Chiang Mai Urban Flood Lab

CHIANG MAI URBAN FLOOD FIELD LAB
A one-month long arts and technology un-conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Exploring critical design practices in disaster risk management,
collaborative technology production, and wild hacking.

Unconventional format:

Fluid time-frame – Come for as long or as short as you can over a month-long period in June and July of 2019.

Emergent schedule – A few organizers will organize / lead set workshops and trainings, but most of the schedule is created by participants (bring your own project, host a workshop, run an activity).

Production Oriented – There will be presentations and discussion, but we will prioritize creating opportunities for participants to make, write, design, code, question, break.

Localized and Globalized – Residents of Chiang Mai, those of Asia and those of the World are all stakeholders and participants in the event.

Three Simple rules:

Rule 1: Make something. Bring an idea and produce something while you are there: an art piece, policy brief, music, map, digital app, risk model
Rule 2: Document your work
Rule 3: Contribute to the conference community

The Setting

Chiang Mai is a flood-prone urban area in northern Thailand with around 1 million residents. It’s a cultural center of the region, with hundreds of Buddhist temples and numerous important holidays and festivals. It is also a technology hub, and a destination for Thai and international software developers who want to participate in the rapidly growing digital economy. In 2017 the national government announced major investments aimed at helping Chiang Mai become Thailand’s first “smart city.” Flood risk is increasing due to growing population, unplanned development, and climate change. Major floods are becoming increasingly frequent, limiting the city’s ability to achieve sustainable and equitable development.

Thematic Areas

Participants will organize their projects, workshops, and trainings around several thematic areas, including:

Informating Crisis. On the social life, ethics, and hidden biases of disaster data. What is measured? By whom? How is it analyzed? Communicated?
The Art & Science of Disaster Risk Management. What opportunities exist for cooperation between art & science to communicate flood risk, speed recovery, or imagine new ways of living with water.
Flood Risk Financing. Designing technical foundation and tools for more efficient financial strategies to fund response to urban floods, including pre-arranged finance, insurance, and delivery of funds.
Communicating Risk. Innovating risk communication and developing new ways of thinking and narrating risk.
Machine Learning & Computer Vision. New technologies for mapping a changing city, rapid impact assessments, remote sensing and near real time flood monitoring.
Internet of Things. New sensing technologies for infrastructure monitoring, early warning, long-term data collection.
Grassroots flood mitigation. DIY weather stations, community alerts, citizen hazard mapping, capacity and vulnerability assessment, soft & hard community infrastructure, policy advocacy.
Nature-based solutions. How can investment in nature — forest protection or restoration, floodplain restoration, etc. — help mitigate flood risk?

Potential Outputs

Prototype applications – funding will be available for implementation and scale-up of impactful ideas following the event
Trainings delivered to & by local and regional governments and university students
New collaborations launched
Findings report developed jointly by participants
Academic research
New Datasets

Join Us!

Share your ideas with us. There are many ways to contribute.

We’re open to bringing on new co-organizers as well as financial and/or technical sponsors.