Understanding, envisioning, and planning

Complex Human-Environment Systems

for improved sustainability, justice, and equality

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Theoretical perspectives of our CHES research

 

We leverage knowledge and theory from a number of disciplines. These include complexity theory, landscape ecology, geographic information science, cyberinfrastructure theory and technology, big data science, and domain knowledge from sociology, demography, economics, and so on. At the same time, our group advances the knowledge, theory, and methodology in the above disciplines. With support from our digital 4-D methodology, all these theoretic perspectives render our work to be: 1) multi-disciplinary¡ªwith input from social, natural, and engineering sciences; 2) inter-scale¡ªwith ranges varying at spatial, temporal, and organizational scales; and 3) cross-type¡ªwith use of both quantitative and qualitative data or models. Below are a set of exemplar theories or frameworks we often build on:


Our theoretical support is not limited to these perspectives. As an evolving process, our research will leverage a broader knowledgebase, including potential contributions from computer science and engineering, spatial semantics, computational linguistics, human (cultural) geography, political science, and the like. We look forward to new perspectives or theories from more researchers, practitioners, and/or projects.

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