What motivated you to pursue an internship with IPUR?

My first introduction to the Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR) was a competition that I signed up for, along with my friends Denzel Shemaiah and Premakumar Ganesh. It was the Optigram competition, and we had come up with the idea of an interactive video to highlight the consequences our food decisions had on the climate. With assistance in refining in our idea, IPUR’s communication and support was invaluable in us delivering on our idea, which had really broadened our horizons.

In addition to that, we attended the Understanding Risk Asia 2021 conference hosted by IPUR. There I both got to see the international influence of the work IPUR does, but also to meet the IPUR team in person and realise how friendly and approachable they were. With these prior interactions, I realised I would enjoy exploring climate risk communication with IPUR and joined the internship.

What work was I involved in?

My main project was building visuals for our world risk poll report, blending together information from the EMDAT database and our World Risk Poll data into coherent, informative and intuitive visuals. I built visuals in a variety of forms, geographical heat plots, circular and standard bar plots and pie charts. It was an iterative process of exploring the data, building visuals and understanding what meaning I could further add, or how I could present information more intuitively.

In addition to that I was involved in two smaller projects. The first was researching potential blockers or concerns for AI adoption in medical fields for a project working with Bangladesh. The second was exploring creative ways to artistically visualise climate data, such as using a mandala or spiral graphs.

What were your experiences in IPUR?

My experience of IPUR has been highly positive. The people there are welcoming, friendly and very open to questions and suggestions. They do their best to make you feel a part of the team, and are also comfortable giving you important tasks that have a meaningful impact on their work. At the same time, they are flexible and were comfortable with accommodating my school schedule during my internship, for which I am very grateful. IPUR also held several events during my time there, such as the “Rumours, Myths & Misinformation” lecture and panel session which I found very insightful.

What lessons did you learn in general and about risk communication?

I learnt the importance of communicating information clearly and succinctly, removing superfluous elements in visuals so that the key comparisons can be made intuitively. An interesting consideration that I learned to remember was to have variety in my visuals. A report where every visual looked the same would both me forgettable and boring. Rather, graphs are best tailored to highlight relevant trends, ratios or metrics as appropriate.

I also had the chance to learn more about AI adoption, particularly in the medical field. It was eye opening realising how much AI technology could be hindered by insufficient communication, trust or infrastructure. I really appreciated how these practical considerations complemented the technical know-how I’ve learnt from my studies.