Heather Ackenhusen, OS-Climate.org | OSS North America 2023

This is Techstrong tv. Hello and welcome back to the Open Source Summit in beautiful Vancouver. We're with Heather Atkisson, who's from the Lennox Foundation, and we're talking about Climate OS and no, it's not an operating system.

Heather, welcome the show. Thank You. Great to be here, Mike.

So it's great to see you guys are doing some stuff around open source and climate, but why don't you walk us through exactly what that is and cuz I don't think most people even think that open source has a role. Absolutely. Yeah.

So I work for the, uh, open source climate project for, which is part of the Linux Foundation. And our goal really is to start to unblock the trillions of dollars of investment that need to flow into climate aligned solutions. And one of the big blockers is that people, whether it's investments, uh, organizations or financial institutions, banks as well as corporations don't have the data, uh, and trustworthy data and transparent data, uh, they need as well as the analytical tools to make the decisions to start shifting those investments.

So what os climate is building is really kind of a transformational, uh, data mesh architecture, uh, which is the underlying platform for what, uh, we're creating. And then on top of that, we're also building like key analytical tools to aid in that decision making. Um, and the great thing about open source right, is it's transparent and people can see, you know, what was the math that was done and what models are being used so that they can have trust and more confidence in the decisions that they're making to, to start to shift those investments.

Ah, Interesting. How will that process work? Am I gonna instrument everything?

Is um, am I gonna attach like some sort of agent software to collect all this data? Or how does that kind of work? Actually, we're using the latest and greatest data mesh architectures, and it's was, uh, designed, red Hat is one of our members was designed by Vincent Caldera, who's the CTO at apec, and he's put together this fantastic architecture that manages data as code.

And the whole principle behind it is we're not collecting all the data, we're actually federating with the data. So if they're data sources from NASA or NOAA from like a climate perspective, we're going to have access to that, um, and make that available to our users through something we call the data exchange, uh, where people can come identify the climate models. Maybe you're looking at hazards or vulnerability for your assets, um, in a particular area or region.

And you'll be able to pull that data through the data exchange and then apply it, use our tools or use, you know, your own, uh, uh, in-company tools to, to analyze the data and make good financial decisions, uh, loans, investments, things like that. It's no secret there's a lot of emotions attached to this whole topic. So as part of the goal here to take that out of the equation and maybe just have a conversation about here's what the data actually shows and we've edit the data.

Absolutely. And that's where the transparency really comes into play and where open source comes into play because we want people to understand exactly how you got from A to B and that data scientists can replicate one another's results and there is no one model. That's absolutely correct.

Right? But if you see a series of models and you know, the trajectory is similar, right? For all of them, you can have higher confidence in the decisions that you're, that you're making, not only for your company, uh, like I said, but for financial institutions as well.

What role do you think it people will play in all of this? Because there are issues that stem from the way we write codes a little sloppy, uh, sometimes we leave our virtual machines on other times we, uh, don't pay attention as much to spikes in consumption that we don't need to have happen. Is do I teach people appreciate these issues?

Do they get that and do they understand their role in this whole process as well? I mean, cuz frankly, that's just one more thing that we gotta look at. Right?

Right. Absolutely. No, and I, and I think people are, um, I think the, the level of knowledge varies, right?

Depending on where someone is personally in this journey around like understanding climate change and the rest that are in front of us. But yeah, as, as consumers of a lot of energy, right, for these models to run and, um, to understand the impacts, uh, yeah, that definitely has a, a big impact in in what we're going, uh, to, to have to address right. As, as a planet effectively what role Are governments gonna play in all this?

Because will they work with you guys and look at that data and run that through their analysis or how's that gonna play out? Yeah, Absolutely. Our members are pretty vast and pretty, uh, expansive.

We've got academic, uh, institutions that are members of OS climate, not only financial institutions and the banks, but we're also working with the nonprofit sector as well as some government entities like the N P R I organization and really to solve the climate challenge, right? You need a community of, of, uh, of a lot of different key stakeholders. You know, no one organization is gonna be able to solve this problem on its own.

And our founder and CEO Truman Siemens took a look at, you know, how are big problems been solved in the past, whether it's mapping the human genome or developing the covid vaccine. A lot of that has come out of open source. And so that's why we went with an open source, uh, approach so that we could bring these communities with expertise and understanding, uh, you know, that that can help inform these tools.

And our tools aren't just for Right. Uh, I talked about the financial community, but uh, we just announced this week a Sustainable Africa initiative where we're gonna be taking our platform and our tools, uh, to the country of Nigeria to begin with. But our goal is to, uh, build the platform for all of Africa.

