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、水和能源系统的严峻挑战。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联系，不仅是地方问题，而且是全球问题。这就是所谓的食物-水-能源(FWE)关系。当地水问题的有效解决可能会在当地造成新的粮食或能源问题，或者在全球范围内造成新的水问题。在地方范围内，很难预测在粮食、水和能源系统内，无论是在地方还是在全球范围内，一个问题的解决办法是否可持续。围绕这一联系的创新解决方案对于使城市能够更好地管理其食品、水和能源系统并了解不同解决方案的好处和权衡尤为重要。该奖项支持美国研究人员参与一个由29个国家通过联合贝尔蒙论坛-联合规划倡议(JPI)欧洲城市计划竞争性选择的项目。可持续城市化全球倡议(SUGI)/粮食-水-能源联系是一个多边倡议，旨在支持将全球各地零散的研究和专业知识汇集在一起的研究项目，以找到应对粮食-水-能源联系挑战的创新解决方案。这一呼吁寻求开发更具弹性、更实用的城市解决方案，以造福更广泛的利益相关者。世界人口的快速城市化突显了这一重点的重要性。邀请国际合作伙伴为这一挑战制定解决方案。申请的资金将用于支持美国参与者在财团中进行合作，财团由至少三个参与国的合作伙伴组成，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。来自其他国家的参与者通过其国家资助组织获得资助。该项目寻求通过在奥地利、巴西、德国、荷兰、南非、瑞典和美国的城市生活实验室进行实验，开发一种新的方法来产生创新的解决方案，以应对本地和全球可持续的四个挑战。城市生活实验室是一个创新的论坛，应用于新产品、系统、服务和流程的开发，采用工作方法将人作为用户和共同创造者整合到整个开发过程中，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、过程、系统、概念和创造性的解决方案。该项目将在创新的创造性和评估过程的早期让一系列城市利益相关者参与，所产生的解决方案将接受环境合理性和经济可行性以及社会可接受性和健壮性的测试。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.