Resilience: Building resilience is about managing change. But context matters - resilience of what and for whom? At IREES, our research focuses on building capacity to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to change to help enable a more sustainable and prosperous future.
Waste carbon-based emissions from energy and infrastructure systems are among the largest sources of heat-trapping gases (greenhouse gases) that are contributing to the growing threat of weather variability and other associated risks. These impacts include —increasing heat extremes, changing rainfall patterns, rising sea level, declining snowpack, and worsening air quality— are, in turn, increasing the vulnerability of our critical infrastructure. Stormwater systems are failing to cope with record-breaking rainfall events, extreme droughts and declining snowpack are limiting hydropower productivity, summer heatwaves are leading to more blackouts, and more intense hurricanes are disrupting energy transmission and distribution lines along with other critical infrastructure.
In response, countries around the world are taking measures to reduce the rate and magnitude of these changes by committing to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases and accelerate efforts to directly remove carbon dioxide and other harmful species from the atmosphere. These endeavors must include solutions that enable the development of new and improved energy systems that underpin our economies in order to mitigate deleterious effects while securing our energy future. However, the opportunity to reduce emissions is present across all sectors, and the need for solutions is vast. Durable solutions toward a sustainable future however, must consider social, economic and environmental dimensions—with a deliberate focus on developing these solutions in collaboration with participating and impacted communities.
IREES will support and expand the university’s energy and infrastructure expertise and leverage Oklahoma’s considerable wind, solar, biomass, and natural gas resources to drive innovation and accelerate implementation of solutions. We aim to design our energy and infrastructure systems—from the nanoscale to the regional scale—for a future that is resilient and sustainable, while best serving the communities that rely on the produced energy and infrastructure.
The IREES community of scholars pursues research in hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels, energy efficient buildings, geothermal energy, natural hazard transportation and freight infrastructure, photovoltaics, bioenergy and carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), pre-combustion carbon sequestration, and more. Our initiatives in these areas combine researchers from natural, physical and social science, engineering, petroleum engineering, and mathematics fields with external contributors and stakeholders to better understand decision-making and behavior, including the roles of economic incentives, political institutions, cultural and social influences, and ethics in shaping those decisions. With this convergence approach and wide focus, we see endless opportunities to help enable appropriate transitions toward a sustainable future
Two global trends similar in speed, scale, and systems impact are changing the way we live, work, and relate to one another. These trends have no historical precedent, are driven by science and technology, and the changes they bring are wholly transformative. The first is technology-based. Digitization, artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, advanced materials, 3D printing, and biotechnology are reshaping industries and creating entirely new ones—online learning, self-driving cars, genetic editing, and e-commerce. The second trend is Earth systems based. Extreme weather, rapid climate variability, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, and chemical pollution are straining the planet’s life-sustaining services. These two trends are tightly linked, and on their current trajectory, they are not sustainable.
Governments, investors, business and civil society are transitioning away from emissions-intensive energy sources and manufacturing practices and taking steps to build more resilient, sustainable communities and economies. Managing an appropriate and timely transition toward these goals requires multi-stakeholder decision making.
IREES connects stakeholders and scholars in research endeavors that seek to understand the multiple interacting dimensions of transformational change. IREES teams work together with national, regional, and place-based partners on solutions that strengthen communities, create new economic opportunities, and support environmental improvement. Our integrated approach considers how social, political, economic, cultural, technological, and environmental conditions interact to shape outcomes. We are asking questions that explore, for example, who decides what kind of transitions are needed, how vulnerable stakeholders are included in decision making processes, who is affected by the benefits and the burdens of change, and how can mitigation and adaptation efforts be distributed in safe and appropriate ways.
Extraordinary advances in science and technology have enabled the collection, storage, and analysis of massive data streams monitoring the Earth’s systems, improving our understanding of the impact of human development not only on our immediate, local environments, but on the global environment as well. We know that the current concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has not been seen on our planet in over 3 million years. The severity and frequency of extreme weather events are increasing around the world. Today, one in five species on Earth faces extinction. Widespread nitrogen and phosphate pollution in rivers has created oxygen-starved “dead zones” downstream and diminished water quality.
These conditions are observed as a shift from a steady-state, predictable global environment that has allowed humanity to flourish, to a planet trending toward a state that is less predictable, less stable, with fewer natural resources. Addressing the trajectory of these trends and guiding society toward a more sustainable, resilient future will rely on our ability to observe, understand, and predict the complex interactions among Earth’s coupled natural-human systems.
To address this challenge, IREES connects teams of scholars from fields including public health, meteorology, political science, geology, engineering, urban planning, ecology and agriculture with stakeholder communities in convergence approaches that maximize the social-economic-health values of our research and creative endeavors. We are asking questions such as how do extreme weather, climate variability, and change impact soils, microbes, plants, animals, and humans; can next-generation radar imaging be used to detect and predict insect and avian migration; how can we build resilience to extreme weather, climate variability and; what are the connections between air pollution and urban heat island effects; can we design “smart wetlands” and other green infrastructure to improve water quality; what factors will affect the frequency, intensity, and duration of severe storms; using satellite and networked observation systems how can we improve understanding of the global carbon cycle.
