Description du projet
Un nouvel outil aide à gérer l’eau, l’énergie et la nourriture à travers le prisme des services écosystémiques
La gestion simultanée des ressources interconnectées que sont l’eau, l’énergie et l’alimentation (WEF – water, energy and food) a toujours été compliquée. Les défis sont considérablement exacerbés par le changement climatique, la rareté croissante de l’eau ainsi que la fréquence et la gravité croissantes des phénomènes météorologiques extrêmes. Une gestion plus efficace et plus équitable du lien entre l’eau, l’énergie et l’alimentation (le nexus WEF) nécessite des outils et des cadres élaborés en tenant compte des relations et des feedbacks entre ces trois composantes au sein de leurs écosystèmes respectifs, ainsi que du rôle des facteurs externes tels que le changement climatique. Le projet UNTWIST, financé par l’UE, applique l’intelligence artificielle dans des modèles qui quantifient les interactions, en mettant l’accent sur les services dits «écosystémiques», à savoir les avantages que les personnes pensent tirer d’un écosystème et qui favorisent, directement ou indirectement, leur survie et leur qualité de vie.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
- 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
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
48940 Leioa
Espagne