The MIT School of Science is launching a center to advance knowledge and computational skills in the field of sustainability science and to support decision makers in government, industry and civil society to achieve sustainable development goals. In line with the MIT Climate Project, researchers at the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy will develop and apply expertise from across the Institute to improve understanding of sustainability challenges, and thereby provide insight and actionable knowledge for informed strategies for improving human well-being. for present and future generations.
Noelle Selin, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, will serve as the center’s inaugural faculty director. C. Adam Schlosser and Sergey Paltsev, senior research scientists at MIT, will serve as deputy directors, with Anne Slinn as executive director.
Incorporating and succeeding both the Center for Global Change Science and the Joint Program on Global Change Science and Policy, while adding new capabilities, the center aims to produce cutting-edge research to help guide societal transitions towards a more sustainable future. Building on MIT’s long history of efforts to address global change and its integrated environmental and human dimensions, the center is well positioned to lead the growing global effort to advance the field of sustainability science, which requires to understand nature-society systems in their entirety. complexity. This understanding is designed to be relevant and applicable to decision makers in government, industry and civil society in their efforts to develop sustainable pathways to improve the quality of life for many stakeholders.
“As critical challenges such as climate, health, energy and food security increasingly affect the lives of people around the world, decision makers need a better understanding of the earth in its full complexity – and that includes people, technologies and institutions as well as environmental processes”, says Selin. “Better understanding of these systems and how they interact can lead to more effective strategies that avoid unintended consequences and ensure an improved quality of life for everyone.”
Advancing knowledge, computational skills and decision support
To produce more accurate and comprehensive knowledge of sustainability challenges and guide decision makers to formulate more effective strategies, the center has set the following goals:
- Advance fundamental understanding of the complex interrelated physical and socioeconomic systems that affect human well-being. As new policies and technologies develop amid climate and other global change, they interact with environmental processes and institutions in ways that can alter critical life-supporting earth systems. The underlying mechanisms that determine many of the behaviors of these systems, including those related to the interaction of climate, water, food, and socioeconomic systems, remain largely unknown and poorly defined. Better understanding can help society mitigate the risks of sudden changes and “tipping points” in these systems.
- Develop, create and distribute new computing tools towards a better understanding of Earth systems, including environmental and human dimensions. The center’s work will integrate modeling and data analysis across disciplines in an era of increasing volumes of observational data. MIT’s multi-system models and data products will provide powerful information to inform decision-making and shape the next generation of sustainability science and strategy.
- Produce actionable science that supports equity and justice within and across generations. The center’s research will be designed to inform action related to measurable outcomes consistent with supporting human well-being across generations. This requires the engagement of a wide range of stakeholders, including not only nations and companies, but also non-governmental organizations and communities that take action to promote sustainable development – with particular attention to those who have historically borne the brunt of injustice environmental.
“The center’s work will advance fundamental understanding in sustainability science, use cutting-edge computing and data, and promote engagement and impact,” says Selin. “Our researchers will help lead scientists and strategists around the globe who share MIT’s commitment to mobilizing knowledge to inform action toward a more sustainable world.”
Building a Better World at MIT
Building on MIT’s existing capabilities in sustainability, science and strategy, the center aims to:
- focusing research, education and outreach under a theme that reflects a comprehensive state of the field and international research directions, fostering a dynamic community of students, researchers and faculty;
- increase the visibility of sustainability science at MIT, highlighting the connections between science and action, in the context of the Institute’s existing goals and other climate and sustainability efforts, and in a way that reflects the vital contributions of a range of natural science disciplines and social in the sense of human-environmental systems; AND
- re-emphasize MIT’s long-standing expertise in embedded systems modeling while leveraging the Institute’s concurrent strengths in data and computing, creating leadership that leverages the latest innovations, including those in machine learning and artificial intelligence , towards addressing the scientific challenges of global change and sustainability.
“The Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy will provide the synergy needed for our MIT researchers to develop, deploy and scale serious solutions to climate change and other critical sustainability challenges,” says Nergis Mavalvala, the Curtis Professor of Astrophysics and Kathleen Marble. of the MIT School of Science. “With Professor Selin at its helm, the center will also ensure that these solutions are created in collaboration with the people directly affected now and in the future.”
The center builds on more than three decades of achievements of the Center for Global Change Science and the Joint Program on Global Change Science and Policy, both directed or co-directed by Professor of Atmospheric Science Ronald Prinn.