Central European - 2 years ago

On March 12, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) announced five Austrian research projects selected for major funding under the Emerging Fields initiative of excellent=austria . CEU is part of REMASS (Resilience and Malleability of Social Metabolism), a research consortium granted 7.1 million euros over a five-year period with scientists from the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), University of Vienna and the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) under the leadership of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU).  REMASS focuses on global supply chains in the face of rapidly increasing global use of natural resources and its environmental and social impacts. The research specifically acknowledges potential disruptions to these chains through, for example, wars, pandemics and climate extremes, and their impacts on resource use, sustainability, inequality and social wellbeing. REMASS will employ innovative approaches to research “social metabolism”, which refers to the analysis of resource flows, material stocks, such as buildings and infrastructure, and their contribution to society. The researchers will develop a global database focusing on three provisioning systems crucial for sustainability and social well-being: nutrition, housing and mobility.  The newly created database will make it possible to investigate how these three basic supply systems can be made more sustainable and socially just, as well as to analyze the effects of supply chain disruptions on transformation processes and inequalities at different levels, such as geography, income, gender, ethnicity, and so forth, said REMASS researcher Anke Schaffartzik, Assistant Professor in CEU’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy. For the consortium, Schaffartzik is joined by Helmut Haberl and Fridolin Krausmann (BOKU); Stefan Giljum (WU); Shonali Pachauri (IIASA); Cornelia Staritz (University of Vienna); and Stefan Thurner (CSH).  “With REMASS, we’ve outlined not just a research project, but an agenda for a new field of research, in which we bring together multiple extensive data sets on resource use, economic indicators and wellbeing using advanced modelling approaches, while simultaneously enabling on-the-ground qualitative research to shape these models and interrogate their results,” said Schaffartzik. “This sounds like what it is: an ambitious and somewhat daunting task that we will only be able to accomplish together, in collaboration.”  FWF s scientific board of trustees selected the five emerging fields after a multi-stage decision-making process including jury hearings. The selection was based on an international jury s recommendations, which assessed the groundbreaking innovation potential and scientific excellence based on global peer reviews. In total, the FWF will invest 31 million euros across five consortia from Vienna to Innsbruck over the next five years.  The Emerging Fields Program of the FWF is aimed at teams of outstanding researchers doing pioneering work in basic research who are prepared to depart from established approaches,” said David Jan Krych, Research Project Coordinator from CEU’s Academic Cooperation and Research Office, who served on the team developing the REMASS proposal. He added: “The program focuses on funding research that has the potential to trigger a paradigm shift in its field.    FWF is the funding body of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, which aims to strengthen Austria as a top international location for science. In March 2023, the FWF awarded CEU for two projects that are part of the funding body’s Clusters of Excellence. The programs offer scientists new opportunities to conduct research at the highest level to expand Austria s innovative power and to find answers to the challenges of tomorrow.   Unit: Department of Environmental Sciences and PolicyAcademic Cooperation and Research Support OfficeResearch Area: Environmental and Energy StudiesCategory: NewsImage: Content Priority: Top

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