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NORMAN, OKLA. – Kash Barker, a professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, has received funding through the Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative to examine socio-economic vulnerability to climate change. Barker’s project is one of seven funded through the 2023 Defense Education and Civilian University Research Partnership and is the first Minerva Research Initiative project awarded to the University of Oklahoma.
In collaboration with Ashly Townsen from Air War College and Andres González and Chie Noyori-Corbett from OU, Barker is studying how countries can make better decisions about climate refugees that maintain the well-being and dignity of those on the move due to the adverse effects of climate change. Barker explains that, on top of the dangers to refugees themselves, uncontrolled migration may lead to instability and security threats, a concern for the Department of Defense.
“We’re focused on prescribing what should happen so we can anticipate the number of people that might be on the move and optimize where they go,” Barker said. “The DoD could use such information to identify security concerns and what resources might need to be in place to address those concerns.”
In the current planning model, the researchers account for the cultural differences of migrant populations versus where they might be located. However, Barker acknowledges that people and governments make decisions that cannot necessarily be predicted, such as during the Syrian refugee crisis, during which strong right-wing sentiments began to surface in countries where it was perhaps unexpected.
Barker received a 2022-2023 Fulbright Scholarship to conduct the research that laid the groundwork for this project. During that time, he spent five months at Aalto University in Finland examining how to effectively make relocation decisions for climate change refugees. This idea was introduced with a previous model — which initially addressed the question of location for a refugee facility location — adding a new type of uncertainty to the model. In his current research, decentralized decision-making adds an additional layer of uncertainty.
“Previous research assumed a central decision-maker in all decisions. But that’s really not at all how things work,” he said.
Building on this past and ongoing work, the team’s Minerva project, “Temporal Networks of Environmental Refugee Relocation: Security and Socioeconomic Impacts,” proposes a different type of model, one that he compares to the interconnectivity of gas, electric and water infrastructure networks, which Barker and González have studied for several years.
“We can take the same multi-layer idea from infrastructure networks but instead consider those layers to be different time periods. From a basic research prospective, this is a new kind of idea, this temporal way of representing this problem,” he said.
The Defense Education and Civilian University Research Partnership program promotes collaboration between Defense Professional Military Education institutions and civilian research universities. Research conducted through this program and consequently through the Minerva Research Initiative helps the DoD prepare for future challenges prioritized in the National Defense Strategy.
About the Project
“Temporal Networks of Environmental Refugee Relocation: Security and Socioeconomic Impacts” is funded through the Minerva Research Initiative’s Defense Education and Civilian University Research Partnership funding opportunity HQ003423NFOEASD13. To read more about this year’s MRI awardees, click here.
About the University of Oklahoma
Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. OU was named the state’s highest-ranking university in U.S. News & World Report’s most recent Best Colleges list. For more information about the university, visit www.ou.edu.
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