Web Technologies and System Dynamics for Community Sustainability Gordon Keating, Donatella Pasqualini, & Gary Geernaert Los Alamos National Laboratory Larry Barnett Epiphanet, Inc. February 6, 2009 Applied Solutions Workshop, Rohnert Park, CA Funding: SCWA and IGPP

The Challenge Develop a web portal that will –build community among sustainability-minded communities in the U.S. –interest, inform, enlist, and retain input from Sonoma regional citizens Map out a course towards energy sustainability and resilience, carbon neutrality, and economic vitality, given projections of future climate change Define solutions to serve as an example for the state of California, the U.S., and international organizations In order to meet the goals of carbon footprint reduction outlined in AB32 and Sonoma County’s GHG reduction targets… “Change in energy use and GHG emissions must begin with local efforts.”

Develop an understanding of the interrelationships among important natural, built, and social systems, and ways to enhance their collective resilience, Engage public and build community through social networking features Collect and analyze public ideas to inform decision making Approach Stakeholders: Sonoma County public, Business community, Environmental community, Municipal and County governments, External counties and regions

Example: Drupal Information Interactivity News feeds Presence & Social networking Content awareness Surveys Interactive models Data animation Consensus building …… Content Management System (CMS)

Gathering User Input – Survey Mindmap (undirected graph) Example from a study of potential new directions for a scientific organization: “What are core capabilities of the organization that have been important in your work?”

Gathering User Input - Blogs Tag Cloud ( Tagclouds are useful for providing a gestalt of blogs, discussions, comments, tags

User comments, blogs, and survey responses can be analyzed and visualized in a variety of ways User Input Analysis Mindmap (undirected graph) Statistics Interactive Graphs Tag Cloud Goal: provide actionable understanding of changing attitudes and priorities of site users (citizens)

Expect complex interrelationships among component systems Policy selection Scenario comparison Nonlinear feedbacks System Dynamics Model Investigate non-intuitive interrelationships among important systems that affect energy-water sustainability and resilience

The model is designed to track the CO2 flow across sectors Total CO2 emissions CO2 emissions from transportation CO2 emissions from electricity generation In this first version of the model, we considered two CO2 emissions sources Renewable Policy: wind Renewable Policy: PV Renewable Policy: wind Public Transp Policy Hybrid-cars Policy Mental model residential transportation industry/commercial transportation residential electricity industry/commercial electricity electricity for water treatment water demand Demand population Economics climate change population climate change population Exogenous drivers