamics, the underlying modeling methodology, which sees the world as interconnected parts such as economics, technology and policy and seeks to understand the feedback and interconnectedness between these myriad components.
Travis Franck, research assistant professor and climate modeling and policy director at the Climate Policy Lab, had a significant leadership role within the organization for 11 years and continues to be involved in the project while at Fletcher. He served as the project’s chief technology officer, overseeing the En-ROADS development team, the user interface and the technical underlying models.
“En-ROADS is a global climate solutions simulator that puts our planet’s future in the hands of users and allows them to test how different policy decisions and technological changes could impact global temperature rise and other climate, health and nature outcomes through 2100,” said Brad Morrison, chair of the award’s selection committee, in his speech. “It has been used in thousands of interactive workshops with policymakers, business leaders, investors, educators and community leaders to build their understanding of climate dynamics and help them make more effective decisions.”
Making Data Approachable for All Users
Franck saw En-ROADS’ high adoption and versatility as distinguishing factors in receiving the award.
“Our goal was to make it approachable for a whole variety of people in the world and help them understand the energy transition and our response to climate change,” said Franck. “Green growth is a really complicated topic, but we can build an approachable simulator that allows decision makers, policy makers, citizens and even fifth graders to play around, understand their role in the system and see how all the various parts interact.”
The system stands on the shoulders of other scientific research. When other scholars publish new data, or novel studies and technologies emerge, the team reviews these reports and incorporates the knowledge into the model.
“I think the power of the tool is the integration of economics, innovation, research and development, and theory and research of climate science, the oceans and ice sheets,” said Franck. “The model is constantly being updated as new research is being published.”
Since its launch, En-ROADS has been used in over 165 countries, a figure that is self-reported and Franck suspects is lower than its true use in classrooms, congressional briefings and in government ministry meetings worldwide.
“We designed the experience – both the underlying modeling, the science and engineering decisions, along with the user interface decisions – to present those results and insights in a meaningful way,” said Franck. “We always start with user-centric design and think about modeling the problem or trying to answer a particular question, and go from there.”
“To win the applications award is meaningful because it really says that we've had a lot of impact in the world as an application of the methodology,” he added. “We’re proud of this. It means that all the efforts to reach people and get them to think differently have been successful, and it was great to have a society acknowledge that impact.”
The En-ROADS outreach engagement team worked tirelessly to train climate ambassadors and lead users through multi-week training courses to help them understand the model, facilitate experiences and develop manuals and other supporting materials, which amplified the project’s reach.
“It has been used by the Climate Pathways project at MIT to brief members of Congress,’ said Franck. “It's used by C-suites and brought in through the CEO or chief sustainability officer for corporate trainings.”
“Here at Fletcher, it has been used in Professor Melissa McCracken’s Environmental Problem Solving class. I also used it in the Climate Change Policy & Law class,” he added.
Climate Policy Lab’s Mission for Engaged Research
Fletcher students find excellent opportunities for experiential learning through study and research at the Climate Policy Lab, and En-ROADS is emblematic of the center’s vision of research to effect change.
“The En-ROADS project fits so well with the expertise of the Climate Policy Lab (CPL) because of the user-centric research design that CPL does,” said Franck. “We're focused on seeing which climate policies work, which don't and why. We're doing practical applied research to move that forward.”
“The Climate Policy Lab is focused on getting knowledge in front of decision makers instead of keeping it locked up in peer-reviewed journals,” he added. “It's an engaging and vigorous place to work. We're working with master’s and doctoral students every day on their research, and those students engage policy makers around the world from Brazil to South Africa, China, India, Mexico and Indonesia.”
The lab is currently preparing for their September research symposium. They invite leaders from around the world to talk about practical applications and gaps in climate change policy and implementation.
Read more about Fletcher’s Climate Policy Lab, the CPL Symposium and use the En-ROADS simulator here.
Team members from Multisolving Institute, Climate Interactive, MIT, Reutlingen University, United Nations Development Programme, Energy Innovation and UMass Lowell contributed to En-ROADS.