CMCC Lectures
03 March 2026, 11:00 CET
The CMCC Lecture can be attended online or in person in Venice.
- Online attendance
Registration for online attendance is available through the online registration form
- In-person attendance | Venice – Palazzo Loredan, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti
Registration for in-person attendance is available at the following link
Water scarcity, energy security, land use, and critical infrastructures: our society shapes deeply interconnected resource flows, giving rise to cascading risks and new resilience opportunities.
In this CMCC Lecture, Prof. Patrick M. Reed, Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, shares the vision and progress of the Multisector Dynamics Community of Practice and its role in addressing interdependent societal risks.
Register to join the discussion on how advancing complex adaptive human-Earth systems science can improve our understanding of critical water and resource flows in a world of interconnected risks.
Global challenges such as water scarcity, energy security, land use, and critical material supplies can no longer be understood—or managed—in isolation. The societal systems that shape these critical resource flows are deeply interconnected, adaptive, and span local to global scales. This complexity gives rise to cascading risks, as well as opportunities for building resilience, demanding new integrative approaches in human–Earth systems science.
This CMCC Lecture will share the vision and progress of the Multisector Dynamics Community of Practice (MSD CoP) and its role in addressing interdependent societal risks while fostering the synergies emerging from human–Earth systems science. Established in 2020, the community has to date successfully connected thousands of researchers globally, a wide range of agencies, and a broad array of recently published advances.
Drawing on his own work within the MSD CoP, Prof. Patrick M. Reed, Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, highlights the importance of accounting for diverse demands, legal and institutional frameworks, critical infrastructure, and deeply uncertain drought hazards to better understand how water shortage risks propagate across sectors, scales, and thousands of water users, focusing on the Colorado River Basin.
Prof. Reed also presents the MSD framework, which prioritizes two core objectives: shaping a research agenda to promote scientific breakthroughs and facilitating rapid growth of a broader community that bridges disciplines, researchers, and agencies to accelerate progress.
Join the Lecture to explore the multifaceted challenges posed by climate change, bringing together policy, advanced scientific research and multisector perspectives to support resilient strategies and informed decision-making.
Speaker: Patrick Michael Reed, Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering, Cornell University
Discussant: Matteo Giuliani, CMCC
Moderator: Guido Rianna, CMCC
Dr. Patrick M. Reed is focused on advancing our ability to navigate the tradeoffs and synergies in confronting climate change, energy transitions, and sustainability development goals. Dr. Reed is seeking to transform our critical water and energy infrastructures and better map the interconnected risks that shape their deeply uncertain dynamics. He is harnessing emerging computational, data, and algorithmic breakthroughs to advance our understanding of complex adaptive human-Earth systems and our candidate pathways to a sustainable future.
In support of these goals, Dr. Reed has served as a chapter author on the Complex Systems chapters of the 4th and 5th U.S. National Climate Assessments, as a facilitator in the development of the MultiSector Dynamics Community of Practice, as a member of the congressionally chartered U.S. Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee (2017-2025), and his role as an Editor in AGU’s Earth’s Future transdisciplinary Gold Open Access journal.
The event is part of the CMCC Lectures webinar series, which presents frontier topics and solutions in climate sciences and action, through the insights of leading experts. The series provides a platform for prominent scientists to showcase their cutting-edge research and engage in dialogue with peers and stakeholders.