An International Network-to-Network Approach to Generating New Scientific Community Collaborations in the Gulf of Mexico Region - A Case Study

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This award funds planning and implementation of a workshop for stakeholders from the U.S. and Mexico working to advance research on climate variability and its impact on community resilience and adaptive capacity in the Gulf of Mexico region. The workshop is intended to be an initial step in developing a network of networks to coordinate among existing networks of researchers focused on the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding coastal communities. The network-of-networks will support a new community to facilitate collaborative research and education for researchers, educators, engineers, decision-makers and the public. It will establish critical research priorities that link natural and social sciences to better understand the complexity of GOM systems in a changing climate. The priorities can then be used as a focal point by researchers and funding agencies in addressing the most pressing science to inform robust and actionable solutions for decision-making. The network-to-network approach will require cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary and international risk-based solutions and thus will spur integrated research teams that transcend traditional boundaries. The network will foster focused innovation and targeted use of limited resources for maximum societal, economic and environmental impacts, by exploiting novel data and platforms, decision support that advances social, economic and environmental sciences, and improved earth systems forecasting, and by aligning research to provide state of the art testbeds and infrastructure. A parallel outcome of the project will be a case study documenting the methods used to facilitate the network-of-networks collaboration. The case study will document development of shared research priorities among existing networks, perceptions of the value of the network-to-network collaborations, along with the challenges, barriers and time investment necessary to initiate this approach. The case study will provide an example pathway for development of future network-to-network collaborations.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.