 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for our polar research board fall meeting today is a topical session focused on knowledge to action in the polar regions. I'm April Melvin I'm currently the acting director of the polar research board, and I'm just going to cover a few things before I hand it over to our moderator for today's session. So first for a housekeeping item. If please take a look at how your name appears in the zoom participants list and ensure that it shows your full name will be using the raise hand function and the chat function and it'll be helpful to to make sure that everyone that's participating knows who they're they're talking with and you can just rename yourself by hovering over your name clicking that those three dots and choosing to rename yourself if necessary. Please stay muted unless you're speaking to minimize any background noise that we might hear. We encourage you to have your video on when you're speaking as bandwidth allows. As I mentioned we will be using both the raise hand function and the chat so please feel free to utilize both of those to contribute to the conversations today. And last if you need any assistance you can send a chat directly to read a gaskins or send her an email at the email listed on the screen. Thank you very much. Thank you for your presentations for conduct today. The National Academies are committed to fostering a professional respectful inclusive environment where all participants can participate fully in an atmosphere free of harassment and discrimination. We look to you all to be partners in this commitment with us today. So I know that you feel that you have not been retreat been treated respectfully. And we will address it as quickly as we can. You can also visit the Academy's website on our policy on harassment to read more about this. And last I'd like to acknowledge that the National Academies Washington DC office is physically housed on the traditional land of the Nacanj tank and Pascataway peoples past and present. And it's a tribute to the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations and the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations, and this land. I'd now like to turn it over to merit Tourette ski who will moderate today's session merit is a professor in the Department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, and serves as the director of Arctic Security for the center of the initiatives at the university. She's also a member of the polar research board. Barrett over to you. Thanks so much and welcome everyone in particular welcome to our speakers today. Really, really appreciate you being here. I'm excited for today's session on use inspired research or knowledge to action. Welcome up in almost meeting we've had over the past couple of years and, you know, I'm happy that we are now paying attention and having a chance to dive a little bit deeper into this topic as it applies to polar regions in our work together today. So we're going to hear from a bunch of different perspectives focused on applied sciences and engineering there are certain other, you know, certainly other topics that we can explore in future meetings, but I think we're going to have some good conversations I want to turn things over before we get started to Martin Jeffries the chair of the PRB who's going to provide us sort of a bird's eye view of the session today. Martin. Okay, thank you merit and thank you for agreeing to the session at rather late notice when we had somebody their schedule turned out not to allow them to do this. If you could bring up the slides. Thank you. Okay, so this, this session reflects my interest in the topic of knowledge to action in the polar regions, or use inspired research as merit described at a moment ago. So last week on Tuesday when we met merit also use the term public interest research, but basically what it's about is moving your research, if you care to embark on that journey moving it up, moving it beyond the standard currency of basic research in a peer reviewed paper in some respectable journal as determined by you, your research community perhaps your dean or director. I first came across the term knowledge to action in Montreal Quebec in April 2012 this was the, the final act of the previous international polar year, a big conference in Montreal I seem to recall it was the entire week five days. And then next, please. And then I think it was later in the year when the polar research board published this report on lessons and legacies of IP why 2007 2008. There is a section in their chapter five called knowledge to action. As members of the PRB current members we should perhaps all be reading this report and become familiar with it, as we embark on developing and executing our contribution to the next international polar year for 2032 33 and I'll talk about that in a moment. I think it worked by the way I wish I was that good today never mind at five, age five next please. So let's expand a little on the Montreal conference knowledge to action. This conference described itself as an opportunity to address the translation of new polar scientific findings into an evidence based agenda for action that will influence policy that will guide activities in an enhanced stewardship of the polar regions. All very wonderful motherhood and apple pie type stuff. But next slide or next little piece, I would say that's too late. You've, you've had international polar year you've generated new knowledge and understanding and now you have solutions looking for problems. I should have been doing that probably seven, eight, nine years previously to find the problems that need your particular knowledge and understanding and skills. Find the people to work with to develop the deliverables the products the services and whatever. Next, please. This, this to me comes as no surprise, having been a program director at NSF and a program officer at the Office of Naval Research NSF most people on this call familiar with NSF. And it's broader impacts criterion one of two criteria for judging the excellence of proposals and whether they're worthy of funding. And as a program director, and also as a reviewer and panelists, quite separately. And in broader impact statements to see what I consider to be throw away remarks or comments about what this research will do. It might be to improve Arctic model predictions or improve Arctic policy making decision making. Well, if you're going to say that I want to know who you're going to work with. In the case of a model or model say perhaps your research on sea ice albedo could lead to an improvement in the parameterization of albedo in models. So, who are you going to work with to develop that parameterization tested in the model or models and see if it works and improves the process understanding or the projections of the future of sea ice. Policy making and decision making. Who are you going to partner with who did you talk to and what's your plan for helping develop that policy or improving decision making. Similarly, in the navy and the naval relevant section of our office of naval research proposals. It would be the same thing and I would often asked myself, well, did you talk to a master chief petty officer to find out what the fleet really needs. Did you happen to bump into an admiral in the checkout line at the supermarket and he told you this is what the navy needs. Tell us your plan for turning your knowledge and understanding into action, or a deliverable. So we have now an initial concept notes for the next international polar year 2032 33 less than 10 years away now before it begins. And if you haven't read the concept note I hope you will please do because we have a session on IP why when we meet on Thursday, 2pm Eastern. It's a very general concept note that we're told will be expanded into a longer document to be released early next year 2024. But even at this stage the initial concept note makes promises about core commitments and the key impacts generation of new knowledge. This looks rather like the goal of the Montreal IP why conference. So, I would, I would suggest that while we still have time. Nine years or less before the next international polar year begins let's avoid some of the mistakes that were made previously, and work to really actually realize some of the promises that are already being made in these descriptions of the next international polar year. Next please. So the first. The first thing to do it seems to me is identify the problems and I and develop the collaborations that are necessary to deliver on the promises that are already being made. So what do you do. So find out what people and communities need what do they want. What's most important to them. Similarly, what do policy and decision makers need. We're going to help them to make good decisions and implement good policy. Next please. And finally, talking of collaborations and developing deliverables. Working with these different stakes and the right hold rights holders that are described in the paragraph in the top right corner. So that looks to me like convergence as defined by NSF bringing together multiple disciplines to work on hard problems or societal problems to meet need or needs. So perhaps and I throw this out. So as an idea that the next IP why, or at least the US contribution to the next IP why could be defined by convergence and or co production, which look on paper, basically same the same to be the same thing to me. So the convergence and or co production that genuinely brings together the stake and rights holder groups as named to solve problems together and deliver the products and services that are needed. So we have a great opportunity here in the next international polar year to really push the cutting edge it seems to me on research that delivers solutions meets needs solves problems, and so on. So please is transition back to merit to resume her responsibilities as session moderator. Thank you. Thanks so much Martin for really sort of setting the stage well. We do have a few minutes I'm wondering if anyone around the zoom squares has some clarifying questions or food for thought questions for Martin. I'm excited to consider at this point. You're welcome to raise your hand on zoom or just unmute yourself. Well I just think Martin's right about us doing our homework on this and, you know, making sure that all those lesson learned, they were valuable that we really keep that in mind as we go forward so I'm just glad we're having these conversations early Merrick could I just add one comment to what I've already said, not most speaking, as a university leader reminded me, and I might. This is provocative perhaps and maybe it will offend I hope not. But I think one of the problems we have with knowledge to action. And most of that knowledge and understanding is created in universities, government labs. We have a problem with the reward system the incentive system that basically university administrators they can count peer reviewed papers. And that's the primary currency for promotion and tenure, as well as grants and what they are worth and how much indirect cost recovery. They bring in to make up for the money that the states certainly are not investing in the state university systems. So we need to change. And we can't do this overnight but universities really need to be thinking about