Elisabeth Gilmore

• Professor (Associate) at Carleton Univerity

Harnessing scientific research to address societal challenges requires careful alignment of expertise, resources, and research questions with real‐world needs, timelines, and constraints. In the case of place‐based research, studies can avoid misalignment when grounded in the realities of specific locations and conducted in collaboration with knowl...

Recent research highlights how the same vulnerabilities that lead to disasters also condition the impact of hazards on violent conflict. Yet it is common practice in the literature to proxy rapid-onset hazards with disaster impacts when studying political violence. This can bias upward estimates of hazard–conflict relationships and obscure heteroge...

As a vulnerable population, immigrants can be disproportionately affected by disasters. Because of their legal and migratory status, immigrants may have different challenges, needs, and possibilities when facing a disaster. Yet, within disaster studies, immigrants are rarely studied alone. Instead, they are often considered part of the large hetero...

Harnessing scientific research to address pressing societal needs requires careful alignment of resources, expertise, and research questions with real-world needs, timelines, and partnerships. Literature on best practices for place-based transdisciplinary research is underdeveloped on the question of choosing locations to help achieve this alignmen...

The escalating impacts of climate change on the movement and immobility of people, coupled with false but influential narratives of mobility, highlight an urgent need for nuanced and synthetic research around climate mobility. Synthesis of evidence and gaps across the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report highligh...

Publications are only as strong as the people who make them work. As part of this new chapter in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine (TSM), this is the first in a series of pieces to introduce the new associate editors who represent a powerhouse of knowledge on the social implications of technology and are leaders from across the many varied disci...

At the recent international negotiations on climate change in Dubai in 2023, the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to play a critical role in addressing climate challenges was recognized through the initiative “AI for Climate Action (#AI4ClimateAction).” Launched by the Technology Mechanism—established under the United Nations Framework Co...

When Greta Thunberg addressed world leaders at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)'s 24th Conference of Parties (COP24), it highlighted how young people including Indigenous youth are seeking to influence international climate change negotiations. However, young people face barriers to effectively engaging in the COP...

Armed conflict and economic growth are inherently coupled; armed conflict substantially reduces economic growth, while economic growth is strongly correlated with a reduction in the propensity of armed conflict. Here, we simulate the incidence of armed conflict and its effect on economic growth simultaneously along the economic pathways defined by...

When Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed world leaders at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s 24th Conference of Parties (COP24), it was clear that young people are interested in and aware of their potential to influence international climate change negotiations. Young people also face barriers to effe...

Anthropogenic climate change is commonly characterized as a threat to human security. However, the extent to which and under what conditions climate impacts and responses may produce severe risks to peace have seen less systematically assessment to date. This essay provides a conceptual discussion of what risks to peace entail and how such risks mi...

Since AR5, climate-change impacts have become more frequent, intense and have affected many millions of people from every region and sector across North America (Canada, USA and Mexico). Accelerating climate-change hazards pose significant risks to the well-being of North American populations and the natural, managed and human systems on which they...

This paper presents the overall and distributional welfare effects of alternative multi-regional emissions trading coalitions relative to unilateral action. It focusses on meeting Paris Agreement pledges and more emissions reduction targets consistent with 2 ∘ C and 1.5 ∘ C temperature pathways in 2030. The results from seven computable general equ...

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes COVID-19, emerged in late 2019, halfway through the preparation of the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report. This Cross-Chapter Box assesses how the massive shock of the pandemic and response measures interact with climate-related impacts and risks as well as its significan...

Urban populations in South Asia are regularly exposed to poor air quality, especially elevated concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ). However, the potential differential burden for the urban poor has received little attention. Here, we evaluate the links between occupation, patterns of exposure to PM2.5, and the impacts at an individu...

Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to reduce the overall negative climate change impacts on crop yields and agricultural production. However, certain mitigation measures may generate unintended consequences to food availability and food access due to both land use competition and economic burden of mitigation. Integrated assessment mo...

Climate hazards can compound existing stresses on the revenues and expenditures of local governments, revealing potential risks to fiscal stability. Incorporating these risks into local budgeting and strategic planning would encourage a more complete accounting of the benefits of climate adaptation and risk reduction efforts.

The feasibility assessment (FA) presents a systematic framework to assess adaptation and mitigation options organised by system transitions. This Cross-Chapter Box assessed the feasibility of 23 adaptation options across six dimensions: economic, technological, institutional, socio-cultural, environmental-ecological, and geophysical to identify fac...

An emerging risk is characterized by scant published data, rapidly changing information, and an absence of existing models that can be directly used for prediction. Analysis may be further complicated by quickly evolving decision‐maker priorities and the potential need to make decisions quickly as new information comes available. To provide a forum...

The Earth system and the human system are intrinsically linked. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have led to the climate crisis, which is causing unprecedented extreme events and could trigger Earth system tipping elements. Physical and social forces can lead to tipping points and cascading effects via feedbacks and telecoupling, but the curr...

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthe...

People affected by conflict are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks and climate change, yet little is known about climate change adaptation in fragile contexts. While climate events are one of the many contributing drivers of conflict, feedback from conflict increases vulnerability, thereby creating conditions for a vicious cycle of conflict....

To facilitate ambitious mitigation targets, the Paris Agreement allows countries to cooperate by recognizing and transferring emission reductions - referred to as Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMO). While multiple studies have confirmed that cooperation through a global emissions trading market reduces the total costs of abateme...

Climate policies will need to incentivize transformative societal changes if they are to achieve emission reductions consistent with 1.5°C temperature targets. To contribute to efforts for aligning climate policy with broader societal goals, specifically those related to sustainable development, we identify the effects of climate mitigation policy...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03090-4

To date, projections of human migration induced by sea-level change (SLC) largely suggest large-scale displacement away from vulnerable coastlines. However, results from our model of Bangladesh suggest counterintuitively that people will continue to migrate toward the vulnerable coastline irrespective of the flooding amplified by future SLC under a...

We present the first systematic, global stocktake of the academic literature on human adaptation. We screen 48,316 documents and identify 1,682 articles that present empirical research documenting human efforts to reduce risk from climate change and associated hazards. Coding and synthesizing this literature highlights that the overall extent of ad...

Purpose of the Review Climate change presents significant risks to the international trade and supply chain systems with potentially profound and cascading effects for the global economy. A robust international trade system may also be central to managing future climate risks. Here, we assess the treatment (or lack thereof) of trade in a selection...

Significance Tropical cyclone disasters frequently result in substantial loss of life. Institutional capacity and economic development are believed to play protective roles, but previous efforts have been unable to disentangle their relative effects. We establish empirically that stronger national and subnational institutions, independent of income...

Context : It is now widely accepted that the climate is changing, and that societal responses will need to be rapid and comprehensive to prevent the most severe impacts. A key milestone in global climate governance is to assess progress on adaptation. To-date, however, there has been negligible robust, systematic synthesis of progress on adaptation...

Sea‐level rise sits at the frontier of usable climate climate change research, because it involves natural and human systems with long lags, irreversible losses, and deep uncertainty. For example, many of the measures to adapt to sea‐level rise involve infrastructure and land‐use decisions, which can have multigenerational lifetimes and will furthe...

What can a lowly lichen reveal about a grisly murder case? Which common clothing item requires 5000 gallons of water to create? Where is the best place for a pilot to crash a malfunctioning airplane? Chockful of interesting trivia and thoughtful scholarship, the books on this year's fall reading list—reviewed by alumni of the AAAS Science and Techn...

Reliable estimates of externality costs—such as the costs from premature mortality from exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) —are critical for policy analysis. To facilitate broader analysis, several datasets of social costs of air quality have been produced by a set of reduced complexity models (RCMs). Using the tabulated marginal costs der...

Purpose of Review This special issue on “Bridging Research and Policy on Climate Change and Conflict” brings together the results of a 2018 workshop organized by the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and the Wilson Center with six papers that address different aspects of the translation of the research on climate change and conflict to policy a...

This article evaluates the effect of energy conservation policies and carbon mitigation efforts on reducing health damage in China’s building sector, which has been long ignored. The study bases on both national and provincial levels. To evaluate the health damage effect, we use domestic data by region to ensure the reliability of the evaluation. R...

Purpose of Review Researchers from five social science disciplines—anthropology, criminology, economics, geography, and political science—review the literature on climate change and conflict, focusing on the contributions since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fifth Assessment Report. Recent Findings These authors find little...

State governments in the United States are well placed to identify opportunities for mitigation and the needs for adaptation to climate change. However, the cost of these efforts can have important implications for budgets that already face pressures from diverse areas such as unfunded pensions and growing health care costs. In this work, the curre...

To facilitate the use of nuclear energy globally, small modular reactors (SMRs) may represent a viable alternative or complement to large reactor designs. One potential benefit is that SMRs could allow for more proliferation resistant designs, manufacturing arrangements, and fuel-cycle practices at widespread deployment. However, there is limited w...

