Climate models play a critical role in how societies understand, prepare for, and respond to the climate crisis. However, the question of who these models are built for, and who can access, audit, or challenge them, is often left unanswered.
This talk examines climate and disaster modeling from the perspective of public interest, open data, and engineering ethics. While technological advances are frequently presented as neutral or purely scientific, the choices behind data sources, modeling tools, and software licenses are deeply political. Closed models and proprietary systems can limit transparency, exclude affected communities, and concentrate decision-making power in the hands of a few institutions.
Drawing from hands-on experience with regional climate simulations, open reanalysis datasets, and hydrological modeling workflows applied in real-world disaster analysis through open-source tools and open datasets, this talk argues that free and open-source software is not merely a technical preference, but an ethical necessity in the era of climate crisis. Open tools enable accountability, reproducibility, and democratic access to climate knowledge; all of which are essential when model outputs inform public policy and risk management.
Rather than focusing on a single local case, the talk adopts a global perspective, highlighting structural issues in climate technologies and the responsibility of engineers and researchers working in this domain. The goal is to invite technologists to critically reflect on their role: not only as builders of models, but as actors shaping who benefits, and who bears the consequences, of climate technologies.