Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 214, 519-545 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2012-01704-2

Regular Article

Data and models for exploring sustainability of human well-being in global environmental change

¹ National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture (IRSTEA), France
² Netherlands Environmental Agency (PBL) – Utrecht Sustainability Institute (USI), The Netherlands
³ Center for Policy Modelling, Manchester, UK
⁴ Centre for Research in Social Simulation, University of Surrey, UK
⁵ The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland
⁶ Alterra, Wageningen, The Netherlands
⁷ The Finninsh Environment Institute, SYKE, Finland
⁸ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany
⁹ University of Edinburgh, Scotland
¹⁰ Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Italy

^a e-mail: guillaume.deffuant@irstea.fr

Received: 1 August 2012
Revised: 9 October 2012
Published online: 5 December 2012

Abstract

This position paper proposes a vision for the research activity about sustainability in global environmental change (GEC) taking place in the FuturICT flagship project. This activity will be organised in an “Exploratory”, gathering a core network of European scientists from ICT, social simulation, complex systems, economics, demographics, Earth system science. These research teams will collaborate in building a self-organising network of data sources and models about GEC and in using new facilities fostering stakeholder participation. We develop examples of concrete directions for this research: world wide virtual population with demographic and some economic descriptors, ecosystem services production and distribution, governance systems at various scales.