Session 1.1: Societal Drivers

Session 1.1.A: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

Abstract The control systems science and engineering community is strongly positioned to play a crucial role in the race to meet the challenges posed by the effects of anthropogenic climate change. We itemize several broad strategies that have been proposed for mitigating and adapting to climate change. Climate change mitigation requires, for the most part, reduction and ultimately elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from energy, agriculture and land-use sectors. Climate change adaptation requires actions that reduce the impacts of climate change, such as hot extremes, droughts, and flooding. We discuss a number of sectoral targets for research and innovation for the controls community; these include infrastructure systems, power generation and grids, industrial processes, transportation and logistics, and food and agriculture. We also discuss several broader perspectives that must be kept in mind, related to sustainability, social justice, deployment-at-scale, education, and transdisciplinary collaborations.

Session 1.1.B: Quality of life

Abstract In this short presentation, we will discuss the role of learning, control and decision systems in improving the quality of life, particularly as it pertains to the health care system. We will describe this impact at multiple scales: individual scale with devices impacting drug administration or organ failure, internet level with  IoT devices that bring together distributed sensors and actuators, and finally at a global scale that addresses major pandemics and emergency response systems. Examples at each scale will be presented and discussed to highlight how learning and control play a critical role in their success.  We will discuss how well this section fits into the rest of the document.

Session 1.1.C: Smart Society

Abstract A smart society is a human-centered society that aims to solve societal problems through systems that highly integrate cyber and physical spaces.  There, a vast amount of information from sensors in physical space will be accumulated in cyber space via the IoT. One could then analyze this big data, using a variety of methods including AI and ML, and moreover have the results of the analysis fed back to humans in the physical space in various ways. In this session, we will discuss how the vision of smart society and the new technology involved enable us to overcome difficulties and create new values for a more human-centered world. 

Session 1.1.D: Sharing Economy

Abstract The Sharing Economy refers to a transition from ownership-based models to sharing resources. Driven by technologies such as blockchain and more informed consumers, this new paradigm is leading to the empowerment of citizens and communities. A key aspect of the sharing economy is the rise of the prosumer: the traditional consumer replaced by a prosumer who both produces and consumes resources. This makes sharing economies resilient and efficient, but not without significant challenges such as fairness, dimensioning, social compliance, and increasingly the orchestration of both humans and machines. Many of these can be addressed through quintessentially control-theoretic methods. 

Session 1.1.E: Global Security

Abstract Global security issues arise from the threats of interstate conflict and regional instability. These threats often have cascading effects across the globe and lead to long-lasting consequences, including economic slowdown, humanitarian crises, and geopolitical tensions. Recent events such as COVID-lead disruption of global supply chains and energy embargo during armed conflict in Eastern Europe have revealed the fragility of our manufacturing, energy, and transport sectors. Multiple industries are confronting new risks because global trade relations are changing, which directly impact how energy, materials, and goods are exchanged. These risks are expected to persist in the face of climate-related disruptions and economic fluctuations. We discuss various ways in which control systems science and engineering community can lead and collaborate on addressing global security issues. These include: (1) developing safe and secure technologies for automating and monitoring critical supply chains; (2) leveraging advances in IoT, AI, and cloud computing to increase efficiency and agility of various industry sectors; (3) developing new strategies to improve resilience to disruptions; for e.g., by building energy capability, redundant infrastructure, strategic stocks and locally sourced supply of materials.