Neel V. Patel

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“It’s A Big Challenge If They Need To Renovate Those Spaces So They Can Be Flooded”

March 3, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The New York City I grew up with is no longer here, and that’s no surprise. It’s always been a place constantly tearing down and building up. But if climate change truly unfolds in a worst-case scenario–or a very bad one, at least–what does that mean for the city? Was Hurricane Sandy just prelude? Will Manhattan, an island crowded with skyscrapers, become Venice? Will it stand on stilts, trying to keep its balance? From Neel V. Patel’s Wired piece “How Climate Change Will Alter New York City’s Skyline,” about a time when weather may continually be an “event”:

Last week’s report estimates that average annual rainfall in New York City will increase between 5 and 13 percent by the 2080s. Sea levels could be as high as six feet by 2100, doubling the area of the city currently at risk for severe flooding. And that’s without taking into account results published this week in Nature that found coastal sea level north of New York City had jumped temporarily by more than five inches between 2009-2010—an extreme, unprecedented event scientists partially blame on climate change.

That means that New Yorkers will first have to radically reinterpret how they use their basements and ground floors. Building owners in flood zones will be responsible for raising habitable spaces up; the city’s Office of Recovery plans to keep ground floors least 2 feet above projected sea level. One way to do that: Abandon all pretense of actually living on the ground floor. Alex Wilson, president of the Resilient Design Institute, advocates for clearing out ground floors and basements in buildings that are at-risk for frequent flooding, and adapting them to let water move in and drain out with minimal damage. “It’s a big challenge if they need to renovate those spaces so they can be flooded,” says Wilson. “That means losing those apartments, moving equipment like boilers to higher floors, and most of all making sure residents have some place to go.”

Buildings will also have to adapt to rising temperatures. New York is going to get much hotter, with average temperatures increasing by as much as 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit by the the 2080s. And the number of heat waves per year will likely triple from two to six.•

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“The Robots’ Collective Movement Is An Organic Outgrowth Of That Self-Correction”

February 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

A hammer can be a tool or a weapon depending on how you swing it, and that’s important to remember while we’re being wowed by Boston Dynamics’ new four-legged robot, Spot. Neel V. Patel of Wired noticed something about the viral video showcasing the AI: a moment which is perhaps coincidence or maybe collective behavior, even if it isn’t swarm robotics. An excerpt:

We’ve seen all of this—admittedly amazing—stuff out of BD’s four-legged robots before. But it gets crazier around the 1:20 mark, when a pair of Spots begin trekking up a hill. Spot Number One starts repeatedly colliding into Spot Number Two—and neither loses balance. After a few seconds and a bit of subtle push-and-shove, they straighten out and walk in parallel again, and then turn together once they reach the top of the hill. This is getting creepy, guys—it looks like these robots are exhibiting the same swarm-like behavior that we see in animals.

We checked in with Iain Couzin, a Princeton biologist and expert in the study of collective animal behavior, to get his take on the robots’ seeming hive mind.

We know from Spot’s reaction to that kick that he can dynamically correct his stability—behavior that’s modeled after biological systems. From what Couzin can tell, the robots’ collective movement is an organic outgrowth of that self-correction. When the two Spots collide at the 1:25 mark, they’re both able to recover quickly from the nudge and continue on their route up the hill. “But the collision does result in them tending to align with one another (since each pushes against the other),” Couzin wrote in an email. “That can be an important factor: Simple collisions among individuals can result in collective motion.”

In Couzin’s research on locusts, for example, the insects form plagues that move together by just barely avoiding collisions. “Recently, avoidance has also been shown to allow the humble fruit fly to make effective collective decisions,” he wrote.

It doesn’t look like Spot is programmed to work with his twin brothers and sisters—but that doesn’t matter if their coordination emerges naturally from the physical rules that govern each individual robot. Clearly, bumping into each other isn’t the safest or most efficient way to get your robot army to march in lock step, but it’s a good start.•

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