EAGER: CAS-Climate: Research Coordination Network on the Indirect Environmental/Energy Impacts of Digitalization

该项目旨在建立一个研究人员社区，专注于提高社会对数字经济间接能源和环境影响的理解。越来越多的研究试图理解和量化数字化的直接环境影响，包括能源使用的增加或减少、设备（和/或其配套基础设施）使用产生的排放，以及数据中心等运营基础设施对环境的影响。然而，对数字化的间接环境影响的估计要复杂得多。间接影响可能包括与数字产品替代实体产品相关的影响，或者如果数字媒介行为节省（时间或金钱）导致能源密集型活动（如短期租赁平台增加长途旅行），则会产生反弹效应。确保数字基础设施和人类行为的长期可持续性，将需要在多个（通常是不同的）学科的交叉点上进行更多的研究工作，并加强跨国界的科学合作。该RCN旨在缩小学科和知识差距，提高研究的质量和数量，并开始发展一个新的领域。项目目标是：增加所需的多学科互动，特别是物理科学和行为科学之间的互动；促进美国和欧洲研究人员之间的更大合作；识别知识缺口和高价值研究；提高学术影响力；推进工作以获得更多的研究支持。通过促进学科之间的合作和提供更好的研究优先次序，研究协调网络可以在利用现有和新来源的资金来增加对主题领域研究的支持方面发挥重要作用。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。

This project is designed to build a community of researchers with a focus on improving society's understanding of the indirect energy and environmental (E&E) impacts of the digital economy. There is a slowly increasing body of research that seeks to understand and quantify the direct E&E impacts of digitalization, including the increase or reduction of energy use, emissions arising from the use of devices (and/or their supporting infrastructure), and environmental impacts from operating infrastructure such as data centers. However, far more complicated are estimates of digitalization's indirect E&E impacts. Indirect impacts may include those associated with the substitution of digital for physical products, or rebound effects that occur if savings (in time or money) from digitally-mediated behaviors induce energy-intensive activities (like short term rental platforms increasing long distance travel). Ensuring the long-term sustainability of digital infrastructure and the human behaviors it enables will require greater research efforts at the intersection of multiple and often disparate disciplines along with increased scientific cooperation across national borders. This RCN seeks to close disciplinary and knowledge gaps, increase the quality and quantity of research, and begin to grow a new field. Project goals are to: increase needed multi-disciplinary interactions, especially between the physical and behavioral sciences; facilitate greater collaboration between U.S. and European researchers; identify knowledge gaps and high-value research; improve scholarly impact; and advance work to secure greater research support. By fostering collaboration between disciplines and providing a better sense of research priorities, a research coordination network can be instrumental in leveraging funds from existing and new sources to grow support of research in the topic area.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.