Funding-NSF-USDA -
Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems (INFEWS); March 22,
2016
Agency
National Science
Foundation
Description
Humanity is reliant upon the physical
resources and natural systems of the Earth for the provision of food, energy,
and water. It is becoming imperative that we determine how society can best
integrate across the natural and built environments to provide for a growing
demand for food, water and energy while maintaining appropriate ecosystem
services. Factors contributing to stresses in the food, energy, and water (FEW)
systems include increasing regional and social pressures and governance issues
as result of land use change, climate variability, and heterogeneous resource
distribution. These interconnections and interdependencies associated with the
food, energy and water nexus create research grand challenges in understanding
how the complex, coupled processes of society and the environment function now,
and in the future. There is a critical need for research that enables new means
of adapting to future challenges. The FEW systems must be defined broadly,
incorporating physical processes (such as built infrastructure and new
technologies for more efficient resource utilization), natural processes (such
as biogeochemical and hydrologic cycles), biological processes (such as
agroecosystem structure and productivity), social/behavioral processes (such as
decision making and governance), and cyber elements. Investigations of these
complex systems may produce discoveries that cannot emerge from research on
food or energy or water systems alone. It is the synergy among these components
in the context of sustainability that will open innovative science and
engineering pathways to produce new knowledge and novel technologies to solve
the challenges of scarcity and variability. The overarching goal of INFEWS is
to catalyze the well-integrated interdisciplinary research efforts to transform
scientific understanding of the FEW nexus in order to improve system function
and management, address system stress, increase resilience, and ensure
sustainability. The NSF INFEWS initiative is designed specifically to attain
the following goals: Significantly advance our understanding of the
food-energy-water system through quantitative and computational modeling,
including support for relevant cyberinfrastructure; Develop real-time,
cyber-enabled interfaces that improve understanding of the behavior of FEW
systems and increase decision support capability; Enable research that will
lead to innovative system and technological solutions to critical FEW problems;
and Grow the scientific workforce capable of studying and managing the FEW system,
through education and other professional development opportunities. This
activity enables interagency cooperation on one of the most pressing problems
of the millennium - understanding interactions across the food, energy and
water nexus - how it is likely to affect our world, and how we can proactively
plan for its consequences. It allows the partner agencies - National Science
Foundation (NSF) and the United States Department of Agriculture National
Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA/NIFA) and others - to combine resources
to identify and fund the most meritorious and highest-impact projects that
support their respective missions, while eliminating duplication of effort and
fostering collaboration between agencies and the investigators they support.
NSF and USDA/NIFA are interested in promoting international cooperation that
links scientists and engineers from a range of disciplines and organizations to
solve the significant global challenges at the nexus of food, energy and water
systems. Proposals including international collaboration are encouraged when
those efforts enhance the merit of the proposed work by incorporating unique
resources, expertise, facilities or sites of international partners. The U.S.
international counterparts generally should have support or obtain funding
through other non-NSF sources. All questions regarding proposal submissions
should be directed to
the program officers on the track teams responsible for the
different tracks. See program description for descriptions of the different
tracks. A complete list of the program officers on these track teams can be
found on the program website http://www.nsf.gov/geo/ere/ereweb/infews-contacts.jsp
Announcement Number: 16-524
Closing Date: Mar
22, 2016
Contact Information
Link to Full
Announcement
http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=280663