Webinar: From mapping problems to solving them. Geospatial Modeling and Simulation for policy decision support.

In this webinar, India Flying Labs demonstrate how geospatial modelling and simulation can create decision-support systems that allow policy makers to ask practical “what if” questions before implementing costly or irreversible decisions.

As policy problems are made up of multiple interactions between people, infrastructure, environment and institutions, Advait Kulkarni calls for a move from mapping problems to solving them, from the simple usage of data to actionable intelligence that policy makers can implement in their own decision-making.

Nachiket Kondhalkar then presents two cases where simulation and modelling proved invaluable in addressing spatial problems. The first was an evacuation and emergency-planning model for the Tarapur nuclear facility region. They identified road bottlenecks and vulnerable settlements, and tested which infrastructure upgrades would most improve evacuation time. The second was an urban heat decision-support model. They pinpointed which neighbourhoods faced the highest heat exposure, and showed which adaptation interventions, like tree planting or cool roofs, would reduce that exposure most effectively.