Interdisciplinary - Global Team:
Institute for International Urban Development I2UD
I2UD's, two co-leads are Carlos Rufin, Senior Associate, and Alejandra Mortarini, Senior Fellow.
Carlos Rufin is a multi-faceted professional with extensive experience in urban poverty, public-private partnerships, multi-stakeholder collaboration, renewable energy, water and sanitation, and business development, as well as command of several major languages. He holds advanced degrees from Harvard University (PhD in Public Policy) and Columbia University (Masters in Economics).
Alejandra Mortarini develops innovative solutions for climate change at the intersection of machine learning, poverty and territorial planning for cities in the Global South. She has provided assistance to more than twenty cities and townships through strategic and urban development plans funded by multilateral agencies and private foundations in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and the US. Alejandra holds a Masters in Urban Planning from Harvard University and a Licentiate in Architecture and Urbanism from Universidad Belgrano.
Alfredo Stein is a professor and urban development planning expert at the University of Manchester. He brings over 35 years of experience in the design, management, monitoring and evaluation of low-income housing, municipal and local development, post-emergency reconstruction and urban poverty reduction planning, policies, and projects in the Global South.
Dymaxion Labs is I2UD’s technology partner for AI Climate Project. Led by Federico Bayle, Dymaxion’s experience encompasses a wide range of applications of ML algorithms for the remote sensing of informal urbanization, flooding, deforestation, and illegal mining. Dymaxion has worked closely with I2UD for the proof of concept of the ML component of AI Climate, specifically the application and refinement of the ML algorithms for the detection of informal and other socially vulnerable settlements, the prediction of their growth, and the identification of flood-related hazards, as well as a web-based application showing the outcome of the ML analysis.
IHCIT, Institute of Earth Sciences, is a unit of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (UNAH). Dr. Nabil Kawas, Dean of the Faculty of Sciences at UNAH and IHCIT’s founder, provides local expertise on climate change and flood hazards in Honduras. Dr. Kawas is also coordinating relationships with Honduran municipalities, public agencies and civil society stakeholders for validation of results and scenario planning.
Adriana Larangeira is a former planning expert and official in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro. She is trained as an Architect and holds a Master’s Degree in Spatial Planning and a Doctoral Degree in Engineering from the University of Cantabria in Spain. She is the Coordinator of the EAD Informality and Regularization Policies course at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, MA. She will contribute to AI Climate concept development, particularly with regard to vulnerable communities.
Víctor Pajuelo is Senior Remote Sensing and Machine Learning Manager at Satellogic. Mr. Pajuelo brings extensive knowledge and experience in remote sensing, from his research at the University of Iceland and at Satellogic. In Iceland, Mr. Pajuelo developed algorithmic methods using ML to detect flooding and landslides risks induced by land- use and climate change.