their rewards and incentive systems. And they might actually realize more commercialization and income from knowledge to action in their university. I'd like to sort of echo and also table that for a future PRB conversation this has come up in the past how can the PRB and the national academies more generally provide some best practices for broadening and revising tenure and promotion standards as someone at the University of Colorado who has you know cracked open some of those practices and policies within a couple of units. It can be done and it doesn't have to take years to revise so we do have the ability to kind of set some good precedence. One final question before I see a good thumbs up alright like it. Anybody else want to weigh in before we keep rolling. Yes, awesome. Thanks. I'm just curious who if you know the stakeholders that you might start to engage with on this do you does the PRB because I'm new do you have a list of stakeholders that you've traditionally been in touch with and working with already. Martin do you have a good answer for Jenny I think that was directed at you. Great. I don't have a very good answer off the top of my head but the, the board staff would certainly be able to contribute to that. And again, it's maybe a topic that we could discuss further and future meetings about helping connect researchers with the policy makers and decision makers, and the tribes in Alaska, etc. Whoever the stakeholder or rights holder might be agreed. So we're going to start our summer meeting to maybe engage in some kind of a mapping exercise just to sort of document the, the flows of our current engagement so that might be something we return to. Wonderful thanks for getting us kicked off on the thought provoking note Martin, it's always great. I am really honored to introduce the rest of our panel today so we are going to have four presentations on really different topics stemming from this knowledge to action or use inspired research theme within polar research. Each talk will be between 15 and 20 minutes and hopefully we'll have time for a few clarifying questions after each presentation, but we have saved some room at the end of the session also for some group discussion. You are welcome to continue to use the chat box as openly as you wish and we can come back to any thoughts or ideas that you populate in that chat box. So our first presenter today is Jason wheel he's a research civil engineer at the US Army cold regions research and engineering lab or crel, and he will be presenting on the development of the South Pole traverse and Jason if you want to share your own slides that's great. Welcome. Thanks everybody really appreciate the opportunity to tell the story. I see quite a few familiar names and faces out there and I'm sure many of you know this already but we'll get into a few of the details perhaps here and hopefully it will kind of provoke some I think that follows on from Martin's introduction of, you know, how do we maybe adapt the system, the research system a bit to to produce timely and relevant solutions, especially in the world we live today, which is changing rather rapidly as we all know. I'll just introduce you real quick to. I work here at Greil and our remote sensing center of expertise. I've been here for about. Oh, it's getting on 2324 years. And one of the first projects. And then my hiring here back in 2001 or so was the South Pole traverse, and it has been entered. There have been multiple iterations of attempts for a traverse starting back in the in the 70s through the 80s and rather significantly in the mid 90s. The nut hadn't been cracked so to speak. And so the National Science Foundation was keen to find a better and more efficient way to resupply South Pole, especially in the context of the early 2000s when the new South Pole station was being constructed and resources were extremely coming from a transportation and infrastructure perspective. So kind of with that is the, is the, is the step we take off into the, into the discussion with diverse. Next slide please. So, Martin wanted to be sure that we kind of illustrated the DoD research process the Department of Defense R&D process. I may be familiar with this, these terms 616263 all the way through 6-7. They're just no, it's just notation, DoD speak for the spectrum of research and development from basic research at 6-1 up through applied and technology development which is 6-1 to all the way to 6-2, 3, and 4. So I'm going to demonstrate and validate and 6-4. And then at the 6-7 end is you have an operational system that you can deploy to the field. I've placed the TRL, the technical readiness levels at the bottom, which is a NASA term and we will be hearing about that as well today. In the middle, the words there are kind of what the OMB circular that describes basic research would, how it would map to the basic research from the DoD as well as the technical readiness levels from NASA. So maybe we can all be speaking the same language because I know it can be very difficult. But that's generally how it looks in an hour world and the DoD world. If you'll see there's a curve on there with dollar signs. And that is simply that at the basic research level, and I think everybody on this call probably is extremely familiar with the fact that there aren't very many dollars there. But when we get out to fielding stuff, it's really expensive, especially in this day and age with technology. And so my discussion here is, hey, how can we take advantage of that heavy economic end, the development deployment end. And maybe leverage some of those dollars to conduct basic research. And that's, that's what we'll talk about here. Next slide please. So this is what I call the DoD loop. This is how we conduct basic research on the top of this screen. And it's basically we move step by step from defining a research problem, or in our case the DoD has a research need. And they publish those and pretty much everybody has access to those. And we move into the proposal writing process. We conduct basic research. And there's stage gates along the way. And if it looks good, then we move, we'll get some more money in 626364. We'll do some applied research and engineering and innovation. And then at that point, most of the people in the laboratories and entities with which I work, step out of this and technology transfer mostly enters the public sector and private company partnerships. And then we just do it all over again, right? We get to that end stage 6.7 or TRL 9 or wherever you want to call it. And then, okay, we go back and we work on a, maybe a totally different problem. And we write a proposal and we start all over again. And that's, that's kind of the loop that we talk about. And I'm going to try to explain maybe breaking this up a little bit could be more, more effective. Next slide please. So here we go. What is the South Pole Traverse? It's pretty simple. It's an 1100 mile trip from McMurdo Station to the South Pole Station. We begin at about sea level. And we run across the Ross Ice Shelf, rise up the Leverick Glacier to somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 feet and arrive at the South Pole Station. Now up until 2005, 6, 7, the only way to resupply South Pole Station was with the LC-130 aircraft, which you see there on your screen. They're old, they're expensive, and they're extremely inefficient when it comes to delivering fuel. They are currently approaching the end of their service life. I think many folks here are aware that the DOD is trying to figure out if they can resource development of a new or replacement system for the LC-130. In our metrics in developing the South Pole Traverse, we determined that they burned about three gallons for every two gallons that they delivered to South Pole. And when you have a million gallons worth of storage at South Pole, you can see quickly how that adds up to an awful lot of money that you're just flying shuttle missions back and forth from McMurdo at the South Pole Station. And these days I think an LC is somewhere around $12,000 or $13,000 a flight hour. If you say among that's basically a term, a military term for chartering an LC-130. So as you can see, extremely expensive. Next slide please. So the challenge for us was to change this whole paradigm of in particular fuel delivery to South Pole. And if anybody's a baseball fan or player, there was a book and a movie Moneyball a few years ago, it's basically how do you do this completely differently with extreme constraints? And for us the constraints were logistics, dollar signs, environment, you know, really cold, dark a lot of the year. And then just the whole overarching perspective of this is a National Science Foundation. This is the Antarctic continent. We need to do things the right way. We can't be dirty. We can't be spilling fuel and all of that. So it was a highly visible activity. And this method can be applicable to all sorts of different logistics and science and operations issues, especially in extreme climates and environments. What we wanted to do was to haul these loads over unprepared snow. So we're not plowing the snow or not grooming the snow. None of that. We can't afford to do that for 1100 miles. And resupply the South Pole Station, as well as perhaps have a new asset available for science camps in the remote interior of Antarctica. And we do, of course, justify all of this with both efficiency gains and costs. So there are typical ROI that everybody likes to see. So can we save money? Can we hedge our bets on future cost increases? Can we lower our fuel consumption and emissions? Can we carry oversized now weight cargo that can't currently get to the South Pole or in the interior because it has to only fit into an LC 130. So we have that very limited air resource that is outliving its expected life so that it can be used for high value science activities instead of just shuttering fuel back and forth. And of course, our hands were tied from day one or marching orders where you can only use existing proven technology. And you'll see quite quickly that became problematic for us. Next slide please. Oh, here you go. This is the existing proven technology that we were supposed to use when we started out from day one. And the upper right, you'll see there are those are fuel tanks. There's 3000 gallons of fuel in each of those tanks. That tractor could not pull four tanks. Interestingly enough, it requires three, two of those tanks just to get to South Pole. So if you can't tow four and you can burn two on your way, maybe you deliver 3000 gallons for burning six. That sounds kind of like an LC 130 or worse, right? So this is how we started our endeavor. And I can remember being down in Naranick about 2002 or 2003 and testing these with the tractor. And in the first day of tests, I looked to money colleagues and I said, you know, if we don't change this, we should go home right now. There's no way this is going to be successful. And for sure, we had to go back to the drawing board, but all of this kit needed to be tossed aside. It was just completely ineffective. It was not going to work. So here we are at like 67 or TRL nine. And already we got to go back to 616263. Let's start at the traverse. Next slide, please. So how do we fix this problem? So we need to make another investment in kit and hardware, because the stuff we have doesn't