MultiSector Dynamics

About Us

Private: 2024-2025 Earth’s Future Special Issue

The 2024-2025 Special Issue of Earth’s Future focused on MultiSector Dynamics is currently open and accepting submissions. Abstract:Climate change resilience and sustainable development goals are not independent challenges. Individually and collectively, these challenges encompass diverse sectors, services, and changes across global-to-local scales that have tremendous societal implications. Moreover, the underlying…

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About us

We are a multi-disciplinary collective of researchers based at universities and national labs across the United States. Our community of practice is made up of junior and senior natural and social scientists, engineers, economists, and other researchers working at the interface of human and natural systems.

The following mission statement, themes and science questions, and community development process are meant as starting points for the MultiSector Dynamics (MSD) community and will continuously evolve and be formally developed into an upcoming white paper.

Mission Statement

Our mission is to help establish a community of practice of MultiSector Dynamics (MSD) researchers in the United States and internationally.

The MSD community aims to improve our understanding of the co-evolution of human and natural systems over time, and build the next generation of tools that bridge across sectors (energy, water, land, economy) and scales (spatial, temporal), and offer a holistic view of systems-of-systems.

Using these tools we aim to identify and illuminate how key processes act across the multiple scales that shape the complex interactions and multidirectional feedbacks among human and Earth systems.

Community Development Process

The MSD community’s mission and focus is coalescing rapidly from insights generated by the participating members of the research community. In the coming year, members of the Community will have opportunities to work together to continue evolving our mission, themes, science questions, and synergistic activities. 

Funding Acknowledgement
The Facilitation Team thanks the DOE Office of Science, Earth and Environmental System Modeling, MultiSector Dynamics program area for financial support of its activities through the Integrated Multisector Multiscale Modeling (IM3) project. For more information related to the broader DOE MultiSector Dynamics Program please see https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/program-area/multisector-dynamics.

MSD Working Groups

Connecting MSD Research to Operations and Planning

Welcome to the MSD Working Group on Connecting Research to Operations and Planning About Our vision is to elevate the visibility and amplify the societal impact of scientific advances emerging from the MSD Community of Practice, both within the United States and internationally. This Working Group aims to further the…

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Human Systems Modeling

Welcome to the MSD Working Group on Human Systems Modeling About Our vision centers around the development of a new typology for human representation in multisector dynamics models. The Human Systems Modeling working group explores state of the art modeling methods that can improve representation of human decision making and…

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Early Career Development

Welcome to the MSD Working Group on Early Career Development About The mission of this Working Group is to support the success of early career researchers in fields related to MultiSector Dynamics. We promote early career professional development throughout activities of the MSD Community of Practice. We support the future…

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Working Group – Uncertainty Quantification and Scenario Development

Welcome to the MSD Working Group on Uncertainty Quantification and Scenario Development The Uncertainty Quantification and Scenario Development working group studies the propagation of uncertainties, including deep uncertainties, through multi-sector systems. We are interested in understanding how uncertainty interacts with complex system dynamics and cross-sectoral feedback mechanisms to affect the…

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Urban Systems Working Group

Welcome to the MSD Working Group on Urban systems About Our vision is to integrate individual and aggregate human activity with earth system processes at different scales. Cities are a key focal point for addressing questions related to system dependencies, tipping points, and uncertainties. Cities are also a fruitful context…

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Using AI to Enhance MSD Research

Welcome to the MSD Working Group on Using AI to Enhance MSD Research About We posit that research efforts in multi-sector systems can benefit from advances in AI. Recent advances in Artificial intelligence (AI) are quickly changing the landscape of tools available to conceptualize, execute, and disseminate research. We posit…

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