Advancing transdisciplinary research for sustainability: a systems approach

2018 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18F18802
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: 福士 謙介 東京大学, サステイナビリティ学連携研究機構, 教授 (30282114)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): SIOEN GILES 東京大学, サステイナビリティ学連携研究機構, 外国人特別研究員
• Project Period (FY): 2018-10-12 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: Stakeholders / Transdisciplinary / System / Network / Collaboration

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

Giles utilized this first period to investigate challenges and opportunities in transdisciplinary research between urban and health and its implementation. To do so, he conducted an extensive review of transdisciplinary research on urban and health issues under the Future Earth Knowledge-Action Networks.
The review focused on the challenges and opportunities of the existing networks and enabled him to narrow down the topic by setting the systems boundary. Specifically, he identified that several topics such as urban heat (from climate change) and land use changes have a direct impact on health. This also led to an initial selection of indicators for a quantitative evaluation in the next stage of this research. There is an ongoing process in which he is interacting and receiving feedback from the relevant stakeholders to continuously improve the co-design process. Throughout the first period he attended multiple stakeholder meetings with key stakeholders.
The targeted data of his analysis has focused on Academic literature, books, government databases, content analysis of reports and publications from national and international organizations, indices, and preliminary interviews with key stakeholders.
He has initiated the first draft on the research method and findings from this stage of his project, which he plans to submit for a peer-reviewed manuscript later this year.

Current Status of Research Progress

2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.

Reason

Giles has carefully designed his research plan in clearly defined and executable steps. This has allowed him to mostly complete the planned research. His review on the challenges and opportunities in transdisciplinary research between urban and health is touching upon a relatively new field of study of which there is limited literature available. Therefore, he has explored the disciplinary fields of urban and health studies and identified the possible synergies. The disciplinary studies were rich in number and the selection process for relevance had to occur in a clear and consistent way with relevant linkages to the transdisciplinary focus.
Giles has had extensive communication with various relevant stakeholders for this study, which has taken a larger amount of time than he had foreseen. However, the additional information he is able to gather has contributed positively to the understanding of the challenges and opportunities at hand. Through discussions with the stakeholders, it has also led him to have better insights on how to leverage the opportunities for the design of the roadmap at the end of his study.
Although he has initiated a draft of the manuscript based on the acquired data, some more work needs to be made for the completion of this draft before it is ready for submission.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

Because the content for the literature review and collection from the first stage of Giles’ research has been completed, and the manuscript is under development, he is ready for the preparation of organized workshops with stakeholders such as organizations, governments, and beneficiaries for the co-development of a Stakeholder Value Network (SVN). Consecutively, Giles plans to support the outcome of the SVN development with key informant interviews for the identification of opportunities and challenges within the system network. This will allow Giles to identify the value linkages between each stakeholder and allow for overall improvements of the value flows between the stakeholders and their roles.
After completion of the previous step, Giles aims to develop scenarios for organizational system designs, which will allow for the creation of a tradespace analysis focussing on urban and health issues. Such analysis will allow him to identify the optimum system design based on variables. A number of scenarios will be applied on various data sets on global, national, and local scales to test and simulate the systems approach as well as the monitoring of those systems. Finally, this will feed into the final stage of his research project to develop a roadmap for implementation of transdisciplinary co-design.