work. We need to increase the amount of payload we can carry per tractor. We need to make it a quick trip. This needs to be extremely reliable in an extreme environment. We can't have breakdowns. The total costs of the kit need to be reasonable. The operating costs need to be even more so. I mean, I guess if you're competing with $13,000 of flight hour, you have a little bit of room in there, but still, I mean, we're talking about $500, $600,000 tractors and we need eight per fleet and we have three fleets so it adds up pretty quickly. So we had to look into basic things like mobility research of tractors tracks on snow and sled technology. But the tractors were given, we were not going to have caterpillar or case or somebody redesigned tractors just for this. There's just no money in it. So one thing we could affect were the slides. Next slide, please. So, as I said, this is where you break the loop. We were already out on the technology transfer and we had to go all the way back to redefine the problem to be solved and to conduct more basic research. Next slide, please. So working with NSF. I'm just going to give you the solution first, I think most people here are aware of that solution. So working from the top left, you'll see the existing tank sleds stuck in the snow. So the slide just below that where we figured well if we make the skis bigger and we get the tank sleds outside of the skis, the outside of the rucks of the tractor, they kind of float on top. So now we can actually tow for these tanks with one tractor. On the right, you'll see we moved. Well, there's these things called bladders that are flexible and sleds that slip over the snow fairly effectively. And if we can tow those, all of a sudden we have cheaper equipment. This is far cheaper than steel. It's much, much lighter so there's no tear weight so we can tow more fuel. So you go from four steel tanks at 3000 gallons a piece to eight bladders at 3000 gallons a piece. And everybody knows a little bit about, especially I hope in the polar regions knows a little bit about snow sliding friction skates and sliding friction and all that. Well what if we make the fuel a little warmer does it slide a little better. So, well let's try black ladders and we'll soak in that solar energy and warm the fuel up a little bit and perhaps we can slide more efficiently. Keep in mind this is like a 10 year process in one slide, but but we got there. Next slide please. So, these are the lightweight flexible fuel bladders sleds as we constructed them early on with a tan bladders. You'll see that they're, they're, they're pretty simple. But this was a very challenging endeavor. The bladders thankfully were produced for the military and already existed. We were able to work with a company in New Jersey to kind of reinforce these in certain areas to make them work better for us in this environment. The equipment was tested in the laboratory as you see in a second here but this was by no means simple, and from the perspective of, it's an elegant solution, but it required a lot of work to make sure this was going to both be safe and environmentally friendly cannot have bladders this exploding randomly on the ice sheet in Antarctica. It just, it was unacceptable so there were environmental implications that we had to watch out for here. All right, please. So the theory here and we have a whole bunch of papers on this, but I was informed not to use equation so I won't. I like pictures better. So we can take the skis and we can mold them to the terrain conditions. We lose the high local ground pressure and sinking and dragging in the snow, and, and the slamming motion over the peaks of those just trees which could also cause a problem in rupturing either the bladders or the tank slides. And so, and also being flexible and lighter weight materials reduces both weight and cost. So the longer ski length you have the more efficient the ski becomes and your sliding resistance goes down. And the steel has a high heat conductive conductivity. So that snow sled interface that you want to keep warm. If that cools rapidly, then you increase your drag resistance. Oh, and then the other thing is you got to make stuff durable. One thing with steel and the cold is extremely durable. And these other materials have to keep up with steel. Next slide please. So here we did we conducted a test of a 3000 gallon fuel bladder here at crel in our test basin we drain the water out. We threw a we built a modified to Struvia plywood, and we blew a bunch of snow in there, brought a bladder sled in a big winch and cooled things down blew some snow and told this back and forth 10,000 or 20,000 times all in a live video feed from the laboratory back to NSF headquarters that in. And so anybody could watch it 24 hours a day and see how things are going and it was a resounding success it was it was actually really impressive. We weren't quite sure it was going to work this way, but it did thankfully. Next slide please. So there was a lot of other science involved here. We had to go back to the drawing board on how do you actually measure sled resistance on a piece of equipment this large in Antarctica so we developed the system where we would instrument the sled with thermistors all the way down the length of it. So we measure measure the constant we measure the temperature of the snow slide interface. And, and you'll see in a minute here, it was kind of interesting how that all worked. We also had instrument men and load cells and shackles for the tractors towing so we can measure the resistance of the sled train. So we can back out how much power that it's going to the tractor tractor is going to the tractor overcoming the snow resistance and the sleds resistance sliding over the snow. So it's just all these metrics go into develop these equations and these relationships, so we can understand the impact of snow surface temperature, fuel temperature air temperatures, solar irradiance we measured all of these things, how deep were the ruts of the tractors and the slides. So this is a science based traverse, because it was the only way we're going to be able to make it, make it work and fortunately we had good people everywhere. People on the ground that people in SF making the decisions going about for funding that all understood that this was a rigorous test that we needed to, to undertake here to prove that the investment was worth making for such a, I mean, a critical thing. There's no point where failure was not an option because we invested so much in it and we're so close. There were a whole lot of other factors going in here. I don't know if many of you know about the murder shear zone and the crevasse as we had to avoid and fill and find a blast. There are a lot of other things going on in parallel with this particular mobility effort. Next slide please. Jason I'm sorry to wrap. I'm going to wrap by about one more minute and we'll have no problem. So, here's our relationship with snowflake friction and just one second on that next slide please. And again, these are the black bladder slides that were instrumented and and these ultimately prove very effective. Next slide. We had other challenges. The plastic got cold and it shattered. We had to work with plastic manufacturing facilities design whole new plastic mixes for this diverse so our sleds wouldn't fall apart. Next slide. And we had to modify an ASTM tensile test to test the plastic strength because the existing test wouldn't work at these cold temperatures and the test equipment wouldn't survive the cold temperature so we had to completely redesign this next slide. Well, and this is kind of the takeaway. In the beginning, we could only tow maybe four of those steel tank slides. And in the end, we could tow 12 to 16 of the bladders and both for less of a tear weight and a far far less cost. Next slide please. So here are the benefits in the economics. You can deliver close to a million pounds per swing. The operational costs for about $3 million a year, airlift costs for about $5 million a year. So if you can bring two to $3 million per swing back into NSF coffers every year. That's a whole lot more science you can do. So 2.3 years worth of capital payback, who wouldn't make that investment. Right. And you've got your LC 130s you can use for higher value missions, and oh, the traverse burn emits about less than 1% carbon of LC 130s per delivery. Next slide. Okay, last thing here in, in working on this and assuming snowflake sled friction theory was a whatever was what it was for the last 80 years. Turns out that's actually not correct. We were not able to develop a lubrication layer between the sleds and the snow's snow interface. It just did not exist. And we've published some scientific journal articles on this next slide please. And at the end of the day, we are not convinced. And we do not think that self lubrication is the dominant mechanism that governs snow sliding friction, and the same as well with skates and ice. So, my proposal here is that in the future when we conduct activities scientific research operations and everything in between. We need to keep coming back to the table and determining where we are in this in these relationships and perhaps make it a bit easier to go back and, and drive some basic research dollars to solving problems mid midstream instead of waiting to the end till it's a failure. And I'll stop there I'm sorry I went over. That's great Jason what a fascinating topic and like you get extreme creativity kudos for all the logistics you had to jump through. I love the calculations for sort of return on investment and I think that might be an important topic for discussion amongst this group is you know how are we going to show the, you know the return in creative ways so that we can keep investing in this work. As we transition slides to our next speaker does anybody have a clarifying question for Jason we will also have a chance to return to group discussion at the end of today's session, but one quick burning question. I have questions but they're not clarifying should I wait. Do you have a quick question. No, I think they're not quick. No, why don't we hold that then for the end. Jason, I did see a couple remarks about the carbon emission reduction in the chat box so you'll get a kick out of that. Thanks so much. Okay, our second speaker today is Tony Martino who is an instrument scientist for Atlas or the advanced topographic laser altimeter system on the ISAT to mission I think he's going to talk to us about readiness levels on that mission. Take it away Tony, we have Tony I don't see everyone on one screen. Tony you're muted. Not anymore. I can't hear you now I'm just trying to find the right screen to share. And I think it will be. I think it's this one. You see my title page. We see a picture. We don't see a title but there's a pretty picture. Okay, that's the background image for the stream that I was trying to share, but it has windows open on it. I'll try this again. For some reason it does not want to let me share it. Okay, what. Why don't you go ahead and share my slides. We might we might run into an issue with a with a hyperlink that doesn't work from outside the NASA domain but we'll deal with that when we get there. Okay, so if you go ahead into. Okay. So I'm Tony Martino. Optical physicist I've worked at Goddard Space Flight Center for 