Vanessa Schweizer

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Vanessa is a postgraduate scientist in the Integrated Science Program at NCAR (the National Center for Atmospheric Research) in Boulder, CO. Her research interests include characterizing the human dimensions of global change namely greenhouse gas emissions due to socioeconomic development (i.e., energy demand and land use) and development policies that affect socioeconomic vulnerability to changes in climate (i.e., capacities for preventing or responding to crop failures and damages from extreme weather events). She uses a technique for constructing and studying self-consistent socioeconomic scenarios called cross-impact balance (CIB) analysis. In the literature, CIB has been described as analogous to multi-value Kauffman nets and cellular automata.

Vanessa is self-taught in the CIB technique and looks forward to learning more about graph theory and other versions of network analysis. She is interested in applying tools from complexity science to problems of decision making under uncertainty and planning for socio-ecological resilience. Her PhD is in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, where she was affiliated with the Climate Decision Making Center.