Session Summary and Speaker Bio

Broward County Resilient Environment Department

Session Title	Introduction to GIS & Leveraging Spatial Data to Solve Climate Issues
Target Audience	Grades 9-12
Session Summary	In this interactive session, students will get a crash course on GIS basics and will learn how spatial data can be leveraged to address climate related issues such as extreme heat and flooding. Students will take on the role of environmentalists and data scientists and will explore relevant data layers in order to carry out a site selection for enhanced tree canopy in Broward.

Presenters

Adrienne Aiken

GIS Analyst

Broward County Resilient Environment Department, Resilience Unit

Adrienne Aiken is a GIS analyst at Broward County’s Resilient Environment Department. In her role she supports the Resilience Unit in their climate change resilience and adaptation planning initiatives and is often responsible for carrying out resilience reviews of new transportation projects, mapping exercises to visualize the spatial distribution of extreme heat, and flooding vulnerability, and tracking climate change adaptation and mitigation progress throughout the County. Ms. Aiken remains committed to furthering environmental justice across Broward through climate outreach, replacement of inherently biased data, and through leveraging GIS to help identify equitable adaptation strategies.

Ms. Aiken holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Biology from the University of the West Indies, and a Master of Professional Science degree in Natural Hazards and Catastrophes from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

Saadullah Baloch

GIS Analyst

Broward County Resilient Environment Department, Innovation Unit

Saad Baloch recently moved to South Florida from Idaho after graduating from University of Idaho and joining Broward County as a GIS analyst. He is a passionate and progressive Data Scientist/Analyst who likes to analyze data that might help in resolve real world issues and in policies related to resiliency and other county needs such as demographics, GIS project management and GIS web applications etc. Last year he presented his spatial and non-spatial analysis of Broward County’s rising air temperature. Saad Baloch has a Master’s in Environmental Science from University of Idaho and Master’s in Geology from University of Wollongong, Australia. In this free time, he like to play games on his PC, enjoys cooking, socializing, and going to EDM music events.