RCN - SEES: Sustainable Cities - People and the Energy-Climate-Water Nexus

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1140384 (Ramaswami). This award is funded under NSF's Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) activities, which aims to address the challenges of creating a sustainable world. This project will develop a research collaboration network (RCN) across 20+ US universities and 2 national labs to coordinate work on the overarching theme of sustainable cities, with focus on reducing energy use, carbon emissions and mitigating climate-risks to water supply and public health in cities. The US network will collaborate with international sustainability research networks (in Australia, EU, Asia) and with a network of practitioners and policymakers in US and global cities. RCN activities will lead to the development of (a) inter-disciplinary systems framework(s) to represent linkages between people, infrastructures and the natural system, from the city-scale to the global scale, that shape sustainability outcomes in cities, (b) harmonized methods and international data standards to operationalize the framework, to report, for example, the carbon footprints of cities, water vulnerability of cities, or to analyze social actors who shape urban infrastructures and consumption patterns toward sustainability, (c) a network of 12 global cities for testing the framework and its component theories and models/methods in cities with different natural, infrastructural, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics, (d) a virtual collaborative forum to share research methods, experiences and teaching tools across more than 20+ US universities on the common thematic area of sustainable cities. The RCN will provide science based systems analysis tools, much needed by more than 1000 cities worldwide that are developing sustainability plans addressing energy, water and climate change. A unique aspect of this RCN is broad-based integration across urban ecology, industrial ecology, atmospheric sciences, infrastructure engineering, architecture, urban planning, behavioral sciences, public affairs and public health toward the goal of sustainable cities. Cross-discipline integration, coordination of data across scales, and cross-city comparisons are expected to advance the science of sustainable cities. The RCN has potential to impact more than 1200 students in participating US universities and 65 million people in the network of cities where field work will be coordinated. Dissemination potential is high through network links with policy groups such as ICLEI-USA and The World Bank who work with cities worldwide.