Descripción del proyecto
Una nueva herramienta ayuda a gestionar el agua, la energía y los alimentos a través del prisma de los servicios ecosistémicos
La gestión simultánea de los recursos interconectados de agua, energía y alimentos (WEF, por sus siglas en inglés), siempre ha resultado complicada. Y los problemas aumentan con el cambio climático, el incremento de la escasez de agua, así como la mayor frecuencia y gravedad de los fenómenos meteorológicos extremos. La gestión más eficiente y equitativa del nexo WEF precisa de herramientas y marcos desarrollados con una comprensión clara de las interrelaciones y la retroalimentación entre estos tres componentes dentro de sus ecosistemas conexos, así como del papel de factores externos como el cambio climático. El proyecto UNTWIST, financiado con fondos europeos, aplica la inteligencia artificial en modelos que cuantifican las interacciones, con especial atención a los denominados servicios ecosistémicos, que son los beneficios que las personas creen que reciben de un ecosistema y que apoyan, de forma directa o indirecta, su supervivencia y calidad de vida.
Objetivo
UNTWIST aims at exploring new pathways to operationalize Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus concepts into practice. Despite the urgent need of adopting systemic thinking for the governance of water resource and interconnected sectors has been widely recognized and stressed by EU, several challenges for an effective mainstreaming of such frameworks into policy remain. These can be largely attributed to the lack of frameworks and tools able to effectively quantify interlinkages and feedbacks between nexus component and related ecosystems and to account for the effect of exogenous drivers of change (e.g. climate change). By combining ESs theories with complex system analysis, UNTWIST aims at contributing to fill these gaps demonstrating, through case studies applications, the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing integrated models supporting the quantification of critical interactions occurring in WEF nexus systems. Ecosystem Services (ESs) flows, being in the centre of the WEF relationships, will be used as common assessment endpoints to disentangle the nexus, thus contributing to reveal potential interdependencies between policy sectors and unlock opportunities for delivering integrated solutions addressing key challenges towards the achievement of interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The research project, which will last 24 months, will be mainly conducted at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) in Bilbao (Spain), under the supervision of Professor Ferdinando Villa, while a secondment period, will be performed at GECOsistema (Italy), an environmental consulting based in Rimini. UNTWIST results will be disseminated and the main findings will be communicated with tailored actions to a wide audience, including the academic community, policy makers, industries and the general public.
Ámbito científico
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental scienceshydrology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
48940 Leioa
España