CS/INFO  6702 Topics in Computational Sustainability

Computer Science and Information Science

Cornell University

 

Spring 2013

 

Instructor: Carla Gomes

Faculty Team: Jon Conrad and Carla Gomes

Researchers: Theo Damoulas and Bistra Dilkina

 

Guest Speakers: Ole Amundsen (Conservation Fund), Bistra Dilkina (Cornell), Stefano Ermon (Cornell), Angela Fuller (Cornell), Steve Kelling (Cornell), David Schneider (Cornell), and Andrea Wiggins (Cornell).

 

Course Assistants: Ronan Le Bras and Ryan Finseth

Time: T Tr 1:25-2:40 pm.

Location:   110 Hollister Hall

Grade options and credits: Letter or S/U; 4 credits 

Web page: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs6702/2013sp/

Office hours:

By appointment, via email:

Carla Gomes – gomes@cs.cornell.edu

Jon Conrad – jmc16@cornell.edu

Ronan Le Bras –  lebras@cs.cornell.edu

Ryan Finseth – rmf82@cornell.edu

 

Project Meetings:

 

Individual or team meetings with instructor and/or TAs to discuss ideas for reaction paper and projects.

Location of Meetings: 5160 Upson Hall. 1st date for project meetings:  Tuesday Feb 12th  (1:25-2:40PM).

After Feb 14th regular project meetings on Thursdays (1:25-2:40PM).

 

Schedule the meeting ahead of time (lebras@cs.cornell.edu or rmf82@cornell.edu)

 

 

Overview

Computational Sustainability is an emerging field that aims to apply techniques from computer science, information science and related disciplines (e.g., engineering,  operations research, applied mathematics, and statistics) to help manage the balance of environmental, economic, and societal needs for sustainable development. The focus of Computational Sustainability is on developing computational and mathematical models, methods, and tools for a broad range of sustainability related applications: from decision making and policy analysis concerning the management and allocation of resources to the design of new sustainable techniques, practices and products. The range of problems that fall under Computational Sustainability is therefore rather wide, encompassing computational challenges in disciplines as diverse as environmental sciences, economics, sociology, and biological and environmental engineering.

The main goal of the course is to identify interesting computational research questions concerning sustainability problems and more generally we hope the course will provide additional insights towards the understanding of the boundaries and central methodologies in Computational Sustainability.

 

Topics:

 

The course is meant to provide a high-level perspective on different topics including: crowdsourcing, citizen science, human computation, educational games, agent-based models, game theory, constraint satisfaction and optimization problems, probabilistic reasoning and inference, machine learning methods, and dynamical models. The course includes examples of sustainability topics concerning natural resource protection, economics and human behavior, climate, energy resources, and human-built systems and land use.

This is a project-oriented course.
For examples of topics see previous offerings of the course: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs6702/2010sp/ and  http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs6702/2011sp/

 

Course Work

 

The course work consists of four components:

 

1.    Attendance and participation in the talks

2.    A reaction paper based on one or two papers on a particular  computational sustainability topic, a description of a research problem you are interested in, or a good annotated bibliography on a computational sustainability topic. More details here. Reaction paper write-up due Feb 19th

3.    A presentation to the class (based on 2).

4.    A final project, including an initial project proposal. Project Proposal due Mar 1st. The final projects will be presented during the last two class meetings, Tuesday 4/30 and Thursday 5/2. The presentations may be in powerpoint or poster format. Students are also required to submit a poster and a short paper on the project by 5pm May 17. The final paper should be 5-12 pages, and describe the problem, the approach, the results, and related work. Please submit the materials by email to Ronan Le Bras and Ryan Finseth. Sample posters to use as reference can be found here and here.

 

Grade option: 1, 2,  3, and 4 required.

S/U option: 1, 2, and 3 required.

Students are encouraged to form interdisciplinary groups.  

 

Project Meetings:

 

Individual or team meetings with instructor and/or TAs to discuss ideas for reaction paper and projects.

Location of Meetings: 5160 Upson Hall. 1st date for project meetings:  Tuesday Feb 12th  (1:25-2:40PM).

After Feb 14th regular project meetings on Thursdays (1:25-2:40PM). Schedule the meeting ahead of time.

 

Examples of Projects:

                           Landscape connectivity

                           Species Distributions

                           Citizen Science for Bird Conservation

                           Materials Discovery  (e.g. for Fuel Cells) - phase map identification

                                    models and algorithms

                                    human computation and crowdsourcing

                           Management of Batteries of Electrical Car

                                    models and algorithms

                                    crowdsourcing route data

                           Management of Natural resources (e.g., forests and fisheries)

                           Design of agronomic experiments

                           Climate: impact of reforestation

 

 

 

More details on the reaction paper, project proposal, and final project will be posted as the semester progresses. Students will be encouraged to work in interdisciplinary groups for the final project.

 

Lectures

 

Introduction to CS 6702 and Computational Sustainability

Slides: Course mechanics; Intro to Computational Sustainability

 

Computational Sustainability Games  Slides

 

EBird: Citizen Science for Bird Conservation  Slides

 

Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities Slides

 

 

 

Student Presentations: Reaction Papers

 

Poaching and the Protection of an Endangered Species: A Game-Theoretic Approach (Adrian Lopes)

 

Potential Applications of Mechanisms Used in Games-with-a-Purpose for Computational Sustainability (Efe Gencer)

 

Population size estimation of black bears (Catherine Sun)

 

Data-center energy consumption patterns (Mark Reitblatt)

 

User experience research for Okekey : a password encryption system, for a mobile banking application for remote and

underdeveloped regions (Amit Gupta)

 

 

 

Readings

 

Computational Sustainability: Computational Methods for a Sustainable Environment, Economy, and Society.  Carla Gomes.  The Bridge, National Academy of Engineering, Volume 39, Number 4, Winter 2009. PDF

 

Machine Learning for Computational Sustainability. Dietterich, T. G., Dereszynski, E., Hutchinson, R. A., Sheldon, D. (2012). International Conference on Green Computing (IGCC-2012). PDF

 

Data on Wings. Rosner, H. Scientific American, Feb 2013. PDF

 

Local dispersal promotes biodiversity in a real-life game of rock–paper–scissors. B. Kerr, M.A. Riley, M.W. Feldman and B.J.M. Bohannan,  Nature, vol. 418, pp. 171-174, 2002. PDF

Space--The Final Frontier for Economists and Elephants. E. Bulte, R. Damania, L. Gillson and K. Lindsay,  Science, vol. 306, pp. 420-421, October 15. 2004. PDF