Coastal Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, cyclones and increasing salinity. While we can identify some ways in which climate change impacts upon health, such as by intensifying conflict, our understanding is far from comprehensive. Myriad factors, bound together in complex causal relationships, play a part. This talk will introduce a project which aims to use the Complex Adaptive Systems Theory Framework and system dynamics and agent based-integrated technique to model these relationships as they occur in Bangladesh. The goal of the presentation and ensuing discussion is to work through some of the challenges in conceptualizing and communicating about this highly complex endeavor.

Speaker

Dr. Byomkesh Talukder is the inaugural Planetary Health Fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research (York University), where he works at the intersection of health, sustainable development, climate change, food and agriculture.

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Image Credit: Satellite imagery of coastal Bangladesh / Hoepffner et al., 2008