SRS RN: People-Centric Integrated Assessment Model for Regional Sustainability (PIAMRS): Focusing on the Central Appalachian Region

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This planning grant will prepare the interdisciplinary team to develop and submit a quality Track-1 proposal to create a research network (RN). The goal of the RN is to co-produce a People-Centric Integrated Assessment Model for Regional Sustainability (PIAMRS) with stakeholders for the Central Appalachian region through convergent research involving multiple institutes and disciplines. The central Appalachian region is critical to the U.S. environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Applications of PIAMRS will help transform the region from a traditional resource-based economy into a modern sustainable system and generate a new understanding of the co-benefits and trade-offs among multiple outcomes and new theories of change. This RN will provide stakeholders and the general public in the region evidence of the importance of an inclusive culture in Central Appalachia. The planned research, education, and outreach and engagement activities will improve the region’s inclusive culture with debates on how to measure and improve them at stakeholder meetings. During the planning grant period, the team will develop an educational plan around recruiting, retaining, and supporting first-generation students, help them understand the issues and opportunities in Central Appalachia, motivate them to pursue STEM careers, and encourage them to help the growth and sustainability of the region. The proposed people-centric integrated assessment model for regional sustainability (PIAMRS) will capture the major concerns of people living in a region along with its natural resources and ecosystems and create a forward-looking tool to understand the consequences of different policies and interventions through the many linked subsystems. The research is expected to answer the following questions. 1) What are locally-relevant sustainability indicators for people in the Central Appalachian region? 2) What are the relationships among economic development, health, education, infrastructure, and environment? 3) How can people’s behaviors be modeled? 4) How can the model couple all subsystems within the region and integrate them with other regions? 5) How can the model balance complexity, local relevance, actionability, and scalability? and 6) How can the model balance the responses to long-term trends and potential short-term shocks? The proposed PIAMRS will explicitly model the impacts of diversity and inclusive culture on the region’s sustainable development through its social system module and evaluate the effectiveness of policies and actions to improve inclusion. The new understanding and theories will be scalable to other regions undergoing similar transformations.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.