30 some years. And I'm going to be talking about how the role that technology, technology readiness levels played in the development of the of I sat to And specifically of the Atlas instrument on I sat to. This chart is about the I sat to mission. So this mission was launched in, in September of 2018 after about 12 years of development. It was follow on a follow on to the original I sat which flew in the early 2000s, early to late 2000s decade. And it's, it's science, it has one instrument on it which is the advanced topographic laser altimeter system. And if you look at the pictures in the lower right the you see basically one box stacked on top of another the upper box is the instrument and the lower box is the spacecraft boss. So the scientific objection objectives are to measure changes in ice sheet elevation to measure sea ice free board. That is how high is the surface of the ice above the sea surface and to measure vendor vegetation canopy height. This year we required on orbit operation we've now been in orbit for five years and it looks like it's going to be in operation for for many more years after that. The orbit is about 500 kilometers altitude inclination 92 degrees so it gets up to 88 North and 88 South. It repeats tracks every 91 days so that we can see changes seasonally and annually in the elevations that we measure. Next chart please. This is what it does and it does this in six places, because it has six laser beams. So if you see see the, the green line going from Atlas to the Earth's surface. That's a range measurement that Atlas makes using using the time of flight of laser pulses. And also from GPS. We know exactly where the spacecraft is. And by, and by looking at stars we can tell exactly what direction we're pointing. If you work out the geometry you can get the elevation relative to a reference ellipsoid and that's the basic data product that we publish to the is that elevation. And then there are many higher level data products where the individual elevation measurements are combines together to do studies of the of the the changes of the changes in the ice sheets the sea ice and so on. The next chart. And you can use yourselves by looking at the left but left part of this but I'm not going to go through it. Key vital statistics are regarding the laser. It's green fires 10 kilohertz which is a much higher repetition rate than the then on the previous I sat mission as a narrower pulse width. It's a much smaller pulse energy, but about the same, the same average power as, as on the previous missions, and has six beams rather than one. The receiver has a has a telescope slightly less than one meet one meter diameter. It's a non counting receiver rather than an analog receiver which was new new technology for space although that had flown on airborne platforms, and it has a very, very precise timing resolution. So all that required some new technology. Next chart please. So now I'll talk about technology readiness levels. And if you can open that link. It's a link to our system engineering handbook that in which the technology readiness levels are defined. Okay, are you seeing it. Rita, can you try clicking again and skip the verification. Sure. Are you guys not seeing the charts or anything. Seeing the slide. Okay. Change the share to go to the new window. Okay, I think it's frozen hold on one second. Okay, well, why are you trying to do that I will I will describe the the most important, the most important technology readiness levels. Level six is the most important one that's the one that we that essentially is the the criterion for which we that's the criterion for using something in a in a mission. Ah, there we go. Okay, so level one is base is is basic principles. That's that's not something that you would you if that's all you know you wouldn't use that for a mission. If you go on down to level two. You're starting to get from basic knowledge to technology here. But again that that's that's pretty minimal for proposing to use something in a flight mission. Next if you scroll on down to level three. That's where it starts to become credible that you have a proof of concept. You need to be better than that to pass one of the later design reviews, but you're starting to get credible. Scrolling on down level four. Now you've validated the technology in a laboratory environment at a breadboard level, which is, you're not using flight worthy materials or components but you've shown that the technology actually works in a laboratory in a laboratory environment, scrolling on down. You've now at level five use demo you've demonstrated that you can operate in a relevant environment, but not necessary, but but the materials are not necessarily what what you would use in an operational scenario. Scrolling on down to level six. This is where things really get real. There you've you've made a prototype and you've demonstrated it in a relevant environment and for NASA a relevant environment means something that simulates outer space. So it's working in a vacuum it's working in the thermal environment that you would see there. And by the time you're presenting your preliminary design. That's where you want to be. Scrolling on down to level seven. You've flown a prototype prototype device. You may or may not actually be at ever be at this level, so you'll often skip over it. Next level eight, the actual system that you want to fly has been qualified. And this is where you are once your flight hardware has has made it through all the pre flight testing. And finally, level nine is that you've actually flown it and it worked in space. So if we can go back to the charts. There we are yes. And as an instrument atlas was somewhere was trl four or five as a system when we chose the architecture is it had a similar instrument had flown, had been demonstrated on on aircraft but had, but no high rep rate photon counting altimeter had flown in space. So we did tr six trl six by our preliminary design review. For all components. And you can see there that we achieved the other trls as we went along. So the rest of this presentation I'm going to show where we were at at each of these different milestone reviews. Next chart. And with the mission concept review in in 2009. So the first thing we use these technology readiness reviews for was our cost estimate. Our cost to make cost estimating office has software you give them a spreadsheet like the one that I'm showing you here. This all the components mass power requirement. And over there in column you is the technology readiness level that we assess for each for each of these components, and they ingest this spreadsheet and they come up with a cost estimate. So that's the first place that we use technology readiness levels and components that we listed there are ranged in trl from two to nine. The ones that we listed there that were were level two, they were technically level two, but there was very little risk of being able to get them up higher. Some of the some of the others. Yeah, trying to read the laser for the laser is listed on this on this page of the spreadsheet we also listed that as a level two. And if you go to the next chart, you can see that it is identified as something that we're going to need to put some effort into to get it up to trl six before the next review. So on this on this chart, this is the first version of the system diagram looks a lot simpler than the one that I skipped over. We identified parts that are are less than six and parts that are greater than six. That was the key criterion. In a couple of cases we showed is both yellow and white, because we were trading between some low trl and some high trl options for those functions with it within the instrument layout. So here I'm going to focus for the rest of this I'm going to focus on the laser and the detector because they illustrate two different ways that this can come out. So both the laser and the detector for the laser there was no trl six option we had no choice but to bring something up to trl six for the detector we had different had a trl six option and we had some low trl options next chart. I don't need two minute warning. Okay, I'll make this fast. So, so we put together this roadmap for the laser development. Getting brassboard systems from multiple vendors and down selecting even how it actually turned out was that we just made a contract with one of those vendors and took it up to trl six next chart. And for the detector we also had this roadmap but we ended up choosing the high trl option which was a detector that that over 1000 of them had recently flown on the alpha magnetic spectrometer on the space station. So it was already at trl nine next chart. So then at preliminary design review next chart. We no longer considered the detectors low trl because we had chosen the higher trl option. The laser at that point was nearly a trl six because we had gone through a development process. We were in the process of doing the testing that would bring it up to trl six and in fact we had completed that testing a few months after this review when the mission had its preliminary design review next chart. Skip this. And skip this just shows that we went through a lot of different models to get to trl six. And that brings us to the critical design review now we're five years later. The one next chart by this time the laser was trl six. And we had mitigated all the risks that we had set out to mitigate next chart. Everything was in almost everything at that point. Well many many things at that point we already had in hand on the rest were in process of fabrication next chart. And here I pointed this was just to identify. There were a lot of things where we where we ended up having to do a lot of development that we had not identified at the mission concept review five years before. Those are identified with the lightning bolts. The yellow ones we thought it was going to be simple and it we ended up having to do a lot of development. The orange ones were things that we didn't even have in the design five years before. Next chart. So that brings so so then we finished building it that brought us to our pre environmental review. Next chart. And so that just shows we everything was put together next chart. We have been doing a life test on our laser at that point. And in fact one of those life tests is still running now. Next chart. And next chart. This just shows that all that just showed it all the components have been through environmental testing. And now this is to show you that getting to TRL six doesn't mean you're out of the woods. After during our thermal vacuum testing of the instrument. Something broke in the laser. And then as it turned out it was not anything to do with the laser physics that got us. It was some basic engineering of one of the mounts for one of the elements within the laser. It took us a year to find that diagnose it redesign repair. And get back to where we had been next chart. Only last slide. Okay. Okay. So we went through. And we finished environmental testing with the fixed laser. Next chart. Next chart. Shipped it next chart. Next chart. And so there you see the finished instrument it launched in 2018. I don't see the profile. The profiles of scientific data on the right, but you can see now that the laser is very slowly losing energy and we actually expect the instrument to be working