FUSE adopts an innovative living lab approach in which stakeholders: 1) produce solutions for future urban-FWE challenges, 2) engage in participatory model building, and 3) examine the merits of proposed solutions. Innovative system models quantify connections and feedbacks among users, producers, distribution mechanisms, and resources. The FUSE approach  is being applied to Amman, Jordan and Pune, India: growing urban regions, each with intermittent freshwater supplies and signifi cant competition with agriculture for water and energy.

Results and outcomes

To integrate knowledge, expertise, and views of local actors, FUSE adopted a Sustainability Living Lab (SLL) approach. The SLL approach includes a stakeholder analysis and two series of workshops, at the beginning and the end of the project period, respectively. In this approach, a Stakeholder Workshop – bringing together farmers, citizens, business owners, activists, and NGO representatives from different fields – is followed by a workshop with Food-water-energy (FWE) experts from the public and private sector, NGOs, and academia. Initially, stakeholders share FWE challenges they face, discuss their coping strategies, and exchange ideas and solutions for the future in a one-day workshop. Two days later the workshop’s results – which have in the meantime been collected by the FUSE team – are included into the Expert Workshop. Participants are invited to create a common vision of a sustainable future and to enter into a discussion on measures and policies for sustainable FWE systems from different future perspectives.

Read more about the Sustainability Living Labs

Other results

Article: Mapping Sugarcane in Central India with Smartphone Crowdsourcing

Article: A coupled human–natural system analysis of freshwater security under climate and population change

3-minute video describing FUSE

Policy blog on Jordan’s water crisis

Read the results interview!