Draft program, subject to change. Invited talks run 30 minutes plus 10 minutes of questions; accepted-paper talks run 10 minutes each. Speaker bios are on the speakers page and paper authors on the papers page.

Day 1: Thursday, November 5

  1. 9:00–10:30

    Welcome

    • Welcome remarks
    • Small-group introductions
    • Planning overview: Stephen Wissow
    • Round-robin introductions
  2. 10:30–11:00

    Break

  3. 11:00–12:30

    Planning and Delivering Adaptation

    • Invited talk: Luis E. Ortiz
    • Accepted papers
      • Explainable and Robust Representation-Aware Planning for Climate-Health Adaptation in India Dash and Sarangi
      • Compound-Hazard Feasibility Gaps in Climate Adaptation Planning Dutta and Moharir
      • Can This Climate Plan Actually Be Implemented? Testing Climate Plan Executability under Institutional Constraints Dutta and Moharir
    • Moderated questions
    • Small-group discussion
    Example discussion questions
    • What adaptation-related needs might policymakers and communities have (e.g., resilient infrastructure siting, resource allocation, disaster recovery)?
    • How can we translate research into accessible tools for communities and policymakers?
    • What are other ways that planning research can help adaptation?
  4. 12:30–2:00

    Lunch (on your own)

  5. 2:00–3:30

    Energy and Computation

    • Invited talk: Carla P. Gomes
    • Warm-up partner discussion
    • Accepted papers
      • AI Planning as Solution and as Consumer: Computational Energy as a Planning Resource Georgievski
      • MicrogridOS: Agent-Orchestrated Generation of 80% Microgrid Designs for Energy Access Abdelnour et al.
      • Refined Thompson Learning for Adaptive Bandits: Power-Efficient Flexibility Scheduling Across Data Centers Chen et al.
    • Moderated questions
    • Small-group discussion
    Example discussion questions
    • What are your biggest questions about climate mitigation?
    • Are there opportunities for planning research to transfer to relatively understudied areas, such as multi-agent coordination for industrial process control or task planning for residential electrification?
  6. 3:30–4:00

    Break

  7. 4:00–5:00

    Session to be announced

    • Details to come
  8. 5:30–6:30

    AAAI reception

Day 2: Friday, November 6

  1. 9:00–10:30

    Measuring a Changing Planet

    • Invited talk: Joanmarie Del Vecchio
    • Small-group discussion
    • Accepted papers
      • Toward Adaptive Planning for Autonomous Glider Observations of Subsurface Marine Heatwaves Reed et al.
      • Physics-Guided Multi-Robot Planning for Climate Sensing Shaffer et al.
      • Planning Wildlife Monitoring Under Ecological Uncertainty: Scenario-Based Sensor Placement for Resource-Constrained Conservation Programs Murray et al.
    • Moderated questions
    Example discussion questions
    • How can planning research help improve the scope, scale, and cost of climate data to support climate modeling and environmental monitoring?
    • How can planning research leverage recent advances in ML-based climate models, and what new planning challenges does their widespread use expose?
  2. 10:30–11:00

    Break

  3. 11:00–12:30

    Goals and Governance

    Whose Objective? The Hidden Choices in Planning for Climate

    • Invited talk: Stéphane Hallegatte
    • Accepted papers
      • From Delegates to Trustees: Aligning LLM Planners with Absent Stakeholders in Climate Decision-Making Yang
      • Stress-Testing CBAM under Export Reallocation with RICE-M: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Climate-Economic Model with MRIO-Calibrated Trade Wozny et al.
      • Reinforcement Learning from Ecological Feedback (RLEF): A Framework for Aligning Language-Model Planning with Planetary Boundaries Yang and Aiersilan
    • Panel with moderated questions
    Example discussion questions
    • Whose losses does the objective count, and with what weights? How much does the future count, and who sets the discount factor?
    • How should a planner decide when the probabilities themselves are contested?
    • What role can planning research (multi-agent coordination, mechanism design) play in the economic and policy dimensions of mitigation, such as carbon markets, emissions trading design, corporate carbon accounting, and the equitable phase-out of fossil fuel infrastructure?
  4. 12:30–2:00

    Lunch (on your own)

  5. 2:00–3:30

    Planning Tools for Climate Users

    • Invited talk: Biplav Srivastava “Some Lessons from Smart Transportation to Help Plan for a Better Planet”
    • Small-group discussion
    • Accepted papers
      • Recentering Care in Climate Data Work as Integral for Climate AI Dogan et al.
      • Data Fragmentation as a Critical Bottleneck in Disaster Response Planning: The EVAC-AI Case Study for Flood Risk Assessment Vaidya et al.
      • What Aggregate Accuracy Hides: A Failure-Mode Analysis of Language-Guided Disaster Segmentation for Mitigation Planning Alikana et al.
    • Moderated questions
    Example discussion questions
    • How do some of these lessons apply to your own area of planning and climate work?
  6. 3:30–4:00

    Break

  7. 4:00–5:00

    Strength of Weak Ties

    • Small-group discussions: cross-field connections and gaps
    • Small-group discussions: future interests and research directions
    • Brainstorming groups on shared future-work topics
    Example discussion questions
    • Who have you met here for the first time who works in a different planning subfield, or a different climate field?
    • What connections jump out at you from the talks and discussions? What connections are missing?
    • What topics would you like to explore in your own research coming out of this symposium?
  8. 5:30–6:30

    AAAI plenary

Day 3: Saturday, November 7

  1. 9:00–10:30

    Community Discussion

    • Framing: a community of practice for climate-oriented planning research
    • Facilitated discussions, with share-outs
    Example discussion questions
    • What do we want in a community of climate-inspired planning researchers?
    • How do we create a community that supports both applied and foundational research under an umbrella of climate motivation?
    • What engagement between researchers, industry, funding agencies, and policymakers is needed to support climate-oriented planning research?
  2. 10:30–11:00

    Break

  3. 11:00–12:30

    Closing and Next Steps

    • Options for growing the community
    • Feedback for the organizers
    • Next steps and volunteers