well into the 2030s. And that's it. Awesome. Thank you for giving us that overview and sorry for the technical difficulties at the beginning. But yeah, we're glad you were able to give us that perspective as for transitioning slides. One burning question. That's truly clarifying from anyone. Otherwise we will save it for the end. Okay. All right, so let's postpone to our group discussion then. Again, thanks Tony. Our third speaker today. I'm going to be talking to Lila Alessa, who is a professor and co director of the center for resilient communities at the University of Idaho, and she's going to be speaking to us about the importance of building resilience in the Arctic through multiple ways of knowing such an important topic to many of us very near and dear to our hearts. Thank you, Lila, for being here. While these slides are being loaded up. I just want to say that I'm honored to be here, and I have some challenge questions for you. So ask yourself for all the technology we produce. And, oh my word, if you knew how much technology is sitting on shelves and warehouses. And I know that Martin and Jason both know how much that is. Why does it fall short in our adaptation processes. Why have we done so many efforts in the past and we have this expectation on paper that it should work, but it doesn't survive first contact with reality. Well, and this is something that speaks to the one truth that we have from an old community which I can now say. So I have a background in the special operations community, particularly working with indigenous and local communities around the world. And this is a truth, the first truth that humans are always more important than hardware. So we're going to shift gears here a bit, and we're going to talk about the knowledge to action or the K to a nexus. In the context of the role of indigenous and place based knowledge. So we go back to that first slide. The perfect thing you is that when we talk about what makes successful adaptation, we argue that local in place based knowledge, the context of that, and the use of technology in that context is the single variable determining the success or failure of adaptation, in other words, you can build the perfect piece of technology, but if it doesn't sit in the context of the local communities, then it is unlikely to succeed. Indigenous communities frame futures in ways that remote science cannot replicate or predict. Now when I say indigenous communities. We often talk about our first nations, or native communities in North America. However, as we've seen politics and a number of other factors start to rip people apart to start to polarize views. We have started to talk about the respect of indigenous peoples, and also talk about local peoples. For example, when I've worked with local communities in the UK. There are communities that remain relatively the same. For the last four 500 years, local knowledge is there as well. Indigenous and local people are often viewed also as, you know, let's go talk to the locals. They're not passengers in the knowledge to action process, rather they're partners and innovators, and that is the two way street, not only of localization so those blows of information, but also technology I don't have any technology in here with me, but also technology. The idea that technology essentially creates small worlds in a very complicated setting. When we say this we often talk about engagement with local indigenous communities in some cases as a checkbox like we got to do it in other cases because we want something out of that, but in all cases for successful engagement for true delivery of knowledge to action. We have to have a clear articulation of requirements, outcomes and contingencies that can be integrated. So let's go to the next slide. So I want you. This is this is a one of the studies are lots and lots of thousands of studies on this. And I found this one very, very interesting I think it's a fantastic study, and it is environmental climate researchers think they have local environment knowledge of local environment in the area, whereas local indigenous peoples have a greater a good understanding a very good understanding or an excellent understanding. So this is essentially their perceptions of what they have in terms of understanding local indigenous and what they have of their understanding. Why does this matter, because we off to realize success in whatever we're studying to data, or as Martin said initially, you know the number of papers we produce, and there is a real need for that to ensure that we have that pipeline of going through. There is also a very real need to understand that perception is so phenomenally critical in ensuring that knowledge to action is successful that we have at multiple scales. In this case, this is the perception of in this case Western science practitioners. And when we say Western science practitioners, we mean those of us, including myself, who were trained in a, the scientific method in a structured approach to gaining knowledge and understanding, which is very good. Is it the only way. No, is it a complete way. So, these are perceptions by these researchers of themselves. You can see the expectations in column B, and of how they perceive their indigenous people to have that set of understandings. Let's go to the next slide we can come back to a couple of things. So, we, we talk about place intimacy, and place intimacy is important place intimacy refers to the relatively unbroken we used to say unbroken transmission of knowledge from generation to generation, but frankly in even my career in lifetime, that unbrokenness has broken. So we have lost a lot of the knowledge holders, whether they be Alaska natives American Indian First Nations people, or the indigenous peoples of Scandinavia, or Europe. We've lost a lot of that, but not all is lost, because the knowledge transmission really is tied to place and place matters immensely. So place intimacy refers to the fact that an actor, a researcher, a practitioner, a resident, doesn't matter who resides in a place and has a dynamic, both the biophysical and the socio cultural dynamics, along the same time frame. And that temporal knowledge of both the physical, the social the cultural occurs along the same time frame, as opposed to the study one study another, and then try and fit them together. They are literally living in it. Now, this is paper by a colleague from the University of Saskatchewan in New York, and there is a very vast mix of people in the area. And what's really critical here is that place intimacy is about place, not race. So we always refer to place, not race. And that's really a way of bringing many knowledges together around the idea of place intimacy, local place based knowledge, much of which includes traditional knowledge. We leave out sometimes ecological, sometimes we put it in. You'll see it put in here in a minute. But you can see that place intimacy, intimacy connotes the foods that are eaten, the modes of transport. You can also show the float planes or anything. And the little tricks, like Jason wheel pointed out, we were doing things with planes and try and move things in an environment that really wasn't conducive. So that adaptation to the place, the place intimacy, the local, the EOC proceeds of that place resulted in better adaptive measures, better knowledge to action specific to place. Next slide please. All right. And I remember the, the changes that have occurred in many of our lifetimes are our careers even when I first met Dr. Jeffries, he challenged me greatly. And I walked out of there thinking, what just happened. In the process of answering those challenge questions, science became better. So where we were many, many, many years of this now almost 30 years. And I see that there is now a integration of approaches of peoples, the idea of locality, the idea of place, and the idea of voices contributing to the production of knowledge, using many approaches to science. And through, I'm going to embarrass one of our colleagues, now Brooke here, he has an organization called Voice of the Arctic. So, in there they do a survey every year, and over the years you can see from a variety of data sources. Do you feel that your voice is heard? 51% said yes. That is a measure of effectiveness of ensuring that our knowledge to action when it includes local peoples has better outcomes, more successful outcomes. What I wanted to show you in the column to the, the subsistence income employee, not employee that showing is that we're not talking about victims. So indigenous and local peoples are rarely victims. Now, with the exception of the tragedies that are happening in wars that around the world, those are true victims and the losses in local knowledge that are occurring by the minute are. But for the people that we engage in our practice in the Arctic, we're talking about people who are educated, employed. And live in both worlds, so they live in both worlds, they work in the Western world, they are the Western world, they construct the Western world, and they also retain elements of their native traditions. On the other side, Westerners those communities who become embedded in the place, live in the Western world come from the Western traditions, but then also integrate native traditions into their lifestyles and practices. So these are just some examples of the many, many successes we've had in incorporating local place based knowledge to tangible and and usable science outcomes. So what does this look like back to that perception thing and I've got my timer here so what does that look like perception drives adaptation. We now know this when when I started doing this work. It was a little bit laughable people would kind of go yeah we kind of get it but. What we know now is that diverse perception engaged in the application of knowledge to place adaptation is what create success at scale. So local human systems, we don't make decisions on data, no matter how many data we produce humans make decisions on perceptions. Our perceptions are homogenous. If we have group think we miss parts of natural systems of changes of knowledge is in those natural systems, a diversity of perception results in higher adaptive capacity, because it incorporates much more of the knowledges that cover a range of changes of dynamics of variables that may be missed if only one set or one type of perceptions is used. Next slide please. So, this led us to the drifting Delta problem, and the drifting Delta problem has been now picked up and used not just in our practice of basic science or in engineering, but also in some of the defense and security enterprises that I advise. So the drifting Delta problem says, and I wish I could show you that solid that really dark on the upper left hand side, that dark black line that black dark black line is how we construct a reality right so science takes the environment. It constructs it, and then it uses a set of variables and rules that govern each variable to come up with a trajectory and send in essence forecast and outcome or future. If you don't have a diversity of data of perceptions of constructs of the environment and changes in it, as well as the way that humans in those environments react to those changes. Then you end up with drift. In other words, you're missing significant bits of information that result in an inaccurate