Harlow District Council Sustainability Appraisal Scoping ...
Scoping Research in Sustainability Information Science
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Transcript of Scoping Research in Sustainability Information Science
Scoping Research in Sustainability Information Science
Steven D. PragerDepartment of GeographyUniversity of Wyoming
David BennettDepartment of GeographyUniversity of Iowa
From Reconciling Imperatives to Bridging Scholarship and Policy
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Purpose
Why a new information science?
What makes sustainability information science different from other existing information sciences?
Is the goal to push information science forward using the unique needs of sustainability science as motivation?
Is it to adapt and synthesize existing information science such that it better supports sustainability science and decision-making?
Definition
Ontology of a sustainable system
Ontology of a sustainable information system
Well defined sustainability metrics or classes of metrics
Well defined connections to related concepts (e.g., resilience and adaptive capacity)
Definition
Challenging because sustainability is:• Not a fixed natural state that can be known
solely through scientific measurement, but culturally defined, (Dahl 2012)
• Resources required for environmental, economic, and social wellbeing change through time and across space
• Therefore, sustainability is contextualized in time, space, and culture
• Transformation and adaptability of population/resource relationships over time and space must be represented captured and modeled (Walker et al. 2004, Folke et al. 2010).
Spatiotemporal dynamics of natural processes spatiotemporal dynamics of human processes
The effect of boundaries-
jurisdictional ideological cultural technological
Future directed informed by the past and present
Fundamentally UncertainMust embrace the unknown/unknowable.
Development and Research
Equifinality vs. Multifinality
Path 1
Path 3
Path 2 Outcome
Path
Outcome 1
Outcome 3
Outcome 2
Many Elements
HysteresisPotential multiple stable states
Processes spanning multiple hierarchies and scale
Spatial/Ecological
Political
Individual to national-level trends
Intersecting/integrated fast and slow processes
Complex feedbacks
Adaptive cycleGrowth/exploitation (r)
conservation (K)
Collapse/release (Ω)
reorganization (α)
Adaptive and emergent behavior
Dynamic networksSocial networks
Ecological networks
Social-ecological networks
Qualitative & quantitative data
Provenance of complexity Provenance of sustainability
Research Opportunities
New ST representationsBoundary dynamics, flows, human/nature interaction, feedbacks.
Citizen science, social networks, pervasive/ubiquitous data collection.
How/when/why is this useful.
Sensor networks, data discovery (post-normal science)
Role of HPC, distributed computing, etc.
Much more…
Strategies for Moving Forward
Need to build critical mass on two fronts:Underlying Fundamentals
Ontology of SIS as a first pass at articulating a collective understanding of SIS.
Contributors and ProblemsA Research Coordination Network to build/escalate synergies in SS research.
Ontology as Theory
Fonseca (2007) suggests that if we build theories (ontologies for science) BEFORE conceptual modeling, we build better models.
This is in the context of information science, but why not view sustainability science from this perspective?
Assertion: ontology of sustainability science will enable better ontologies for sustainability science.
Better ontologies for sustainability science will enable better science.
(Fonseca, 2007)
Formalizing Information Representation
Realm
Foundation Realm most general, least detail
Domain Realm topical perspective
Method / Task / Tool Realm
direct the processing of constructs
Application Realm situate use of information within a purpose
Guarino (1997)
Foundations of Sustainability Information Representation Theory:Spatial-Temporal Dynamics of Sustainable Systems
Nyerges et al. (In Review)
Building Community via DIBBs
Conceptualization AwardDeveloping disciplinary and interdisciplinary communities' understanding of their data.The output of a conceptualization award will be design specifications for creating a sustainable data infrastructure that will be discoverable, searchable, accessible, and usable to the entire research and education community.
Building Community via RCN
Bring sustainability information scientists working on various topics together in synergistic ways
Bring sustainability information scientists and social and natural scientists together in synergistic ways to:
form common language and conceptual framework
insure help insure computation tools developed in the name of SIScience are well conceptualized and useful
Provide case studies to help develop and contextualize SIS
Provide applications to illustrate the utility of SIS
Application and case study
Sustainability science is inherently interdisciplinary
Sustainability informaticists can’t do this in isolation
Interaction with interdisciplinary teams working in sustainability science is required
Opportunities for Engagement
Workshop proposal in process:GeoVoCamp-like approach.
Collaborative, participatory.
Product oriented – foundation for later DIBBs or similar proposals.
SLCN Steering Committee:Active coordination, community building
Preparing in anticipation of RCN and related solicitations.