This Biocomplexity: MUSES research and education plan aims to utilize the latest advances in multiscale Bayesian methods to develop a systematic method for integrating the equipment, process life cycle, and economy scale analysis of a material's life cycle. Cross-disciplinary and integrated modeling is appealing for evaluating the economic, environmental and social aspects of materials use. However, previous efforts indicate the formidable challenges in developing useful models due to the vastly different scales and uncertainty. Economic models are at a relatively coarse scale, process life cycle assessment is done at an intermediate scale, while engineering models are at a finer scale. The proposed work will treat LCA as a multiscale statistical data fusion problem, where data and models are available with different degrees of spatial aggregation. The resulting multiscale model will be useful for studying the impact of economic policies on finer scales. This exploratory project will focus on developing the statistical framework, completing illustrative examples and initiating the multiscale life cycle model for gasoline. Techniques from environmental economics will quantify the externalities during the life cycle of materials use, and will be used to formulate policy alternatives. Furthermore, the proposed educational activities will provide insight into the human response to environmental problems. This will be used to devise effective teaching methods and meaningful socio-economic policies, making this a fully integrated multidisciplinary project. This work involves collaboration between chemical engineering, natural resources, environmental economics and statistics. Collaboration with researchers in Brazil and industrial partners has also been established. A workshop on "Resilience Under Uncertainty: Technological, Economic, Ecological and Social Systems" will bring together multidisciplinary leaders and researchers in this emerging field. This project will be co-managed by ECS and DMII.