accuracy of your trajectory. So the drifting Delta problem simply means that there is a large delta or difference between how you are framing knowledge, translating that knowledge to what you perceive or forecast as a successful action, while missing a bunch of data. That means put it really scientifically, you're missing the mark. So we've done a lot of work on the drifting Delta problem. And no matter how many times we slice and dice it, no matter how many times we run it in simulations, or we use data from real world scenarios or use use cases. Globally, no matter how many times we slice it, when you incorporate greater diversity in perception at the echo, not just data, but the actual perception of change itself. You end up with a smaller Delta or a more adaptive set of action put drafts, for example, undesired change and take advantage of desired change. Next slide please. So, what is a framework. So you guys are thinking, okay, well that's kind of nice and theory, does this actually work. Yes, but it requires that you articulate very clearly what it is you're after. So this is a real problem that is funded at quite a high level. There's a lot of money. And it is essentially trying to understand the best ways to capture perceptions, sensor data, and an engagement to understand how adaptation can occur without expensive equipment. But it turns out that in some cases, you don't need a massive amount of technology to actually achieve comparable adaptation successful adaptation outcomes, if engagement at the community level if the community is driving the adaptation needs doesn't mean it's free. It just means that you don't need as many bells and whistles, which at that return on investment that inflection point can actually hurt knowledge to action processes, it can actually hurt adaptation. So this one is dealing specifically with wildfires with drought, and with heat, heat stress. A lot of people don't realize that rural areas, which just happened to house a lot of very rich local and place based knowledge, often have a least access to things like simple conditions like air conditioners. So this is one project and establishing clear workflows so these this workflow was established with five communities, three of which were American communities across three states and three problem sets. And when we finally came down to it and we got a good clean workflow, we were able to step back and let the communities actually do their own data. They're, they are their return on that why would they collect their own data. And this goes back to one of the challenge questions that Martin gave me so so many years ago is that in return for that, we are able to give voice to specific intervention needs at the rural community level. So, next slide please so they are better able to wrap up. Thanks. Yep. Good. So the requirements matter and can be applied to almost anything. This was applied to a salmon fishery. Next slide please. Adaptive capacity indices are a, are a circular, are a circular process, and a new macro cash who was on here will remember this when we ran the Alaska F score project, but the observational data have to come from the context of local have to, they can be married with other ways of observing or acquiring data, but without that local and place based knowledge, they simply will not reflect accurately what is needed to successfully adapt. Next slide please. There are so many sources, and yet we still struggle with the idea of incorporating perception local place knowledge, and the stepping away from that idea that local and indigenous peoples are passengers in this whole process. So there are some sources they are, they're hyperlinked so you can go directly to the paper no paywalls or anything. And I will leave it there. Thank you, April. Thank you so much that was great. Really important I think in the interest of time because I really want to make sure we all come together at the end for group discussion we're going to transition right over to our final speakers and we have a tag team. This presentation will be primarily from Dan Walker I think with Tom Douglas chiming in as needed. Dan is a senior geologist with a engineering science and technology Inc. And is also the associate director of the Center for Technology and Systems Management at the University of Maryland. Today, Tom Douglas is a senior science technical manager for the US Army Corps of Engineers Crell office in Alaska, and they're going to be discussing information from a recent workshop that they hosted focused on nature based solutions for coastal resiliency in the Arctic. So thank you Dan and Tom for being our final speaker today. Well thank you can you hear me fine. We sure can thanks. And what did we decide am I going to run the slides or are you going to run the slides. Thank Dan you are going to run them if you still want to. Yep. Let's see what happens here. Should go to presentation mode. All right, excellent. All right well thank you so much for having us here today. Some of you may know me I don't know I was at the academies for about 11 years at the Ocean Studies Board did a lot of work with with PRB and WSTP at those times and and I actually work for john Holdren for about two days at OSTP I think we passed in the hallway after he was confirmed so anyway it's good to see you again john. Tom and I are going to talk a little bit about a workshop that we did just to give you some context. The American Society of civil engineers 150,000 civil engineers across the world. A leading source recognized international source for engineering information code standards manuals of practice. Very significant player in the development of engineering codes that eventually find our way into building codes all over the world. ASCE, you know, has kind of traditionally been really focused on, you know, the engineers role in in a variety of different areas, and had been slow to kind of, I would say, recognize the importance of climate change and the important role that civil engineering standards, for example, can play in adaptation. That's changed dramatically. I've been working with ASCE now for about 11 years. That's changed dramatically. Signs of that everywhere in the ASCE strategic plan climate is now at the very top in terms of focus areas, bringing more value to ecosystems and natural environment that are that are adjacent to the built environment and integral parts of the built environment is a primary driver of ASCE interest now. So really a big change probably culminating in my view with a recent memorandum of understanding between ASCE and NOAA to bring NOAA climate science and NOAA climate projections into the processes that we use to develop standards. Big changes at ASCE. I just want to kind of set the stage because I think that helps explain why ASCE is interested in things like nature-based solutions. Anybody that's kind of been following this discussion about nature-based solutions knows that, you know, there's a lot of groups that are advocating for it. There's a lot of groups interested in it. But when it comes down to the design and construction of projects, whether it's ecosystem restoration or some kind of a resiliency-based project, you know, civil engineers are really kind of right there at the pointy end of the stick. So what we're talking about today, Tom and I are talking about a workshop that we ran just a couple weeks ago in Reston focused on the role of ASCE in trying to promote and explore the use of nature-based solutions for coastal resilience in the Arctic. Tom knows I get on a roll. I'll talk the entire 15 minutes, but I will stop periodically and give him a chance to weigh in and correct anything I say or amplify anything. So Tom, how am I doing so far? Good job. I think you're behind already, though. I wouldn't step it up there, Dan. Okay, sounds good. All right, off we go. What I really want to talk about here is the partners that we had. The workshop was done in collaboration with NRC Canada. They're very interested in exploring nature-based solutions in the Arctic and in cold regions. Engineering with nature program at the Army Corps, the cold regions research and engineering lab that Tom represents. And then we had some financial support from EA Engineering, who we do a lot of work in the Arctic working with, especially the Alaskan communities up there, coastal communities trying to address their needs for coastal resilience. Some of the questions that we kind of pursued or used as we went through the process. I think this is what's really interesting about NBS in the Arctic, because it fundamentally lays bare some of the key questions. What constitutes a natural or nature-based approach? In the lower 48, in more temperate zones in the world, these solutions almost always involve vegetation and subtype. That's not necessarily going to work in the Arctic, so that really brought that into focus. We're talking about how can we do this at scale? Doing little small projects in the Arctic is helpful, but we've got very large landscapes, very large palates to work with. So that was a question that came up quite a bit. Monitoring and observing, how do we use data that's collected for a variety of means to support engineering practice? That's something that we talk about a lot at ASCE. How can ASCE work with other organizations in the Arctic in particular? We have a limited number of case studies, a limited number of examples where people have applied some of these technologies. We need to share information as broadly as possible, and so that's what we tried to do in this workshop. And then finally, what's ASCE's role here? How could we develop guidance documents? How can we promote some of these technologies? So I'm just going to throw a few slides here from some of the key talks. I can't go through the whole agenda, obviously, wouldn't want to. But for example, you know, Brian Bledsoh chairs one of the committees at ASCE that's focused on natural and nature-based infrastructure. He gave a good presentation on, you know, kind of the fundamental precepts around nature-based solutions. Again, informed primarily more from a temporary perspective, talked a little bit about some of the evolving policies at ASCE, and really kind of set the stage for, you know, what is MBS and then how might it evolve to work in the Arctic? Jeff King from the Engineering with Nature program provided us with some perspectives on kind of the larger programmatic, how the Army Corps is trying to promote some of these technologies, a very strong supporter of the work we're doing up in Alaska. So Jeff's contributions were very helpful. Then we got into some different perspectives. Sam Wyton from EA talked a lot about kind of the ecological perspective. Many of the communities that we work with in Alaska, for example, are in Arctic Canada. You know, they're subsistence hunters and whalers, fishers, you know, they're indigenous peoples. They have that indigenous knowledge that we need to better understand changes up there and to do a better job of interpreting the western science and the western data that we collect. Now, honestly, the work we do with these communities that there could not be done if we did not have the whaling captains, the other people that help us. Many EA employees are actually native Alaskan. So we're really kind of working very closely with these communities to