CP 4052
A capstone course for the Sustainable Cities minor with an aim of analyzing climate vulnerabilities and recommending potential sustainable solutions for those vulnerabilities in the City of Savannah. The object of this course is to produce several deliverables based on sustainable development:
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Identification of environmental, economic, and social equity climate vulnerabilities in Savannah
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Spatial analysis (GIS)
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A web portal to display results and make recommendations
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An academic paper with research methods and results, and
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An infographic poster.
The Instructors
Dr. Jairo Garcia
Class Professor
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Dr. Jairo Garcia is an expert in sustainable urban development, carbon mitigation, and climate adaptation and resilience. His experience includes performing spatial data analysis for ecological assessments and to identify climate vulnerabilities and risks analysis. Dr. Garcia is the former Director of Climate Policies and Renewables with the City of Atlanta. Dr. Garcia received the Individual Climate Leadership Award by the EPA in 2017. This award recognized Dr. Garcia’s leadership in addressing climate change and engaging organizations, peers, and partners.
Elena Oertel
Teaching Assistant
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Elena Oertel is a graduate of the Master of City and Regional Planning program at Georgia Institute of Technology. She was the graduate teaching assistant under Jairo Garcia for the Sustainable Cities Studio Summer 2020 cohort. Currently, Elena is a Project Analyst at Brailsford & Dunlavey, Inc.
Teams
Environmental
Social Equity
Economics
Design
Our class has a mix of majors including public policy, engineering, design, and economics. The division of work is distributed to the teams which were divided based on personal skills and interests in aims to be the most efficient and effective over the course of this class.