Opportunities OLD | Southwest Urban Integrated Field Laboratory

A better environment

The SW-IFL will develop and deploy novel observational and modeling capabilities that improve understanding of extreme heat as a central driver of key environmental outcomes, including greenhouse gas emissions, urban water stress, and fate and transport of urban air pollutants in the complex Arizona megaregion.

The integration of new observations with innovations in coupled models across scales will enable high resolution modeling and the development of sophisticated decision-support tools.

The SW-IFL will specifically advance urban systems science by:

Improving our understanding of how the built environment affects local to regional climates, emissions, and air chemistry

Establishing empirically-grounded theory of how governance, actors, plans, and policies across scales shape resilience to heat

Building a framework and simulation capability to facilitate equitable mitigation of extreme heat and its societal impacts via analysis of co-benefits and tradeoffs of sustainability outcomes

Engaging stakeholders who represent many scales of government and the community in an advising and co-discovery role to drive the research process toward decision-relevant knowledge