Research at SIE
Goals
The unit 'Social and Industrial Ecology' of the Department of Geography at the University of Zürich investigates the question of transition towards sustainable development. The focus is set on analyzing the relationship between human action and the environment. We base our research on the concepts of social and industrial ecology and develop inter- and transdisciplinary methods for analyzing human-environmental systems, modeling their interdependencies and assessing potential regulation strategies from a sustainability perspective.
Research questions
We study the following questions:
- How do human actions affect the environment?
- Which factors affect human actions?
- How can strategies be developed and assessed together with the involved agents?
The interdisciplinary research group composed of researchers from geography, environmental sciences, physics, and sociology is structured into three methodological areas:
1) Decision-making models
2) Environmental process models
3) Integrative approaches
The thematic priorities are: sustainable rural development and sustainable regional resource management. We perform research in Switzerland and in different developing countries, mostly Latin America.