Belmont Forum Collaborative Research Food-Water-Energy Nexus: Globally and Locally-sustainable Food-Water-Energy Innovation in Urban Living Labs

全球许多城市都面临着管理食物、水和能源系统的艰巨挑战。这些挑战源于这样一个事实，即粮食、水和能源问题往往彼此紧密相连，不仅在地方，而且在全球。这就是所谓的食物-水-能源（FWE）关系。对局部水问题的有效解决可能会导致新的局部食物或能源问题，或在全球范围内引起新的水问题。在地方范围内，很难预测在地方和全球范围内，对一个问题的解决方案在粮食、水和能源系统中是否可持续。包含这些联系的创新解决方案对于使城市更好地管理其粮食、水和能源系统以及了解不同解决方案的利弊尤为重要。该奖项支持美国研究人员参与一个由29个国家通过贝尔蒙特论坛-欧洲城市联合规划倡议（JPI）竞标选出的项目。可持续城市化全球倡议(SUGI)/粮食-水-能源联系是一项多边倡议，旨在支持研究项目，将全球零散的研究和专业知识汇集在一起，为粮食-水-能源联系挑战找到创新解决方案。该呼吁旨在制定更具弹性、更适用的城市解决方案，使更广泛的利益攸关方受益。世界人口的迅速城市化突出了这一重点的重要性。邀请国际伙伴为这一挑战制定解决办法。所要求的资金将用于支持美国参与者在由至少三个参与国的合作伙伴组成的联盟中进行合作，并将自然科学家、社会科学家和研究用户（如公民社会、非政府组织和工业界）聚集在一起。其他国家的参与者通过其国家资助组织获得资助。该项目旨在通过在奥地利、巴西、德国、荷兰、南非、瑞典和美国的城市生活实验室进行的实验，开发一种新颖的方法，为本地和全球可持续发展的FWE挑战提供创新的解决方案。城市生活实验室是一个创新论坛，应用于新产品、系统、服务和流程的开发，采用工作方法将人们作为用户和共同创造者融入整个开发过程，在复杂和真实的环境中探索、检查、实验、测试和评估新的想法、场景、流程、系统、概念和创造性解决方案。该项目将在创新的创造性和评估过程的早期涉及一系列城市利益相关者，并将对所产生的解决方案进行环境健全性、经济可行性、社会可接受性和稳健性的测试。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Many cities across the globe are facing difficult challenges managing their food, water and energy systems. The challenges stem from the fact that the issues of food, water and energy are often tightly connected with each other, not only locally but also globally. This is known as the Food-Water-Energy (FWE) nexus. An effective solution to a local water problem may cause new local problems with food or energy, or cause new water problems at the global level. On a local scale, it is difficult to anticipate whether solutions to one issue in the nexus are sustainable across food, water and energy systems, both at the local and the global scale. Innovative solutions that encompass the nexus are particularly important to enable cities to better manage their food, water and energy systems and understand the benefits and tradeoffs for different solutions. This award supports U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 29-country initiative through the joint Belmont Forum- Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe. The Sustainable Urbanization Global Initiative (SUGI)/Food-Water-Energy Nexus is a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that bring together the fragmented research and expertise across the globe to find innovative solutions to the Food-Water-Energy Nexus challenge. The call seeks to develop more resilient, applied urban solutions to benefit a much wider range of stakeholders. The rapid urbanization of the world's population underscores the importance of this focus. International partners were invited to develop solutions for this challenge. The funds requested will be used to support U.S. participants to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries and that bring together natural scientists, social scientists and research users (e.g., civil society, NGOs, and industry). Participants from other countries are funded through their national funding organizations. This project seeks to develop a novel approach to produce innovative solutions to FWE challenges that are both locally and globally sustainable, through experiments in Urban Living Labs in Austria, Brazil, Germany Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden and the USA. Urban Living Labs are a forum for innovation, applied to the development of new products, systems, services and processes, employing working methods to integrate people into the entire development process as users and co-creator, to explore, examine, experiment, test and evaluate new ideas, scenarios, processes, systems, concepts and creative solutions in complex and real contexts. The project will involve a range of urban stakeholders early in the creative and evaluative processes of innovation, and the solutions produced will be tested for environmental soundness and economic viability and social acceptability and robustness.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.