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.

不断增长的人口和发展的发展压力导致了我们星球上生活的各种挑战，特别是当前的人类活动模式是否可持续。人类活动与自然环境密切相关，人类活动与环境过程之间存在双向互连。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，食物的可用性。地球具有维持生活方式所需的有限资源：能源，清水，耕地。随着环境条件的变化，新疾病可能存在可能性，物种可以转移到它们非本地的区域，并挤出我们习惯的物种，并且人类状况可能会受到环境变化的威胁。基本的社会结构（例如国界和我们经济体系的健康状况）可能会受到改变自然资源，短缺和在某些情况下盈余的竞争。这些问题是复杂的，多学科的，并且交织在一起。他们呼吁采用“可持续性科学”。据我们所知，认识到我们星球上生活的挑战，NSF发起了一项主要的可持续性新计划（SEE），涉及基金会的所有局。但是，迄今为止，数学科学仅以有限的方式参与。然而，在各种各样的领域中，存在许多数学问题，具有巨大的复杂性，兴趣和重要性，使数学科学社区进行工作非常重要。该项目支持将描述这些数学挑战的研讨会，并将导致一份报告被广泛传播给数学科学社区以及NSF以及加拿大NSERC的同行。可持续性问题跨越了许多学科。可以预期，该项目所确定的数学挑战会导致对各种社会重要性的各种主题进行研究，例如气候变化，环境健康，有限的自然资源管理以及这些主题与健康的经济体系和持久社会结构的互连。