Alumnights brought together different generations of Ciências ULisboa at the Pavilion of Portugal

The night was one of celebration and also of much science: between the late afternoon and the early evening of last Thursday, the Pavilion of Portugal welcomed professors, scientists, and students from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Ciências ULisboa) for one of the Alumnights sessions. The community did not miss the call for this unprecedented event, which is promoted by the University of Lisbon and aims to foster interaction among students from different generations and different Faculties. At the beginning of the programme, the highlights were the presentations of the journeys and careers of various scientists and different moments of interaction and socialising, until the arrival of the most eagerly awaited moment: a conference panel entitled “The End of the World: Ciências ULisboa in the anticipation and mitigation of major global risks”.

The theme was bold, but the cast and the panel members’ curricula were equally impressive – and there was no shortage of explanations and projections, ranging from climate change to seismology, from the management of beaches and cliffs to the future of science in a world dominated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The panel was composed of Ricardo Machado Trigo and Susana Custódio, both researchers at the Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL) and lecturers in the Department of Earth Sciences and Energy (DCTE); Cátia Pesquita, lecturer in the Department of Informatics and coordinator of the new Bachelor's degree in Data Science; Cláudia Pinto, Director of Projects at the City Hall of Lisbon, coordinator of the ReSist Programme and lecturer at the DCTE; David Avelar, co-founder of the startup 2Adapt and researcher at the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C); and Celso Aleixo Pinto, Head of the Coastal Monitoring and Risk Division at the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA).

It was Jorge Relvas, vice-rector of the University of Lisbon, who acted as host – and set the tone for the start of proceedings. “This school (Ciências ULisboa) is extraordinary because the people who make it up are extraordinary,” the vice-rector reminded. Conceição Freitas, Dean of Ciências ULisboa, also joined in the welcoming moment and highlighted the importance of bringing together “former and new students to socialise and share experiences”.

With the intentions announced, the debate session followed – with the initial projections presented by climatologist Ricardo Machado Trigo. In the memory of many present in the room still lingered the storms that battered and devastated parts of Portugal in the first quarter, but the IDL specialist pointed to projections for a more distant period that may even see major changes in the climate over the next decade.

“We have a tendency towards greater aridity and quite intense droughts,” said Ricardo Machado Trigo regarding the next decade. “I draw attention to the simple fact that the temperature is rising – and it’s not the 1.2 or 1.3 degrees that are talked about, because in reality, in Europe, the temperature has already risen by about two degrees – this means, according to the rule of thermodynamics, that the atmosphere has a greater capacity to retain water vapour. It means that, at the same time as we have aridity and droughts and these problems related to the combination of extreme events,” described the IDL researcher, remembering that the increase in water transport capacity will result in higher precipitation rates, even though they may occur at more spaced intervals over time.

From the clouds to the depths of the planet was just one step – and the entrance of a new speaker. Susana Custódio has built her career in seismology and did not hide the fact that “seismologists hate” the recurring question about the viability of a system that, eventually, might be able to predict the date and location of earthquakes with precision, but she did not fail to remind that seismology deals with the Earth which, unlike the sky, is “opaque”. This does not prevent the use of “electromagnetic means, electrical resistivity, and all the physics that can be applied to the study of the Earth’s interior”.

“At this moment we are beginning to have ways of characterising the variability of the solid Earth over time,” Susana Custódio also reported.

The old maxim that it is not earthquakes, but rather buildings that kill people was also addressed by the IDL researcher, who warned of the need to put into practice the best measures to avoid greater harm. And at this point, only the authorities and the construction sector will have a say.

“The message is: we do not have to die in earthquakes. If we are as well prepared as, for example, Japan, we can survive high-magnitude earthquakes,” she warned. “From my point of view, not building properly in dangerous areas (which are known for their high seismic risk) is criminal,” added Susana Custódio.

Lisbon still keeps the great earthquake of 1755 very fresh in its memory, but that has not stopped it from growing over the years. “Of course we cannot send the population out of the city of Lisbon,” said the specialist who works for the municipality, emphasising the importance of adapting building codes to take into account the variety of periods and types of buildings in different cities.

The topic had already been raised by Susana Custódio, and Cláudia Pinto returned to it, to remind that policies which mitigate risks may not necessarily guarantee the habitability of buildings after an earthquake. This raises the question of costs.

“When it is then said that to carry out seismic reinforcement on a four-storey building €100,000 is needed, the owners may say that there is no capacity to take on this kind of expense. Therefore, we have to move towards allowing – and the legislation currently does not allow – someone to carry out, in the long term, incremental reinforcements,” recommended the person responsible for the ReSist programme.

