Workshop on Mathematical Challenges for Sustainability

可持续发展数学挑战研讨会

• 批准号: 1053887
• 负责人: Fred Roberts
• 金额: $ 9.27万
• 依托单位: Rutgers University New Brunswick
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-15 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1053887&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Workshop; Mathematical; Challenges; Sustainability

The growing human population and increasing pressures for development have led to a variety of challenges for life on our planet, in particular whether current patterns of human activity are sustainable. Human activity is closely tied to the natural environment and there is a two-way interconnection between human activity and environmental processes. Increasingly, we are noting how human activities affect the systems that sustain life, including climate, healthy air and water, availability of food. The earth has finite resources that we need to sustain our life style: sources of energy, clean water, arable land. As environmental conditions change, there are possibilities for new diseases, species can move into areas to which they are non-native and crowd out the species to which we are accustomed, and the human condition can be threatened by environmental change. Fundamental societal structures such as national boundaries and the health of our economic systems can be affected by competition for changing natural resources, shortages and in some cases surpluses. These problems are complex, multi-disciplinary, and intertwined. They call for a "science of sustainability."Recognizing the challenges to life on our planet as we know it, NSF has initiated a major new initiative on sustainability (SEES) that involves all directorates in the Foundation. However, to date, the mathematical sciences have been involved only in a limited way. Yet, there are many mathematical problems of great complexity, interest, and importance in a wide variety of areas that it would be important to get the mathematical sciences community to work on. This project supports a workshop that will describe these mathematical challenges and that will lead to a report to be circulated widely to the mathematical sciences community as well as NSF and also its counterpart in Canada, NSERC. The problems of sustainability cross many disciplines. The mathematical challenges the project identifies can be expected to lead to research on a wide variety of topics of great societal importance such as climate change, environmental health, management of limited natural resources, and the interconnections of these topics with healthy economic systems and enduring social structures.

不断增长的人口和日益增加的发展压力给我们这个星球上的生命带来了各种挑战，特别是目前的人类活动模式是否可持续。人类活动与自然环境息息相关，人类活动与环境过程是双向互动的。我们越来越多地注意到人类活动如何影响维持生命的系统，包括气候、健康的空气和水、食物的供应。地球拥有我们维持生活方式所需的有限资源：能源、清洁的水、可耕地。随着环境条件的变化，可能会出现新的疾病，物种可能会迁入它们非本地的地区，排挤我们习惯的物种，人类的状况可能会受到环境变化的威胁。对不断变化的自然资源的竞争、短缺，以及在某些情况下的盈余，可能会影响到国家边界和经济体系的健康等基本社会结构。这些问题复杂、多学科、交织在一起。他们呼吁建立一门“可持续发展科学”。认识到我们所知的地球上生命面临的挑战，美国国家科学基金会发起了一项关于可持续发展的重大新倡议(SEE)，该倡议涉及基金会的所有主管部门。然而，到目前为止，数学科学只以有限的方式参与其中。然而，在各种各样的领域中，有许多非常复杂、有趣和重要的数学问题，让数学科学界参与进来是很重要的。该项目支持将描述这些数学挑战的讲习班，并将导致一份报告广泛分发给数学科学界以及NSF和加拿大的对应机构NSERC。可持续发展的问题跨越许多学科。该项目确定的数学挑战预计将导致对各种具有重大社会意义的主题进行研究，如气候变化、环境健康、有限自然资源的管理，以及这些主题与健康的经济体系和持久的社会结构的相互联系。