PLATFORM GRANT: Earth Systems Engineering: Sustainable systems engineering for adapting to global change

2003年8月，正值欧洲有记录以来最热的夏季，《自然》杂志发表了一篇题为《欢迎来到人类世》的社论。编辑们解释了地球是如何成为一个“人为行星”的，在这个行星上，地球的自然系统以人类活动为标志，而且经常受到人类活动的深刻影响。管理“人为星球”给工程师们带来了巨大的挑战。例如，规划和设计水资源系统需要有能力分析整个流域在几十年时间尺度上的行为，模拟和测试替代管理方案的有效性，并监测和修改系统的性能。这种将技术、人类和自然系统合理地“工程”结合起来的过程被称为地球系统工程。在纽卡斯尔，我们在地球系统工程方面建立了一个开创性的研究项目，致力于理解和模拟耦合技术，人类和自然系统中的变化过程。我们经常通过开发基于计算机的决策支持工具，利用我们的知识为这些复杂系统的可持续管理提供信息。我们在地球系统工程的研究计划是围绕六个相互作用的主题结构。在主题A中，我们正在制定未来气候变化的详细情景。主题B将前沿的现场监测数据与卫星数据集相结合，为我们在主题c中开创的技术、自然和人类系统的计算机模型提供输入。在主题D中，我们正在应用新方法来处理普遍存在于复杂系统管理问题中的不确定性。主题E主要通过可视化和决策支持工具的开发，将之前的知识汇集在一起，为工程师和决策者提供管理选择方面的信息。主题F在主要综合案例研究中对这些方法进行了检验和论证，这些研究目前包括对整个城市的综合评估和流域管理。我们将在未来五年内努力实现区域规模的大规模示范。我们寻求平台资助来协调这一复杂的努力，并实现我们对工程师应对日益加剧的全球变化挑战所需的分析和决策新时代的愿景。这将通过有针对性的研究活动和对我们团队成功的战略投资来实现。我们将使用平台赠款资金：1。测试和试验新的高风险方法，这些方法可能是我们试图解决的问题的关键。加强我们所依赖的计算机建模系统。联合我们的研究，以提供集成的系统方法。在我们的实地地点保障监测计划。5. 通过提供试验想法、撰写建议和见证项目取得成果的机会，使研究人员在研究项目中承担更多的责任。6. 培养代表下一代人才的初级研究人员和研究生。7. 支持跨学科工作，通过开展跨学科研讨会计划和支持我们的研究人员的学科跳跃活动。8. 建立国际合作伙伴关系，确保我们的研究的国际形象。9. 通过与工业伙伴的合作和研究人员的借调，加深与工业和政府的关系。10. 与学校和公众接触，建立工程师可以为全球变化的挑战提供解决方案的理解，并激励下一代潜在的地球系统工程师。通过使我们才华横溢的研究团队实现他们的潜力，并通过资助整合和发展我们的地球系统工程研究计划的举措，平台赠款将帮助我们提供对全球变化的工程系统响应，这是迫切需要的。

In August 2003, in the midst of the hottest European summer on record, the journal Nature entitled an editorial Welcome to the Anthropocene . The editors explained how the Earth has become an 'anthropogenic planet' in which its natural systems are marked by, and often profoundly influenced by, human activity. Management of the 'anthropogenic planet' presents enormous challenges to engineers. For example, to plan and design water resource systems require a capacity to analyse the behaviour of whole river basins over timescales of decades, to simulate and test the effectiveness of alternative management options and to monitor and modify the system performance. This process of rationally 'engineering' coupled technological, human and natural systems is referred to as Earth Systems Engineering. In Newcastle we have established a pioneering research programme in Earth Systems Engineering dedicated to understanding and modelling of processes of change within coupled technological, human and natural systems. We use our knowledge to inform the sustainable management of these complex systems, often through the development of computer-based decision support tools. Our research programme in Earth Systems Engineering is structure around six interacting themes. In Theme A we are developing detailed scenarios of future climate change. Theme B combines cutting edge field monitoring data with satellite datasets, to provide inputs to the computer models of technological, natural and human systems that we are pioneering in Theme C. In Theme D we are applying novel methods for dealing with the uncertainty that pervades complex systems management problems. Theme E brings the preceding knowledge together to inform engineers and policy makers in choice of management options, primarily through the development of visualisation and decision support tools. These methods are tested and demonstrated in Theme F in major integrated case studies, which currently encompass integrated assessment of whole cities, and catchment management. We will over the next five years work towards a major regional-scale demonstration. We seek Platform Grant funding to orchestrate this complex endeavour and realise our vision for the new era in analysis and decision making that is required for engineers to respond to the challenges of intensifying global change. This will be achieved through targeted research activities and strategic investment in the success of our team. We will use Platform Grant funding to: 1. Test and pilot new high risk methods that may hold the key to the problems we are trying to solve.2. Enhance the computer modelling systems upon which we depend.3. Join up our research in order to deliver integrated systems approaches.4. Safeguard monitoring programmes at our field sites. 5. Enable research staff to take increased responsibility for research projects, by providing opportunities to pilot ideas, write proposals and see projects through to fruition. 6. Train the junior researchers and postgraduates who represent the next generation of high-flyers. 7. Support interdisciplinary working, by running an interdisciplinary seminar programme and supporting discipline-hopping activities by our researchers. 8. Build international partnerships and secure the international profile of our research. 9. Deepen relationships with industry and government through collaborative work with industrial partners and secondments by researchers. 10. Engage with schools and the public to build understanding of the solutions that engineers can offer to the challenges of global change, and to motivate the next generation of potential Earth Systems Engineers. By enabling our talented team of researchers to realise their potential and by funding initiatives to integrate and grow our Earth Systems Engineering research programme, a Platform Grant will help us to deliver the engineering systems responses to global change that are so urgently needed.