Overview

The Social Systems Division addresses the challenges of social systems to realize the future vision that human socioeconomic activities, the root of environmental problems, will be sustainable for both the environment and human society.

We conduct research to support the transition to sustainable social systems, including
- developing theories and methodologies such as those related to mathematical models and social survey that take an integrated approach to examine the relationship between socioeconomic human activities and various environmental issues,
- developing scenarios and roadmaps to realize the vision for a sustainable society that harmonizes the environment and the economy, and
- proposing specific measures and policies in collaboration with related stakeholders.

The Social Systems Division consists of the following five sections.

• Integrated Sustainability Assessment Section
  Research on the development and application of integrated assessment models to advance sustainable transitions by addressing cross-cutting environmental and social challenges across global, national, and regional scales, and by evaluating environmental, economic, and social systems.
• Decarbonization Measures Assessment Section
  Research on development of models and databases for assessing decarbonization initiatives for tackling climate change problems.
• System Innovation Section
  Research on sustainable use of energy and resources, including the development of measures for substantial improvement of their utilization efficiencies. LCCN (Life Cycle Carbon Neutral) is one of the research themes we are focusing on.
  
• Regional Planning Section
  Research on lifestyle and regional planning for balancing environment and quality of life in urban and rural communities.
  
• Economics and Policy Studies Section
  Research on environmental policy assessment, as well as theoretical research on environmental evaluation and methodological developments in the field of economics.

NIES promotes Strategic Research Programs, which are interdisciplinary research programs for tackling the complex environmental challenges that the world has been facing recently.

(*Programs mentioned below were for the 5th Mid-and-Long Term Plan period; new pages for the 6th Mid-and-Long Term Plan are now under construction.)

The researchers in Social Systems Division are mainly engaged in ‘Decarbonized and Sustainable Society Research Program’ and ‘Co-design Approach for Local Sustainability Research Program’, in close collaboration with other programs, such as ‘Climate Change Adaptation Research Program’ and ‘Environmental Emergency and Resilience Research Program’.

• Decarbonized and Sustainable Society Research Program
• Co-design Approach for Local Sustainability Research Program