Meeting:Abstract 2013 CSDMS meeting-052
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Towards a Model Web for Sustainability on a Changing Planet
[[Image:|300px|right|link=File:]]Sustainability of the anthroposphere is a result of a multitude of decisions made concerning social, economic and environmental questions. Decision makers who would like to ensure sustainable development as an emerging characteristic of humanity are challenged by the complexity of a planetary system re-engineered by an increasingly powerful global species. Examples of such problems are sustainable urban growth and the food-water-energy nexus. Tools to reliably assess the consequences of decisions from local to global level are not readily available.
In particular, current capabilities for assessing the various impacts of climate variability and change, as well as other changes are inadequate. The Group on Earth Observation (GEO) recognized this emergency and promoted several initiatives that can help address this shortcoming. One of them is the GEO Model Web initiative. The goal of this initiative is to develop a dynamic modelling consultative infrastructure of intercommunicating models and datasets to serve researchers, managers, policy makers and the general public. It focuses on enhancing interoperability of existing models and making them and their outputs more accessible. The development of the Model Web holds the promise of more decision support tools becoming available. These tools would allow decision makers to ask “What if” questions prior to the implementation of decisions and support adaptive management and responsive design. The Model Web will also benefit researchers by making it easier to run model experiments and model comparisons or ensembles, as well as help highlight areas needing further development. The Model Web would support a synchronization across different spatial and temporal scales and across the languages of different disciplines, thus making the System of System (SoS) more intelligent. The beauty of having a SoS like this is that it amplifies the signal. An immediate application is the emerging geodesign approach to the design of sustainable built environments.