understand their needs, their concerns about coastal change and how they want to adapt and maintain their lifestyles. Then we moved on Canada, and the Murphy from Canada talked a lot about a lot of the work that's being done in Canada. In some respects, the Canadians are a little farther along in developing guidance documents. That's a trend we've seen in the past. He gave some really good examples of different technologies and projects that they're working with, primarily in cold regions, but in the Arctic too. And I think that was really important and very helpful in trying to provide that larger sense of how can we work with materials up there. You know, how can we advance these technologies or try to transition technologies from from other parts of the world. Then we had some international speakers. We had speakers from Finland, Germany, Sweden, Norway, all represented a variety of different perspectives. In that sense, I think they are, they have a good network going, but they don't have very many case examples in the Arctic. Most of the Arctic projects that they were able to bring to the table and talk about where it's fell barred, I'll talk about a couple of those shortly. But they've really got a really good backbone, a real good information sharing process, I would say around kind of nature based solutions. They're very interested in considering how to partner with North America and leverage some of the work we're doing here to kind of flesh out that. The Arctic component of their programs. So that was very helpful and I thought very promising. We then shifted gears a little bit had some presentations that talked about physical change, monitoring physical change, and how that information then could be used to inform design of projects because we want projects that are going to be resilient that are going to provide value for for several years to come. So we have a presentation from Nick Cohn at the Engineering Research and Development Center, give a very good perspective of the limitations of trying to characterize Arctic change, especially coastal erosion, given the limited data sets that we have up there. So that was a very helpful perspective, both in terms of understanding the problems and understanding the limitations of our current observing systems. Then we moved into some project specific examples. This one is in from Shatulik in in Alaska. Here we've got a community that's really, you know, at the at the pointy end of the stick, their experience in coastal erosion they they have problems with their with flooding with seasonal flooding. Very complex setting, they're working very closely with the community to kind of understand what what the opportunities and challenges are but it's very early on you know we're almost all of these projects are still kind of in the engagement phase we're trying to understand what the community needs to get out of these projects and then we're exploring some some different engineering, you know, very early engineering design concepts, you know, like kind of at the 10 10% design concept level. So that was very helpful. This other project that I'm directly involved with at Point Hope, I think is a really good example. This community on Point Hope was about 40 years ago to kind of get out of some of the coastal issues that they were having, but their traditional some of their traditional infrastructure their siglocks the areas where they store meat using permafrost. Those are now being impacted because it's part of the old community structure that they abandoned but they still store their meat there. Those are now really experiencing significant degradation due to coastal erosion. The airport you know this is one of the classic stories, one of the key parts of the infrastructure there that was put in place by again by the United States government and is actually more vulnerable to coastal erosion in this sense. So they've got a variety of components here that they're trying to deal with they're trying to preserve, you know some of their their essential traditional way of life in terms of whaling. They're also trying to deal with you know some of the more the modern problems with infrastructure. So I thought that was a very good but this is the case where in this example, we work very closely with the indigenous groups to understand the problem and then to develop some some conceptual designs. And then I'm going to take a breath and let Tom kind of try to wrap it up is there's going to be a larger workshop next here in three weeks. That's part of the large conference that is holding on climate adaptation and resilience called inspire this particular MBS workshop is going to look at MBS solutions from kind of across the board. And how ASCE should try to promote the use of MBS. And really what it boils down to is is in order for many of these MBS projects to take off to be able to be permitted to be able to be constructed. So we need a greater sense of the veracity, if you will, of the technologies and ASCE feels like you can use it standard setting its guidance document engineering guidance function to provide a little bit more clarity about the validity or maturity of the types of nature based solutions, including in the Arctic so the Arctic workshop will feed directly into this big workshop here in two or three weeks where I hope I will see some of you. Right now just in terms of next steps we're developing a workshop report that we hope that's going to be out here fairly soon and try to capture this information, make it a little bit more widely available. And then we're also looking at some other meetings that are coming up and just really try to promote this idea of a community of practice for MBS in the Arctic. So, Tom, I believe through all the slides but I'm sure you can amplify you have your own thoughts so feel free. Yeah just a couple Meredith how are we on time. I'd like to try to transition into group discussion and let's give you a minute and a half. Okay, that sounds great that's perfect so, and I saw Anne's question. So a couple things just to kind of frame this sort of broader than maybe focus it. There was a really nice meeting a month or so ago in Boulder that Matt Druckenmiller help put together. There was a lot more focused on Alaska and then sort of weaving in indigenous perspective and knowledge. One thing about nature based solutions is a lot of this was sort of started in places like let's say Florida where you can grow stuff like crazy. Or imagine moving dredged material around, or using biology to sort of fix or answer your problem so some of the discussion is kind of green versus gray. And we pretty quickly just abandon that and said hey it's really hard to grow stuff in the Arctic. Of course and so timelines would be decades. And in our sense, if you can sort of help facilitate the people who are living there their lifestyle their sense of working with nature. Yeah maybe there's some concrete or some steel or whatnot the more you can minimize that the better, but that's a that's sort of an added buy in. And then I think a good perspective that is point help when people have been living there for longer than anywhere else in North America, you know continuously thousands of years. And they really just kind of need help so I think moving forward as Dan said, you know kind of putting together a workshop report. It would be nice, Matt to pull in some of the content from the Boulder meeting. And I think this is a kind of a cool topic. Dan, just one final thing you know Dan didn't get into it but what's proposed at point help is really neat I mean it's it's sort of using some thermal siphons like you've probably seen along the pipeline, and basically kind of building and stabilizing some permafrost that could become part of some ice sellers and protect, you know, really old houses and whatnot sort of cultural resources so I think where you can mesh sort of then diagram all those different needs and wants and what is reality that's kind of the dream here so thanks Dan thanks everybody for the time. Thanks Tom. Fantastic thanks everybody. April do you have any final comments before we launch into group discussion. So I mean I just want to thank all the presenters we really took a wide tour through a bunch of different perspectives from, you know hard technology deployment development to really considering community and place based perspectives nature based solutions I was really listening for wetlands to be used just once in there. But you know really really different theory different frameworks, and I think everyone touched, not only on their applications but on their fundamental frameworks of making decisions and operating as well and so I was really pleased that we were able to cover so much ground. So now is a time where we can really come together. This is your opportunity to ask those burning questions that we didn't have time for in the beginning. Martin I see your hand is up do you want to segue us as well into discussion or do you have a question. I have a question if I may this is for Dan and Tom. The core of engineers uses the term engineering with nature. Is that the same as nature based solutions is it different how how are they are like or dissimilar. Well, Tom you're you're the Army Corps man do you want to feel that one or do you want me to do it. Oh, Dan I think you'll do a great job thanks. Well engineering with nature is a program, you know it's a trademark program at the Army Corps that focuses on nature based solutions as part of our engineering approach. So, they're big advocates for natural and nature based solutions, but the program name is engineering with nature. And it emphasizes more of a hybrid, not in either or but more of a hybrid green to gray is how you might often hear it described. Awesome. Thank you, john you have your hand raised. There we go. Yeah I have a couple questions for Jason but I'll try to be very quick. I don't know we don't have much time. One question is, what starts the process. Is it a request from NSF is it a request from the community need, or, or a crow perception. So for instance, renewable energy be great, but we need to have that ready to go in cold weather is that process started. What would be required to do that. Okay, thanks john. So, most of these are need based from the organization that has the need so in this case, NSF wanted to find a better way to resupply South Pole. And we responded to that. And that's the fact that we have people placed at the time I was actually sitting at NSF. So one of the things that I failed to mention that's in my notes here is that we've got to make sure that there is an interdisciplinary approach. When we endeavor to tackle these really challenging problems. And I don't want to use that as a buzzword buzzword as much as, you know, you got to get a people in a room and be able to write on the whiteboard what it is that you need. And be able to communicate that to the people who are going to help you come up with a solution, which I don't think any of us do sufficiently for the most part. We all run away and we want to do whatever it is that we wrote a proposal to do. And we don't too often think about well, what happens when I hand us on somebody's desk three years later. And they're like, Oh, it's a great solution but that's not what I needed. And so I have spent my career, kind of finding my way into different