Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Innovations in Resource Loss Reduction, Recovery, and Reuse (InnR3) for Sustainable Food Systems

规划拨款：可持续粮食系统资源损失减少、回收和再利用创新工程研究中心（InnR3）

• 批准号: 1937023
• 负责人: Ximing Cai
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2022-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1937023&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Planning; Grant; Engineering; Research; Center

The United States is the most efficient producer (total value of $560 billion) and top exporter ($140 billion in 2017) of food in the world. Due to population growth and economic development, it is conservatively predicted that the U.S. food industry will need to grow by at least 70% by the year 2050 to meet the needs of global population reaching 9.7 billion. This is considered a grand challenge that requires revolutionary technological advances in order to achieve sustainable food production growth while avoiding negative environmental impact. A key challenge is that a significant fraction of increasingly limited resources used for food production is lost. These losses occur through a variety of forms including bio-wastes, co-products from food processing and ethanol refining, food wastes, fertilizer runoff, and municipal and agricultural wastewaters. These losses are causing national and global crises by contributing to many interconnected problems including resource scarcity (e.g., clean water, soil nutrients), environmental pollution (e.g., excess levels of nutrients in the Gulf of Mexico), and high energy consumption (e.g., for treating bio-waste). Further, increasing climate variability may induce greater variability in nutrient fluxes and exacerbate these interconnected problems. Despite decades of efforts by the government and private agencies, the system-wide trend continues to worsen. The present practices are fragmented and do not provide an effective solution that society is ready to adopt. This Engineering Research Center (ERC) planning grant aims to develop activities that will address resource security and environmental sustainability revolution that will potentially turn these trends.University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and partners Princeton University, University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Virginia State University propose an Innovation in Resource loss Reduction, Recovery and Reuse (InnR3) ERC to generate a holistic, novel solution that will resolve the interconnected problems. Instead of focusing on a particular technology for a single problem, this ERC planning grant targets a convergent solution composed of a coordinated portfolio of technologies coupled with region specific policies to resolve a system of problems caused by nutrient loss. The project targets a solid work plan and a qualified team to expand the technology portfolio of interconnected problems in the entire food production (primarily in rural areas) and consumption (primarily in urban areas) cycle across spatial scales from field, farm, industry, small watersheds and large basins. Through a series of workshops and virtual meetings, this planning project will identify fundamental knowledge gaps, technology innovation barriers and institutional barriers for system level integration and adoption. These activities will also serve to identify additional needed partners through strategically organized working group discussions. This planning project will work to create a new, diverse workforce of research, education, and practice leaders for realizing InnR3 and create an interdisciplinary student-centered learning framework. Beyond the national concerns regarding degradation of the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, this ERC targets societal impacts in terms of behaviors of food producers and consumers, health of the public, environmental sustainability, economic growth and prosperity, and regional stability.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.

美国是世界上最有效的食品生产国（总价值为5600亿美元）和最大的食品出口国（2017年为1400亿美元）。由于人口增长和经济发展，据保守预测，到2050年，美国食品工业至少需要增长70%，才能满足全球97亿人口的需求。这被认为是一个巨大的挑战，需要革命性的技术进步，以实现可持续的粮食生产增长，同时避免负面的环境影响。一个关键的挑战是，用于粮食生产的日益有限的资源中有很大一部分损失了。这些损失以各种形式发生，包括生物废物、食品加工和乙醇提炼的副产品、食品废物、化肥径流以及市政和农业废水。这些损失造成了许多相互关联的问题，包括资源稀缺（例如，清洁水，土壤养分），环境污染（例如，墨西哥湾的营养物过量），以及高能耗（例如，用于处理生物废物）。此外，气候变异性的增加可能导致养分通量的更大变异性，并加剧这些相互关联的问题。尽管政府和私人机构数十年来一直在努力，但整个系统的趋势仍在继续恶化。目前的做法是支离破碎的，没有提供社会愿意采用的有效解决方案。该工程研究中心（ERC）计划拨款旨在开发将解决资源安全和环境可持续性革命的活动，这将有可能扭转这些趋势。伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校及其合作伙伴普林斯顿大学，密歇根大学，伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校和弗吉尼亚州立大学提出了一项减少资源损失的创新，恢复和重用（InnR 3）ERC，以生成一个整体的，新颖的解决方案，将解决相互关联的问题。ERC规划补助金不是针对单一问题的特定技术，而是针对由协调的技术组合加上区域特定政策组成的融合解决方案，以解决养分流失造成的系统问题。该项目的目标是制定一个扎实的工作计划和一支合格的团队，以扩大整个粮食生产（主要在农村地区）和消费（主要在城市地区）周期中相互关联问题的技术组合，跨越田间、农场、工业、小流域和大流域的空间尺度。通过一系列研讨会和虚拟会议，该规划项目将确定系统级集成和采用的基本知识差距、技术创新障碍和体制障碍。这些活动还将有助于通过战略性组织的工作组讨论来确定更多所需的合作伙伴。该规划项目将致力于创建一个新的，多样化的研究，教育和实践领导者的劳动力，以实现InnR 3，并创建一个跨学科的以学生为中心的学习框架。除了国家对墨西哥湾和五大湖退化的关注外，ERC还针对食品生产者和消费者行为、公众健康、环境可持续性、经济增长和繁荣等方面的社会影响，该奖项反映了NSF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进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.