SCERP News

Border Plus 20 (B+20) Program

Overview

project website: Border+20 Program

The Border+20 (B+20) project is driven, in large part by two principal vision statements for 2020 made at the first Border Institute in 1999:

1. A healthy and sustainable natural environment...a secure and adequate quality of life for all border inhabitants.

2. A sustainable and responsible border economy...enhanced employment, education, and business opportunities.

The B+20 project is developing analytical tools that will assist decision-makers in better understanding the interactions between human natural environments in Border-Region environmental systems. The 'B' represents the state of the Border in the current year--a baseline from where we look ahead to '+ 20' years. Thus, we view the future through a moving 20 year window that enables us to anticipate both long- and short-term outcomes to policy decisions.

Our goal is to provide a software environment that yields different trends in behavior as outcomes of policy decisions - rather than attempting to explicitly model the future. Icon-based system dynamics software provides for the following:

Integrating science/engineering/social fields
Engaging experts and stakeholders in process
Aiding group-based decision making and model design
Exploring interrelated processes and feedback
Constructing and testing alternate scenarios
Finding data gaps

Binational environmental planning reflects national differences and shared/overlapping systems. A system dynamic model quantitatively accounts for both the differences and commonalities. In adopting the system dynamics approach we work with a set of relatively detailed sector models that represent the various parts of the system incorporated in a model. We are engaging experts, stakeholders and our client (funding is provided to SCERP through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) in the process of developing the sector models and inter-sector linkages. At present we confine ourselves to two geographic areas; San Diego/Tijuana and El Paso/Ciudad Juarez. As the project evolves we will consider other border communities within the Border-Region. Principal sectors of the environmental system currently under consideration include the following:

Population - reflects rapid population growth due to both local births and in-migration
Air Quality - accounts for sources and migration of airborne constituents
Water Availability - rationalizes the need for potable water in view of exploitable water resources
Water Quality - represents overall variations in water quality
Energy - recognizes that human endeavor requires energy in a variety of forms
Economy - links human resources and commerce
Quality of Life - indicators of human health and well-being
Politics - local, regional, national and international

Participants include University of Utah, San Diego State University, Arizona State University, New Mexico State University, Texas A & M University, University of Texas at El Paso, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

Contact: Craig Forster, University of Utah, Ph. 801-581-3864, Email: cforster@mines.utah.edu

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Last updated on February 20, 2004