Resilience and Malleability of Social Metabolism

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

REMASS studies how different disruptions during crises affect transformations towards sustainability. Highly resolved social metabolism data are combined with big data approaches from complexity science to quantify the resilience of metabolism during supply chain disruptions. Social metabolism data are linked to data describing trade and production networks representing socioeconomic interrelations within social and economic systems. The resulting models can be used to study the resilience of economies and societies to the above-mentioned disruptions and crises, as well as their impacts on ongoing transformation processes. Another key issue is how resource use changes over space, time and different social groups, in particular during crises, and how that in turn affects inequality and social wellbeing. REMASS creates a solid basis to identify effective reactions to disruptions that can be used as levers to promote fair and sustainable patterns of production, trade, and consumption.