Johns Hopkins University researchers will gather in Baltimore from April 12-14 for the first workshop of an ambitious program to study and address the potential impacts of climate change on human activity.

The Global Assimilation of Information for Action (GAIA), led by JHU’s Applied Physics Laboratory, draws expertise from university divisions and partner institutions to provide information and tools for decision-makers to consider the effects of a changing climate on their segments of society. The first GAIA workshop, covering climate change and public health, will be held at the Mount Washington Conference Center on the university’s Mount Washington campus.

The interactive workshop will include plenary sessions as well as tutorials and collaborative tools that allow researchers to delve into particular aspects of climate effects on public health. Participants will create a research network, define a community of interest, examine the current knowledge in the field and define a path for future work. A virtual laboratory for researchers—called a “collaboratory”— is already online.

“We want to figure out the questions people have, determine the knowledge and models available, and apply [what we find] to the problems facing our many decision-makers,” says APL’s Larry Paxton, GAIA principal investigator. A second GAIA workshop, to be held in late summer, will focus on climate change and national security.

GAIA, one of several Johns Hopkins initiatives to address the health of planet Earth, includes expertise from JHU’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, School of Advanced International Studies, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering, and other partners across the country.

For more information on the program, visit http://gaia.jhuapl.edu [1]. Media interested in attending the GAIA workshop on climate change and public health can register online, or contact Michael Buckley at (240) 228-7536 or michael.buckley@jhuapl.edu [2].