In new constructions, the legislation could also benefit from improvements, recalled Cláudia Pinto. “It is still possible to build hospitals in areas of high vulnerability and high danger,” warned the researcher, alluding to the so-called “constraint maps” which end up not actually constraining construction, as they only require the description of “singularities” that may increase the risks of building in certain locations – and entail the adoption of measures for each case.

“But if land use planning considered a restriction on occupation for a certain type of construction or a certain type of facility, to make it non aedificandi, this would completely change the paradigm,” emphasised Cláudia Pinto.

David Avelar had to learn how to project catastrophe risks in order to launch 2Adapt – and he arrived at the Alumnights session at Ciências ULisboa with a curriculum that highlights a providential intervention which helped the Regional Government of Madeira avoid a repeat of the damage recorded in the 2010 floods, which caused 47 deaths.

It was with the projections from this startup, which stems directly from knowledge produced at Ciências ULisboa, that the Regional Government of Madeira ensured a roadmap of interventions that have already managed to prevent greater harm, even when more extreme rainfall events occur.

The head of 2Adapt confirmed that there is a market for companies specialising in risk assessments and identification of prevention measures because extreme events are already having an impact. If from 1980 to 1999 Portugal spent around €70 million on the prevention of extreme events, in 2023 this amount rose to €623 million.

David Avelar also reveals that several companies are already using 2Adapt’s models to prepare for the occurrence of extreme events – or, in the case of insurers, simply to determine what insurance costs are borne by customers.

“One of the requirements is spatial and temporal granularity. It’s the question of being able to reach the (projection) level of the neighbourhood, but we know there is a trade-off between uncertainty and that granularity. On the issue of climate change, which involves more strategic work, one of the tasks we already undertake refers to the regionalisation (of the models). There are the large (climate) global models, which have a very large grid, of many kilometres, and we try to go down to the municipal level,” replied David Avelar, while also noting that the 2Adapt models deal not only with climate projections, but also take into account the vulnerabilities recorded at each point of the territory.

These are also the projections that point to the growing erosion of the coastal strip, which has caused Portuguese territory to “shrink” year after year, due to the force of the sea. And it is at this point that the intervention of Celso Aleixo Pinto helped to reveal the work that can be carried out by an entity such as the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA).

The former Ciências ULisboa student recalled the paradigm shift recorded in the 1990s, which began to favour “sediment management” over the “heavy works” of previous eras, but also admitted that “artificial beach nourishment” is one of the measures for “mitigation and adaptation to climate change”.

Mitigation can reduce risks – but it may not be enough. And for that reason, the APA specialist admits that the authorities may one day have to move towards “a planned retreat from certain locations along our coastal strip”.

“We have to prepare ourselves for a new physical reality of the territory,” warned Celso Aleixo Pinto. “When we start moving towards the end of the century, there will indeed come a time when we won’t be able to protect everyone. And at that point, very difficult decisions will have to be made,” he stressed.

Despite the mistakes made in the past (“when what is known today was not yet known”), it is now possible to restrict construction in risk zones, through the current legislation in force for land use planning. Which does not invalidate other pernicious issues. “There is, then, here, another dimension that has to do with the legal aspect, the administrative aspect and the aspect of decisions, sometimes inexplicable, that are taken in court regarding certain constructions,” Celso Aleixo Pinto also stated.

If Portugal is dwindling, then what can be said about human knowledge? The question was first raised by Daron Acemoglu, Nobel laureate in Economics, who recently predicted that Artificial Intelligence could put an end to the generation of knowledge, but this was not enough to convince Cátia Pesquita, a researcher who has been building her career in that thematic area.

The researcher at Ciências ULisboa recalled that all humans contribute to global knowledge as they develop individual knowledge through solving everyday problems. The thesis of the end of the generation of knowledge assumes that it is only possible to generate new knowledge if there is “an immediate benefit” or “an immediate return”.

In theory, the use of artificial intelligence not only removes the effort but can also endanger the logic of benefit and lead humanity to stop seeking knowledge, but Cátia Pesquita has a different prediction: “this room is full of people who prove that this is not true. It is full of scientists!”, she recalled, pointing to the Alumnights audience.

The Artificial Intelligence specialist recalled that the biases and prejudices that are reflected in algorithms result directly from the actions of the humans who produce them, but also stressed the conviction that these algorithms are not in a position to replace people.

Cátia Pesquita even admits that Acemoglu "loses sight of the potential of Artificial Intelligence to be a true collaborator with humanity in the generation of knowledge”.

“We have to think of artificial intelligence not just as a tool for efficiency, but as a tool that will challenge us to be more creative, and stimulate our curiosity and reasoning, to lead us to have critical thinking,” she concluded. Decidedly, the future also lies in the Alumnights events at Ciências ULisboa.