And, uh, the plan for that is to basically hal out them the, the, uh, the upscale, if you will, and the tools and the access to the cloud infrastructure as well as the climate models so that they can do their own analysis. Um, and we're starting with agriculture sector initially, so they can do their own analysis and see what changes they need to make and what adaptation and mitigation strategies they need to focus on. So how big is this community actually?

Because it sounds like it's getting fairly large. Yeah, it definitely is getting very, uh, large. We probably have close to 500 folks that are, uh, part of the community right now.

Uh, we're adding new organizations and, and uh, uh, companies each day, earth Daily, uh, has agreed to support us with, uh, satellite information and things like that. And obviously when you're, you're doing and building a public good, I think everybody feels like this is a way that they can help, right? This is a way they can participate and make a difference in, you know, the climate change, uh, problem that we all face.

It's an next essential risk, right? To humanity. How do I aggregate all that data in a way that doesn't aggravate the climate problem because I'm aggravating massive amounts of data.

So is there an intelligent way to go about doing this in this mesh? Yeah. And so that's where their data exchange comes into play and that sits on top of the data mesh.

And like I said, our goal isn't to copy the data, to replicate the data. Um, our goal is to, to leverage the data. The data is owned by whatever entity, um, has it today.

And so we want to connect with that. And, uh, we have a number of folks that are actively building the data exchange to create almost like a shopping cart function, right? If, if you're, uh, you know, someone, uh, in the ag industry in Nigeria and you're interested in your crops, um, you're gonna have the ability to go into the data exchange and with a shopping cart type of function, pick the model that you need, whether it's a hazard, look at the vulnerability for your particular asset.

In this case it might be a crop or a field. And we're working with Linux Foundation ag stacks to understand, you know, the boundaries of those fields and then do the analysis, um, that's required to say, okay, what, what is the chronic level of, uh, drought that this particular field is gonna phase? And how is this crop done, uh, fair and what might need to change when they may need to rotate crops?

They need to, you need to look at different, you know, solutions to, to adapt. But that's the goal is that this data exchange, uh, can provide that ability, uh, and the data is, you know, created and vetted, uh, and owned so that we make sure that it can be trustworthy. And you, you can see the math, like I said, you can see the process by which, um, you know, the, the outcomes and the impact of the analysis is about it.

I'm not marketing. How do you convince folks to connect? Cuz there's probably some entities out there that aren't too excited to understand exactly what they're doing in the climate, or maybe they know what they don't want to know.

So, um, you know, how does that conversation go? Yeah, I think, you know, ultimately, uh, you can stick your head in the sand and you can deny, um, as much as you want. But I think, uh, the science is is pretty telling, right?

And you see what's happening, you know, we're having a beautiful day in Vancouver, which is not normal, right? And I was talking to some of the folks, uh, at lunch yesterday who are based in Vancouver and, and they don't have air conditioning right in their area. And you know, now dealing with 80 and 90 degrees summer, um, you can see that the changes, you know, we've seen other areas of, you know, whether it's the US or you see Pakistan with the major flooding.

I mean we're, there's example after example, after example that we need to do something. Do you think that to a certain degree, even if we have all the data, there's gonna be some folks who are just never gonna believe and, you know, is that just part of the life or is there, can we get, you know, facts to convert? Yeah, I I think there, there will always be the deniers, right?

And I think, you know, you have that continuum. We talk about it early adopters, fast followers, you know, uh, get the majority involved. And then there's some that will, will never get on board, but hopefully, right?

Uh, uh, we get the va the vast majority of folks, uh, engaged and that we come up with these adaptation strategies and, and, and we start making the changes we need. Uh, cuz you know, the earth's been around for 4 billion years, right? It's, it's not the the earth that's ultimately gonna be gone, it'll, it's, it's humans at the end of the day.

We talked about this in the context of say some entity participating, but we've also seen the emergence of so-called citizen scientists. Um, so can they play a role in these kinds of projects to help collect the data? Absolutely.

We're a truly open source project. Uh, whether it's, uh, individual contributors or corporations, like I said, nonprofits, academic institutions, uh, you know, it's fully open, fully public. We're creating a public good.

We welcome and seek out volunteers, uh, to help us in this journey. org. org and find out ways you can get involved.

But yeah, we, we welcome everyone into, into the community. It's truly open source. All right, folks, you heard in here, if you're concerned about the climate, there's a group of folks who are looking for some help.

And so maybe we can all do this together. It would be a change. That would be awesome.

Thank you. All Right, Heather, thanks for being by. Appreciate it.

Have a great day. All Right. And we'll be back in a minute.