Achievement

City footprint research: Our IGERT is advancing methods to measure energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use in cities using two types of city scale footprints. One type, geographic-based expanded infrastructure supply chain footprint, traces the life cycle and considers the full impact of all key infrastructures serving cities, even if they transcend city boundaries. The water footprint includes water directly used by cities and water embodied in electricity inputs to cities. Similarly, GHG footprints include direct emissions within city boundaries and indirect emissions from imported electricity and other trans-boundary infrastructures (regional commuter and airline travel, water supply, etc.) We compared the infrastructure-based footprint with a full consumption based footprint, which adds and subtracts imports and exports to cities based on trade between cities. IGERT trainees involved in this work are Chavez (energy/carbon), Cohen (water) & Sperling (water/energy).