Helicopter fighting BC forest fires during a hot sunny summer day. Credit: edb3_16 from iStock Images.
Big Projects, big progress.
PICS is closing out a fiscal year that has been exceedingly busy and productive despite the challenges of the pandemic.
We’ve funded five new Opportunity projects and seven new Fast Tracks, and the process is well underway to identify the next big Theme project. Through these projects, we have a number of newcomers — both faculty and solution seekers — who have not previously been involved in PICS projects, and we’ve expanded the range of topics that are being funded.
This past year, we also created a new category of funding: Research Implementation. This money is allocated for continued advancement of Opportunity or Theme projects after their formal end date when we have a strong sense that this will enhance implementation success. The first project under this initiative is supporting three pilot projects with BC Housing partners/co-funders that are integrating both climate mitigation and adaptation into the design of multi-family buildings.
As well, more than 70 graduate students and post-docs have been involved in PICS projects this year, building capacity for the workforce of tomorrow in climate solutions.
And for the first time, we participated in the UN’s international climate change conference, with PICS represented at COP26, held last November in Glasgow, Scotland.
And now, on to this edition of the PICS newsletter, where we’re highlighting recent work by PICS people in exploring Canada’s future in a net-zero world, announcing the five new Opportunity Projects, showing new maps depicting BC’s extreme wildfire risk areas, and showcasing lessons learned from the pandemic that can help us deal with the effects of climate change.
Want to know more? View the full Spring 2022 PICS Newsletter here.
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PICS Communications
