BE MUSES:Decision Support for Urban Development: Air Quality, Social Justice, Material, and Energy and the Impact of Social Decision Making

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BE/MUSES: Decision-support for Urban Development: Air Quality, social Justice, Material and energy and the Impact of Social Decision-making.The focus of this BE/MUSES planning grant will be to create a prototype tool that integrates air pollution models, material and energy flow analyses, and an urban development model. The ultimate outcome is aimed at developing decision support tools for environmental management of urban systems. Such tools are expected to encourage planners to choose more renewable resources and reduce waste generation, with the ultimate goal of reducing the environmental impacts of the built environment during rapid urbanization. The research is to explore the urban funnel concept with urban metabolism metrics and visualization tools, while calibrating and validating UrbanSim, a model that predicts urban growth by simulating the interaction of social-decision-making, land development and transportation activities. The goal is also to predict spatial and temporal distribution of major air pollutants, as well as sustainability metrics such as water usage and solid waste generation. Collaboration with a regional planning agency that works with Greater Phoenix municipalities will provide assessment of the models developed. Broader impacts include education for graduate and undergraduate students as well as outreach to K-12 students and teachers, the general public, and urban planners in the Phoenix area. This planning award is co-managed by Robert O'Connor in SES / SBE and Tom Waite in BES / ENG.