organizations, whether it's NSF or NASA or North con as a combatant man, and, and working with the people and mock step to understand what they truly need. And so that's a long answer to a short question but you've got to be with the people experiencing their challenges with them to understand how to deliver a solution that's relevant. A very quick follow up on that is on the traverse capabilities are rigid payloads something that's also being worked on or as you know, it's done fuel. Yeah, yeah I didn't show those slides there's a lot more there but yes, yep. Great. Thank you. I'm seeing a intriguing question in the chat box and I'm wondering if there's a bit of a mashup between these two presentations at the end, you know, sort of thinking about nature based solution and whether it's viewed as natural for a local place based community. Is this how much of this perspective is and maybe okay I see two thumbs up please. I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth but I'm also fascinated by this. Tom very long chat can you say it out loud. I tried to say my words to, I mean, traditionally think about just how much you can grow mangroves in Florida right and how amazing those are for the coast. You can't grow mangroves at point hope and they're just the sort of biologically your options are more limited so we pretty quickly at this meeting got passed the whole oh if it's not biology it's not nature. And we, we part of this again we broaden towards if it helps people sense of place it would help some access country foods if it helps them protect their cultural heritage. Those are all natural needs that sort of help us, again, dance at green to gray you can kind of imagine you could draw a line there or mesh it and we've just decided to mesh it. I think the other part of it is a time and I've talked about this, some of the languages coming out of Europe emphasizes does it mimic natural processes. And that I think that's really what we're trying to do what we're trying to do is avoid situations where we're addressing every problem that emerges in the Arctic with a Western technology will just pour more concrete, right. So we're, you know, when you talk about this kind of on the bread, like one of the issues that came out of Canada. There's so much driftwood in the Arctic that that has been especially in cold regions. That becomes materials that can be incorporated into a design without having to bring in wouldn't, you know, wouldn't materials from other parts of the country, for example. And I think about I think using natural materials wherever as possible to try to come up with designs that that kind of mimic or or harmonize with the natural setting, but at some point, you know, unless you're going to just constantly maintain it, there's probably going to be some, you know, traditional engineered element to the project. And I think, you know, people as many of you know working with these communities they're very practical people. So aesthetic is important, but if they needed to address a problem you know they're they're going to, they're going to do what needs to be done so that they can maintain their, their lifestyle they're they're they're living so very interesting set of challenges there. Awesome. Thanks so much. I see twyla has a hand raised. The question really crossed my mind in Jason's talk but others may also have other comments. Thirdly, you know, eyes wide with fuel use and some of those things and a lot of the engineering developments there helped with costs and also with urban footprint and one of the things I think should be talked about more and more often in our community decarbonization plan, and I'm really curious if you are seeing, or if others are seeing that kind of elements of solution framing or really coming up even directly with solutions is seeing sort of mitigation as an add on bonus, or if it's actually starting to make it into those kind of like top tier requirements in discussion of actions. Jason or others any or any other reflections. I guess, um, from, I guess if I if I keep my government hat on. We have I mean it's almost an requirement these days that anything we develop has to take into account the missions and efficiencies both. I mean there's there's the there's the power generation side and then there's the demand side right so we're working on with NSF right now designing a new station for for summit in Greenland and we're really focused on the demand side. It's really hard to generate electricity on top of the Greenland ice sheet. Um, and so you know you take your, you take your wins where you can. The challenge with South Pole to be honest with you, not just the environment at all but we have a there's a congressional presidential, sorry there's a presidential random says, we shall maintain a permanent station in Antarctica. Right so it doesn't say and it has to be green. So it's really, you know, ultimately we as the solution developers can't mandate that, but we can certainly inject it wherever possible, and we do. And of course NSF is very sensitive to that. Some agencies aren't do these getting better, I would say, I think so we've got two hands raised Ross. Yes, so this, this is for a little I really enjoyed your presentation and I jotted down to comments which maybe you can connect for me or think about how we can enhance communications to build resilient projects one is that communication requires local and play space knowledge, and the others that locals are not just passengers. And so how do we, how do we invest upfront in a process that has to really be upfront before nature based solutions and other projects come about. So I'm wondering in your work how do you foster that communication between scientists engineers and communities. So we get the right outcome, and that it really is effective. So anything you have to share on that I'd love to hear. Well in less than a minute, I would say that you have to recognize plurality if you were to note anything right now, you have to recognize that local and indigenous communities are are plural communities so they're, frankly, they're just people living in different environments and situations. So, when you, when you work at this stage leverage the legacies of networks. There's a vast networks right now that now cross over cultures and societies. So it's really a matter of leveraging those networks as opposed to going in and starting trying to restart somebody. It's also the, or start something from scratch. It's also the onus on us as as scientists and practitioners to walk away from ego and owner. It's a very difficult thing to do. There is frankly a strangle hold right now on science and our earth, our planet is at a stage where we have to let all that go so a lot of people are hesitant to reveal those networks or, or they'll say something very odd which would be like well, we're working with an indigenous community we don't want you to like offend them as if they're children. There's no harm in basically that this is this is a community like anything else we have like any other community. So we have well established practices for you know who to go through there's like a hierarchy like you would go through a local chain of command for through a university or through a chain of command and local communities and indigenous communities have those as well. But if in doubt, how to put it front forward, it's meeting your partners on equal footing recognizing that they're going to have their pros and cons or strength, their foils their, their hidden needs, their hidden agendas, and really having those difficult and Frank dialogues that that accepts the pushes and polls of those tensions so for example. We've talked into communities and it started with, with, with an attack or an insult, and some people feel like they need to take that were to say, you know, if this dialogue is not acceptable to you, then we won't have it, and simply walk away as opposed to trying to push or something to a community that may not exhibit the same respect with which you're coming in and vice versa, recognizing that communities will walk away if they don't perceive that they are equal equals and not passengers. Sorry, very good to see you I babbled on it's a very, you can tell me very passionate about the topic. Email me. Yeah, that's wonderful those are great, great comments and yes I will be in touch. I want to learn from you. Thank you. Well and I should say, you know, we never intended these conversations to start and end here hopefully this gets the juices flowing for all of us particularly on the polar research board and we can continue that relationship building that we all know is so so important so that's come up a few times today and I love it. I'm not seeing any other hands raised. I actually want to put Martin on the hot seat what I call the Pete seat. You started us off with some challenges. How are you feeling at the end of our session today. Thank you merit. I'm very pleased with the session night. It's turned out the way I hope really we had very good talks which I think were provocative in as much as I think there was in many cases a lot of new information there that many on the board might have been unfamiliar with. That was my purpose to challenge people in that regard, and to get people thinking about more about knowledge to action as we've seen and heard described this afternoon. There's still much to be discussed, not the least in the light of our continuing deliberations over the PRB role in the next international polar year, and can we make that an international polar year that really does truly realize some fabulous examples of knowledge to action of delivering on requirements to communities policy makers decision makers, those many different stakeholders that are listed. There are many stake and rights holders that are listed in the IP wide concept document. So I did this. This session has served two purposes in a way. The primary purpose was to, to hear more from expert practitioners of knowledge to action. But, but then secondly, it does relate in my mind, very importantly to the next international polar year where we have to make some very strong compelling arguments in order to get the funding for a US, a meaningful US contribution we can be proud of, and perhaps knowledge to action truly executed is one way to do that, but you have to deliver on your promises so we have to be good about that. So thank you to the speakers. I appreciate the effort and time. We may call on you again and hear from you again. Thank you for being the chair of the session and thanks to the PRB staff and everyone who zoomed in. Yeah, it was really wonderful and PRB board members. I will also put you on the hot seat before we close. Please write down at least one question or challenge that came to your mind today that we didn't fully resolve or we peaked your interest even more. And please pass those over to us, myself or Martin or April and we will continue to, to noodle with these ideas and do it together as a community. Thanks to all the speakers in particular they're all fabulous. Lots of detail, lots of care went into those presentations. And please join us if you're on the PRB back for our final leg of our meeting on Thursday where we will hear from some of our partners scar and I arc in particular. So huge thanks, April Rita everyone. It's amazing. Thank you. Bye.