Rapid expansion of population and income growth in developing countries, such as India, is increasing the demand for many goods and services, including four-wheeled passenger cars. Passenger cars provide personal mobility; however, they also have negative implications for human wellbeing from increased air pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHG). Her...

Climate change and armed civil conflict are both linked to socioeconomic development, although conditions that facilitate peace may not necessarily facilitate mitigation and adaptation to climate change. While economic growth lowers the risk of conflict, it is generally associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions and costs of climate mitigat...

The magnitude, shape, and degree of certainty in the association between long-term population exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5 ) and the risk of premature death is one of the most intensely studied issues in environmental health. For regulatory risk analysis, this relationship is described quantitatively by a concentration-respons...

An ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) facility produces electrical power without generating carbon dioxide (CO2) by using the temperature differential between the reservoir of cold water at greater depths and the shallow mixed layer on the ocean surface. As some of the best sites are located far from shore, one option is to ship a high-energy c...

Autonomous vehicles (AVs)—vehicles that operate without real-time human input—are a potentially disruptive technology. If widely adopted, there is the potential for significant impacts on the energy and environmental characteristics of the transportation sector. This paper provides an outline of key drivers likely to influence the magnitude and dir...

Work conducted at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) has advanced a vision for small modular reactors (SMR) with a tightly controlled fuel cycle. This involves SMRs with sealed fuel compartments that would not give users access to nuclear materials. In addition, these SMRs would be produced in a “hub and spoke” ar...

Turbocharged direct injection (TDI) diesel and hybridized electric gasoline (HEV) vehicles provide higher fuel economy, but have higher manufacturing costs and sell at higher prices than conventional gasoline vehicles. All other attributes being equal, rational consumers expect to recover this price premium in fuel savings over the vehicle lifetime...

Generators installed for backup power during blackouts could help satisfy peak electricity demand; however, many are diesel generators with nonnegligible air emissions that may damage air quality and human health. The full (private and social) cost of using diesel generators with and without emission control retrofits for fine particulate matter (P...

In a restructured electricity market, utility-scale energy storage technologies such as advanced batteries can generate revenue by charging at low electricity prices and discharging at high prices. This strategy changes the magnitude and distribution of air quality emissions and the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We evaluate the social costs...

Existing generators installed for backup during blackouts could be operated during periods of peak electricity demand, increasing grid reliability and supporting electricity delivery. Many generators, however, have non-negligible air emissions and may potentially damage air quality and harm human health. To evaluate using these generators, we compa...

Natural resources, and diamonds especially, are commonly believed to play a significant role in the onset and duration of armed civil conflict. Although there is ample case study evidence that diamonds and similar resources have been used by rebel groups to finance fighting, there are few systematic empirical studies assessing the role of lootable...

While territory, oil, and water are frequently mentioned as resources likely to promote interstate conflict, diamonds have emerged as a prominent factor in explanations of civil war. In this article, the authors report on a new database on diamond deposits and production and analyze the relationship between diamonds and armed conflict incidence. Th...

Contaminated land is a global concern and can be considered a major barrier to sustainable development. The purpose of this article is to examine how the technological, economic, environmental, social, legal, and political framework of contaminated sites and the current remediation strategies hinder progress toward sustainability. Conflicts between...

The objective of this study was to employ radiochemical methods to assess the importance and extent of the readsorption and redistribution of lead in the standards, measurement and testing programme’s (SM&T) sequential extraction procedure. Step-wise tests indicated that 60% to over 90% of the lead extracted from the exchangeable fraction was reads...

Conflicts are spatially distributed, as are natural resources that may fuel these conflicts. The current measures for natural resources, however, are aggregated to country level, and recent empirical research on conflict has not accounted for the location of the natural resources in relation to the conflict area. In this paper, we show how natural...

Meeting electricity demand during the 200 hours of greatest use each year is costly and challenging, especially in transmission constrained urban centers. Allowing installed backup and emergency generators to sell electricity for profit during peak demand and participate in the installed capacity (ICAP) market could lower the price of electricity a...

Conflicts are spatially distributed, as are natural resources that may fuel these conflicts. The current measures for natural resources are indirect and aggregated such as primary commodity revenue as a fraction of total GDP. For this work, a new approach for analysing the relationship between natural resources and conflict is utilized: disaggregat...

This work was made possible by funding from the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), the Research Council of Norway (RCN), and the Norwegian Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (NTFESSD). Infomine provided significant as...