GCR: Collaborative Research: Relevant, Rich, and Realistic Representations of Housing, Well-Being, and Energy-Coupled Transitions

Colorado State University-Pueblo, Pueblo CO

Investigators

Abstract

This multidisciplinary project pursues an upgrade to the science, practice, and use of projections that describe sociotechnical change. The project’s ultimate goal is creating explicit representations of well-being that occur during transitions, connected to the factors that enable change. Thus, the work will facilitate sharing of diverse priorities and experiences in academic, policy, and governance realms. The investigating team is methodologically and topically diverse, yet unified by interest in population heterogeneity and in human health and well-being as endpoints. Technical expertise includes engineering, social science and environmental science disciplines. This work tackles a number of scientific questions under premise that there is the possibility that the imminent wave of action for decarbonization could improve aspects of well-being that are tangible to communities but beyond the scope of current frameworks. The project is build around the following objectives and methods: (1) Elucidate perceptions of well-being, pathways of information, and paradigms of change held by diverse demographic groups through in-depth interviews, coding, and network analysis; (2) Represent the roles of framing, networks, and institutions in models of sociotechnical change through interviews, surveys, and system mapping; (3) Simulate and compare trajectories of well-being with a hybrid statistical-dynamic model that integrates paradigms of change, the physical and social environment, and human priorities; (4) Represent sociotechnical transitions with a cascading-scale framework (nation, region, community, household) that includes distributions of resource access and well-being; and (5) Stimulate transdisciplinary inquiry and shared understanding of frontiers among multiple intellectual communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.