Descrizione del progetto
Un nuovo strumento aiuta a gestire l’acqua, l’energia e il cibo attraverso le lenti dei servizi ecosistemici
La gestione simultanea delle risorse interconnesse di acqua, energia e cibo è sempre stata complicata. Le difficoltà sono ampliate notevolmente dai cambiamenti climatici, dalla crescente scarsità d’acqua nonché da eventi meteorologici estremi più frequenti e gravi. Una gestione più efficiente ed equa del nesso tra acqua, energia e cibo richiede strumenti e strutture sviluppati con una chiara conoscenza delle interrelazioni e dei riscontri tra le tre componenti all’interno dei loro ecosistemi correlati, nonché del ruolo di fattori esterni quali i cambiamenti climatici. Il progetto UNTWIST, finanziato dall’UE, sta applicando l’intelligenza artificiale a modelli in grado di quantificare le interazioni, concentrandosi sui cosiddetti servizi ecosistemici, i quali rappresentano i benefici che le persone credono di ricevere da un ecosistema e che supportano, direttamente o indirettamente, la loro sopravvivenza e qualità della vita.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
- 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
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinatore
48940 Leioa
Spagna