Background and Working Structures

SHAPE will bring important progress beyond the state of the art by bridging model-based system analysis, industrial ecology modelling, social sciences, and participatory dialogue methods. Thus a full interdisciplinary approach encompassing both natural and social sciences will be provided.
Internationally recognized integrated assessment models describing the energy-economy-landuse-climate systems will be augmented with new and improved representations of important sustainability dimensions (freshwater resources and use, the industrial metabolism of material resources, and inequality). The model analysis will combined with regional and global scale analysis of governance challenges.

SHAPE comprises six work packages: