The Center for Research in Sustainability,
Collapse-Preparedness & Information Technology

Meeting Needs with Reduced Resources

In his keynote address at a 2012 NSF-funded National Academies symposium, John Holdren, then Director of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy and chief science advisor to the nation, spoke at length about climate change, and described a need for both mitigation – the reduction of the magnitude of change – and adaptation – the mobilization of responses to change. Holdren advocated for the development of technology that focuses on "meeting human needs [and] wants at lower cost with reduced use of material resources [and] reduced environmental impact." The Center for Research in Sustainability, Collapse-Preparedness & Information Technology (RiSCIT) seeks to engage with this challenge, in part due to the potential for "greening through IT" – that is, making civilizations more environmentally sustainable via IT interventions and in part as means of preparing for civilizational collapse. The goal of RiSCIT is to provide a central focus for research on the role of informatics and computing in supporting the transition to sustainability and addressing the potential to prepare for civilization-scale collapse. Since 2015, RiSCIT has hosted LIMITS—the annual Workshop on Computing within Limits—to foster discussion on the impact of present and future ecological, material, energetic, and societal limits on computing, and also as a means of growing the community of researchers exploring such issues.

Research

Our members engage in cutting edge research on topics relating to sustainability and collapse.

Teaching

We teach courses and supervise independent study students related to the center's research focuses.

Living

We compost, vermicompost, grow food, mine bitcoin, travel less, and generally try to "walk the walk".

Current Events

RiSCIT is sponsoring the 2017 ACM Workshop on Computing within Limits (LIMITS 2017).
Details here.

Past Events

RiSCIT hosted the LIMITS 2015 Public Discussion on Computing with Limits at the UCI University Club Library in conjuction with the Newkirk Center for Science & Society on 3 December, 2015.
Details here.

LIMITS 2015 Public Discussion

RiSCIT hosted LIMITS 2015 at UCI on June 15-16, 2015.
Details here.

LIMITS 2015
Joseph Tainter

RiSCIT was pleased to host anthropologist, historian and author Joseph Tainter on February 14th, 2014 in DBH 6011.
Details here.

The Collapse of Complex Societies

Projects

People