Transition Pathways (KB-25-006-001)

The challenges for liveable, healthy and food secure cities are immense to future developments, due to a worldwide increase in metropolitan population, pressure on natural resources including water, climate change, as well as political and economic instability. With increased population growth in urban areas, emerging challenges for food security and green are getting more urgent. In this study, we therefore address the need to find metropolitan solutions for food secure and healthy livelihood. In the next few years, the main aim is to develop a Transition Support System, that integrates existing approaches in order to take into account different types of information. First, the transition support system will be based on Magnet, that combines advanced optimisation models for food consumptions across nations. Second, the outputs of Magnet will be transferred to place based geographic maps to illustrate differences in food consumptions across rural and metropolitan areas (referred to as Metropolitan detector). Third, the system will be complemented with Big Data, as a source to specify exact consumption patterns. Fourth, stakeholder contributions, in terms of judging on context-specific and scenario-oriented conditions, are planned to be incorporated in the transition support system. This results in an overview, that illustrates differences of food security and green across rural and metropolitan areas all over the world. In 2016, a first concept of the system is described.