Visualizing alternative environmental futures for public decision making and action research: A Biocomplexity incubation activity

Project Summary: This proposal is for a development project to engage researchers, stakeholders, and students in an exploration of ways to visualize alternative futures that are the product of complex interactions in Coupled Natural and Human Systems. This proposal addresses key elements of the Biocomplexity/CNHS program through: 1) development of advance tools for synthesis and visualization, 2) development of people needed to advance biocomplexity studies, 3) formation of new communities of investigators from multiple disciplines, and 4) reaching beyond the US for partners in inquiry on biocomplexity issues.

In this development project we propose to engage in a process leading to an ‘Integrated Development and Environmental Assessment System (IDEAS)’. This developmental project will focus on the process; a subsequent operational project will focus on the product. The specific objectives of the project are to :

• explore ways to link multi-criteria decision aids, landscape process models, land use/cover transition models, and spatial visualization tools to create a functional IDEAS product,
• explicitly include key stakeholders in the identification and development of the IDEAS framework, its functionality, and its deliverables,
• determine the primary theoretical challenges (both technical and intellectual) that must be achieved to deliver a functional IDEAS product, and
• generate a plan to efficiently develop the IDEAS product and effectively disseminate both the product and results from initial testing.

The intellectual merit of this developmental project (and the ultimate IDEAS product) is that it requires integration of leading concepts from a variety of related disciplines, including ecology, hydrology, engineering, economics, sociology, planning, and computing sciences. However, to develop a functional IDEAS product will require shrewd simplification of the essential concepts from each component discipline. Finally, the fundamental intellectual merit of this ‘action research’ approach is that it will specifically engage researchers and stakeholders in shared exploration leading to more informed development and better management of the environment.

The broader implications of this project are that it will advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training and learning through an integrated seminar to be offered for senior undergraduate and graduate students. It will enhance infrastructure for research and education through collaborative learning among wide range of key collaborators and stakeholders in the process of research planning. It will promote broad dissemination of science and technological understanding through explicit collaborations with key stakeholder groups, outreach via an innovative new public education facility, and development of a project web site. The project benefit society through better policy formulation and decision making by involved agencies and organizations. Ultimately, the project will raise public awareness about the complex interactions and unforeseen consequences of long-term, landscape-scale development pattern.