RENOWNED SCIENTISTS HOLD LECTURES
FOR RP DISASTER SCIENCE CENTER

The Philippine Disaster Science Management Center (DSMC) along with the Congressional Commission on Science Technology and Engineering (COMSTE) recently launched a series of lectures by renowned scientists that present show the effects of climate change and disasters in the local setting.

The latest in the series of lectures was given by Dr. Kelvin Rodolfo, entitled, "Reading climate history from ice cores, how the world's glaciers are melting, and what that has to do with us Filipinos?"

The lecture explained how to extend the history of climate change farther back in time, first by examining the rates at which mountain glaciers are losing length, then by seeing how ice cores from deep within the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps yield their secrets. The lecture also discuss how future sea level might be affected, how the process 'feeds back' on itself, and how human water supplies will be affected.

Dr. Rodolfo discussed the effects of humanity on global warming and climate change in his first lecture, entitled, "4 Billion Years of Sun, Earth, Life and Climate." The second lecture, "The Global Temperature Record of the Last Two Millenia, and How We Determine it" went further details, exploring the record of directly measured temperatures back as far as they are reliable, and how we extend it back 2,000 years with proxy techniques.

The DSMC will also present a lecture by renowned control theorist Dr. Jose Cruz to discuss utilizing system complexity in disaster science, to be hosted by Ateneo de Manila University.

The lecture, to be held at Ateneo University on Saturday, January 29, is a continuation a series by renowned scientists that began recently that present a scientific view of the effects of global warming on climate change and technical discussions with the scientific community on coping with disasters in the Philippine setting.

Dr. Cruz is a Control Theorist and Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Ohio State University. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST)

Dr. Cruz is well known for his research and work on game-theoretic control and estimation, circuits and automatic control, hierarchical multi-agent strategies in hostile environments, bidding strategies in energy markets, multiple training in associative memories, and feedback theory.

Angara said that the ongoing lectures will tackle issues like how flooding and can affect insurance companies and how to quickly adopt Renewable Energy Systems to lessen local fossil fuel use. Both local and foreign scientists and experts will be lecturing.

The DSMC is a public-private initiative that the scientific community can use to better understand the mechanics of managing disasters with the cooperation of neighboring countries that have experienced similar storms and natural calamities as the Philippines.