Project 3. Resilience of water resources in a changing world: climate and society
As part of a national effort to raise the excellence of Brazilian academic performance worldwide, the present project proposes four strategic dimensions necessary to reach internationalization in an interdisciplinary way: (1) development of collaborative networks (2) creation of undergraduate and graduate courses (3) promotion of the international visibility of graduate programs and (4) support to excellence in research. This project has a strong focus on Water Safety (WS), which is an imperative to promote sustainable development. Social processes like economic and cultural globalization impose frenetic transformation rhythms, resulting in a new geological time: the Anthropocene. Therefore, concepts, values and social structures become volatile. In this process of economic production, humanity makes use of material and energy resources in a planetary scale (the planet’s ecological footprint represents 170% of its supportability). The relevant energy sources to this development are hydrocarbon, increasing global warming. This process can significantly modify the occurrence patterns of natural climate variability in its multiple time scales. These socio-natural processes produce a crescent complexity and uncertainty to social systems, the increase of water resources systems notably tends to amplify the conflicts of interests in this sector. Adaptive management of water resources is an alternative to guide an action in an environment of complexity and uncertainty. This project aims to impact the current state-of-art, identifying alternative solutions to these problems on technical and scientific fields through a Case Study of a water resource system in the State of Ceará and Northeastern Brazil. New methodologies and conceptual structures capable of generating analyses of complex problems in the society/environment interface are being designed by UFC’s Civil Engineer/Water Resources and Sociology Programs. New methodologies and structures are already being developed and will increase in scope and impact if the initiatives of both programs are further extended to international research networks.
