Multi-Stakeholder Decision-Making for the Development of Livestock Waste-to-Biogas Systems

题目：畜牧业废物转化为沼气系统发展的多方利益相关者决策美国动物饲养业务每年产生的牲畜废物估计为3亿吨。这些废物大多在泻湖中处理或存放在室外分解，导致许多环境问题，如温室气体（甲烷和一氧化二氮）和氨排放，磷径流导致地表水富营养化，以及人类接触致病菌。利用牲畜粪便生产沼气为解决这些问题提供了一个很有希望的替代方案，同时还提供了一系列有价值的副产品，如电力、床上用品和有机肥料。美国环保署的AgSTAR项目报告称，大约8000个美国农场可以支持沼气系统，提供约1600兆瓦的电力（足够为100万户家庭供电），并减少180万吨甲烷排放（相当于减少650万辆汽车的排放量）。尽管有这种潜力，但由于技术成本高、从不可再生资源获得的天然气价格竞争激烈以及政府政策和奖励措施有限，生物气系统的发展受到限制。该项目旨在开发优化模型和必要的解决方案方法，作为开发禽畜粪便沼气生产系统的多利益相关者决策工具。拟议的工作是跨学科的，结合了多目标和随机优化、社会选择和经济学、高性能计算以及农业和能源系统的思想。该项目的一个关键科学目标是为多利益相关者、多目标优化问题开发计算效率高的解决策略。拟议的项目将率先将可信的社会客观指标纳入优化模型。pi提出了将决策对多个涉众的影响纳入模型的新度量。开发的模型将涵盖以前没有考虑过的更广泛的技术和配置。具体而言，指数将模拟废物运输、储存和处理系统、原料和养分管理系统、沼气和电力生产和输送系统以及地区公用事业系统之间的相互作用。将这些系统结合起来的能力将为实现经济可行性和评价环境和社会影响提供新的机会。开发的框架将确定社会最优的折衷解决方案，这些解决方案将考虑多个利益相关者（城市/农村社区、环保团体、农民、技术提供者和地方/地区政府）的优先事项。这将通过使用统计度量来实现，例如风险条件值和广义熵指数。这些指标的使用将使决策者能够评估他们的决策对利益相关者满意度的影响。项目团队可以访问真实的数据集和一组利益相关者，以制定可能对相关利益相关者的决策过程产生直接影响的现实案例研究。pi计划培养一名博士研究生，并开发本科和研究生课程的新教材。他们还提议开展外展活动，以提高公众对动物农场甲烷排放影响的认识，并招募来自代表性不足的少数民族的学生进入STEM领域。

1604374 PI: Zavala TejedaTitle: Multi-Stakeholder Decision-Making for the Development of Livestock Waste-to-Biogas SystemsLivestock waste generated at U.S. animal feeding operations is estimated to be 300 million tons per year. Most of this waste is disposed of in lagoons or stored outdoors to decompose, leading to numerous environmental issues such as greenhouse gas (methane and nitrous oxide) and ammonia emissions, eutrophication of surface waters resulting from phosphorus runoff, and human exposure to pathogenic bacteria. Biogas production from livestock waste provides a promising alternative to address these issues while providing a wide range of valuable byproducts such as electricity, bedding, and organic fertilizer. The EPA's AgSTAR program reports that about 8,000 U.S. farms could support biogas systems, providing about 1,600 MW of electricity (enough to power one million homes) and reducing methane emissions by 1.8 million metric tons (equivalent to taking 6.5 million cars off the road). Despite this potential, the development of biogas systems has been limited by high technology costs, competing prices for natural gas obtained from non-renewable sources, and limited government policies and incentives. This project aims to develop optimization models and the necessary solution approaches as a multi-stakeholder decision making tool for developing biogas production systems from livestock waste. The proposed work is cross-disciplinary, combining ideas from multi-objective and stochastic optimization, social choice and economics, high-performance computing, and agricultural and energy systems.A key scientific objective of the proposed project is the development of computationally efficient solution strategies for multi-stakeholder, multi-objective optimization problems. The proposed project will pioneer the incorporation of credible social objective metrics into optimization models. The PIs propose new metrics for incorporating the impact of decisions on multiple stakeholders into the model. The models developed will capture a wider range of technologies and configurations not considered before. In particular, the PIs will model interactions between waste transport, storage, and processing systems, feedstocks and nutrient management systems, biogas and electricity production and delivery systems, and district utility systems. The ability to couple these systems will provide new opportunities to achieve economic viability and to evaluate environmental and social impacts. The developed frameworks will identify socially-optimal compromise solutions that factor in the priorities of multiple stakeholders (urban/rural communities, environmental groups, farmers, technology providers, and local/regional governments). This will be achieved by using statistical metrics, such as the conditional value at risk and the generalized entropy index. The use of these metrics will enable policy makers to assess the impact of their decisions on stakeholder satisfaction. The project team has access to real data sets and a group of stakeholders for formulating realistic case studies that may have immediate impact on the decision-making processes of the involved stakeholders. The PIs plan to train a PhD student and develop new teaching materials for undergraduate and graduate courses. They also propose outreach activities to increase public awareness on the effects of methane emissions from animal farms and recruit students from underrepresented minorities into STEM fields.