News
In the spotlight🔎 Ontario Climate RiskWorkshop The 2024 Beatrice and Arthur Minden Symposium on the Environment focused on Climate Risk in Southern Ontario this year. Bay Street Climate Report A new report by the TCO casts a spotlight on the city’s financial sector and its outsized […]
The Himalayan Climate Data Field Lab brought 112 people from 19 different countries together in Kathmandu, Nepal in May and June for a month-long participant-led ‘unconference’ that explored new ways of creating, sharing, and using climate change data. As climate change impacts and risks intensify across the Himalayan region, processes of data production and the design of information management systems shape the ways climate-related problems are understood and prioritized, as well as whose stories get told. This Field Lab, organized by Professor Robert Soden and postdoctoral fellow Austin Lord from the Toronto Climate Observatory, created a space where participants could collaboratively reevaluate the landscape of climate change data in the Himalayan region and build new tools to help create more just climate futures.
Congratulations to Aarjav Chauhan on winning an Honourable Mention in the Best Paper award category at CSCW this year! Accepted papers are reviewed separately by an awards committee and only a few – the top 5% of all papers submitted to CSCW – are chosen for […]
The Toronto Climate Observatory faculty, students, and collaborators will be presenting 5 papers and a workshop at CSCW 2024
A great first day at the 2024 Beatrice and Arthur Minden Symposium on the Environment: Ontario Climate Risk Workshop.The Symposium brought together experts from academia, government, the private sector, NGOs, and the public to share knowledge and co-create a research agenda on climate risk in Southern […]
Eighteen Toronto banks, pensions and asset managers responsible for financing emissions that are almost 2x Canada’s total emissions, nearly 100x City of Toronto’s emissions.
Toronto’s top financial institutions financed over $1.43 trillion CAD ($1.1 trillion USD) in fossil fuel companies in 2022, contributing to at least 1.44 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions- nearly twice the total emissions of Canada, and nearly 100 times the total emissions of the City of Toronto, according to a new report from the Toronto Climate Observatory, a research hub based at the University of Toronto (U of T).
The Toronto Climate Observatory (TCO) is hiring a part-time (50%) Research Coordinator to support the growing activities of this campus-wide research initiative. With professors and graduate students from multiple departments and faculties at the University of Toronto, we have developed an ambitious research agenda, online platform, and outreach program to monitor and communicate the accelerating impacts of climate change locally and around the world. Drawing on approaches ranging from climate modeling to human centered design, economics, oral history, citizen science, and art/science collaboration, the TCO develops place-based approaches to understanding the effects of climate change in ways that are contextualized and meaningful to policy-makers and the public. Key aspects of the initiative include our commitments to sound science, interdisciplinary collaboration, climate justice, and public engagement.
The first-ever Toronto Climate Summer School (TCSS) has been featured on the University of Toronto's Arts & Science website.
Led by Professor Robert Soden and Dr. Rohini Patel, the TCSS brought together students from a range of fields to explore how climate change is affecting the city of Toronto. From tracking methane emissions in the Junction to studying how extreme weather impacts housing and migration, students dug into real issues happening right here in our city.
Flood risk data in the GTA is often inaccessible or outdated, leaving most residents, urban planners, municipalities and government agencies without the information needed to take preventive measures.Addressing this critical gap, research by Nicole Gordon, Emily Majeed, Nidhi Subramanyam and Robert Soden with the Toronto Climate […]
What happens when grassroots climate justice activists effectively leverage data? Lilly Flawns’ research, honoured with an Honourable Mention for Best Paper at ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’24) in Copenhagen, explores this question.The paper, “Autonomy, Affect, and Reframing: Unpacking the Data Practices of Grassroots Climate Justice Activists,” […]
Publications
Lillian Flawn; Robert Soden 2024-07 | Conference paper DOI: 10.1145/3643834.3661585 Abstract Though not often considered primary users or creators of climate change data, grassroots climate activism is increasingly data driven. This study looks at the ways in which grassroots climate justice groups engage with data to further their goals. […]
Sophia S Jit, Jennifer Spinney, Priyank Chandra, Lydia B Chilton, Robert Soden CHI ’24: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.364192
Taneea S Agrawaal, Samar Sabie, Robert Soden Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 8, Issue CSCW1 https://doi.org/10.1145/3637373
Taneea S Agrawaal, Aarjav Chauhan, Carolina Nobre, Robert Soden CHI ’24: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642470
Robert Soden, David Lallemant, Manveer Kalirai, Celine Liu, Dennis Wagenaar & Sophia Jit Communications Earth & Environment volume 4, Article number: 386 https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-01039-2
Dashiel Carrera, Gitanjali Bhattacharjee, Robert Soden DIS ’23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference https://doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3595973
Samar Sabie, Robert Soden, Steven Jackson, Tapan Parikh CHI ’23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581412
Olivia Doggett, Kelly Bronson, Robert Soden CHI ’23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581081
Robert Soden, Laura Devendorf, Richmond Wong, Yoko Akama and Ann Light Foundations and Trends® in Human–Computer Interaction: Vol. 15: No. 4, pp 317-426. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/1100000085
Robert Soden, Matt Ratto, G. Arno Verhoeven, and Bart Simon Eighth Workshop on Computing within Limits 2022 https://doi.org/10.21428/bf6fb269.7b608a0d