Energy & Climate Complexity and Sustainability
The examination of the complex interactions of anthropogenic and engineered systems within the biosphere. Special focus on:
- Climate & Climate Change at the Urban Scale
- Human Health Vulnerability
- Energy and Materials
Tools that my students and I use include:
- Remote Sensing
- Life Cycle Assessments
- Microscale and Mesoscale Modeling
- Laboratory Experimentation and Field Testing
Products that we produce:
- Innovative Renewable Energy Generating Technologies
- Energy Reducing Materials and Surface Treatments
- User Friendly Models for Policy Development and Understanding Risks, Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies for Climate-Energy System Interactions
- Future Leaders for Government, Industry and Academia!!!
Biocomplexity examines the complex interactions of global and urban climate systems with energy, materials, ecosystems and anthropogenic systems within our biosphere.
For the first time in history, the world is predominantly urban. More than half of the planet’s popula¬tion lives in cities, up 30% from 50 years ago. Urban areas are gaining an estimated 67 million people per year. By 2030, approximately 5 billion people are expected to live in urban areas—60% of the projected global population of 8.3 billion.
Rapid change in any system defies simple measures or models. It is challenging to measure, yet alone model, expansion in population and built-form on the urban fringe or alterations in the built infrastructure in the urban core. The process of urbanization, both as a driver and outcome of change, is highly complex. Even with the most sophisticated models, demographers, economists, and land-use change modelers have difficulty predicting outcomes. Heterogeneous environments such as cities are especially difficult. Incorporating ecological and engineering dynamics (outcomes and drivers) complicates the models further still. When the different histories, economies, and systems of governance of countries such as China and the US are added, the models become more inclusive but increasingly complex. In short, efforts to build, design, or plan sustainable cities requires that one accept the complexity of the systems and be willing to analyze them within a biocomplexity framework.