SGER: Collaborative Research: Mapping the Structure and Evolution of Sustainability Science Research

CBET-0831644 Luis Bettencourt，圣达菲研究所可持续发展科学与工程的一个新领域正在出现，旨在了解自然与人类社会之间相互作用的基本特征，并帮助引导人类需求对地球自然资源的影响走向可持续发展的轨道。可持续发展科学与工程是统一的，其最终目标明确，但占据了传统研究领域的跨学科地位，跨越科学和工程，跨学科传播，如农业，生态学，海洋学，气候研究，经济学，社会科学，能源和材料以及工程，物理学，生物学和化学的几个其他方面。尽管可持续性科学和工程目前在科学和工程界得到广泛讨论，并开始与经济和社会发展的政治议程相联系，但仍不清楚其许多方面在多大程度上被纳入全球视野，以及研究人员是否利用它作为跨传统科学和工程领域合作的纽带。这个项目将通过描述、分析和绘制关于可持续性的基础研究来解决这些问题。具体而言，将汇编一个全面的学术出版物、专利、研究赠款、政策文件和科普作品数据集，这些数据集共同定义了该领域的综合知识。分析结果将以表格、图表以及地理空间和科学地图的形式呈现。我们将邀请可持续发展专家来解释这些结果。调查结果将通过学术出版物、在线和关于可持续性主题的研讨会进行介绍、讨论和传播。鼓励在大量传统学科中及时取得科学和工程进展需要产生一种全球视角（一种“从上而下”的观点），以确定政府、资助机构、非政府组织、科学界和广大公众应采取的最有效的行动和激励措施。这项工作将描绘全球可持续发展科学和工程的现状，并为其未来发展提供可操作的见解。由此产生的地图将有助于传达最新技术水平，并指出挑战和机遇。它们可以作为可持续发展科学与工程研究和实践的可视化界面进行扩展和采用。几名研究生将参与并接受该项目的培训。

CBET-0831644Luis Bettencourt, Santa Fe InstituteA new field of Sustainability Science and Engineering is emerging that seeks to understand the fundamental character of interactions between nature and human society and to help steer the impact of humanity's needs on the planet's natural resources towards sustainable trajectories. Sustainability Science and Engineering is unified in clear terms by its ultimate goals but occupies an interdisciplinary position among traditional research fields, spanning both science and engineering and spreading across disciplines as diverse as agriculture, ecology, oceanography, climate studies, economics, a diverse set of social sciences, energy and materials and several additional aspects of engineering, physics, biology, and chemistry. Although Sustainability Science and engineering is by now widely discussed in the scientific and engineering community, and is beginning to be connected to the political agenda for economic and social development, it remains unclear to what extent its many facets are being integrated into a global perspective and whether researchers are utilizing it as a nexus to collaborate across traditional scientific and engineering fields. This project will address such issues by delineating, analyzing, and mapping both basic research on sustainability. Specifically, a comprehensive dataset of scholarly publications, patents, research grants, policy documents and popular science pieces that together define the integrated knowledge of the field will be compiled. Analysis results will be presented as tables, graphs, and in form of geospatial and science maps. Sustainability experts will be invited to interpret these results. Findings will be presented, discussed, and disseminated via scholarly publications, online, and at a workshop on the topic of sustainability. Encouraging timely scientific and engineering progress across a large set of traditional disciplines requires generating a global perspective (a view 'from above') to determine the most effective actions and incentives to be created by governments, funding agencies, non-governmental organizations, the scientific community, and the public at large. This work will map the current state of sustainability science and engineering worldwide and provide actionable insights into its future development. The resulting maps will be useful for communicating the state of the art as well as to point out challenges and opportunities. They might be extended and adopted as a visual interface into research and practice of Sustainability Science and Engineering. Several graduate students will be involved and trained in this project.