Projects

The MIT SIC aims to ensure that the design, implementation, and assessment of technological solutions to various community-based problems actually yield improvements in the common interest. A key feature of our approach to research is our deep collaboration with a range of stakeholders, including community members, organizations, non-profits, and foundations; offices and agencies at all levels of government; private companies across various sectors and services; and, often in collaboration with these and other stakeholders.

Current

Community Ownership of Renewable Energy Projects

Considering the needs of all stakeholders, including community leaders, government officials, industry leaders, Tribal leaders, and researchers, this project aims to investigate the potential of community ownership of renewable energy projects. Community ownership of renewable energy projects at different scales is gaining more attention in the face of growing distributed energy markets and the rapidly changing policy landscape. A shared ownership model in various forms and structures can create...

Cyberdefense of Critical Urban Infrastructure

Negotiation in the cyber realm presents a significantly different dynamic from person-to-person negotiations typical of the boardroom, since there is no chance to read the face of the other side. As a target of a cyber attack, you may have limited opportunity to negotiate in real time, and you probably will have no ability to ascertain the culture or values of the hacker. With critical infrastructure being under constant attack by hackers – both state-sponsored and hobbyists- operators, public...

Developing Natural Resource Negotiating Capabilities in Mexico

The MIT-Mexico Negotiation Program is developing an executive negotiation teaching and training program for Mexico’s resource management sector. The goal is to further enhance the skills and strategies available to government and private sector managers involved in water, energy, and natural resource management negotiations at local, national, and international scales. Under the leadership of Dr. Bruno Verdini, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, Leadership and Negotiation specialized training...

Indigenous Community Planning

The Indigenous Community Planning project in DUSP is a multi-disciplinary research and teaching effort that seeks to center Indigeneity within the field of urban planning. Students and faculty within the department engage with Indigenous communities, scholars, leaders, and activists to explore together how to address questions of sovereignty, identity, land-use planning, climate adaptation, natural resource development, and historical land-taking. The research, curriculum development, and...

Offshore Wind Stakeholder Assessment

Decarbonizing the United States’ energy supplies to meet climate targets will require a rapid transition to renewable energy. Some estimates suggest that renewable energy capacity must expand by 38-67 GW per year by 2030, largely through utility-scale wind and solar deployment. Despite significant financial injections from landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, roadblocks remain. Chief among these is the growing wave of local...

Science Diplomacy

In collaboration with Dr. Paul Berkman, Executive Director, Professor Susskind is helping to create a new Science Diplomacy Center based in the Boston area. The Center will sponsor a series of training and capacity-building activities around the world. We are creating an online MOOC to help diplomats, especially in the Global South, learn the skills they need to engage in effective science diplomacy. Science diplomacy is an important new area of research and practice that fosters closer...

Siting of Renewable Energy Facilities

Technology innovation alone won’t allow us to achieve our CO2 emission reduction targets. Institutional reforms are needed to alter the context in which regulatory settings can be used to resolve siting disputes. This project analyzes mediators' roles in helping negotiate community benefit agreements as part of facility siting dispute resolution. The MIT Renewable Energy Clinic (11.092/11.592) provides MIT students with an opportunity to work with communities that have been asked to consider...

The Public Interest Technologist

The Public Interest Technologist is an online publication aimed at helping the MIT community think together about the social responsibilities of students, administration, faculty, staff and alumni who design and implement technologies of various kinds. Public Interest Technology (PIT) is a multidisciplinary field that emphasizes the lived benefits (and costs) that flow from both old and new technologies, and the way they are used. In our view, to be a public interest technologist requires taking...

Using AI Negotiation Coaching Bots to Improve Human-to-Human Interaction

With recent leaps in the accessibility and capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), we believe it is time for college instructors and professional trainers to take seriously the possible uses of GenAI-enabled teaching tools. With a grant from MIT, Professor Susskind, Samuel (Mooly) Dinnar, and MIT graduate students Ololade Olaleye and Leroy Sibanda produced and tested case-specific multi-party negotiation coaching bots. These online tools are aimed at helping students in...

Past

Arctic Fisheries Devising Seminar

In September of 2014 the Science Impact Collaborative and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School hosted a devising seminar on the long-term management of Arctic fisheries. The session brought together senior diplomats, government agency staff, environmental activists, representatives of First Peoples, industry leaders, scientists, and legal/human rights experts. During the seminar these participants brainstormed possible new regimes to ensure sustainable management adapted to the...

Conflicts Over Hydrodevelopment in Southern Chile

In recent years, hydropower plants have proliferated in Chile, generating increasing conflict while creating winners and losers. Relevant stakeholders – including government and the business sector - argue that it is vital to develop the country’s hydropower resources to meet growing energy demand and support the country’s continued growth. At the same time, the negative environmental and social impacts of hydropower are increasingly clear. Much of the country’s hydropower potential is...

Entrepreneurial Negotiation

Entrepreneurship is a basic human activity. It involves a series of interactions between founders, partners, regulators, customers, investors and others. These interactions happen at all stages of the entrepreneurial process -- from seed to exit. The Entrepreneurial Negotiation Project in the MIT Science Impact Collaborative focuses on the factors that cause entrepreneurial efforts to fail. The great majority (80-90%) of all startups fail, and most entrepreneurs who have succeeded have had to...

Malaysia Sustainable Cities Project

Joint MIT-Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) five year effort to help sustainability practitioners from many countries in the Global South document and analyze efforts in Malaysia to implement sustainable development efforts. Involved IAP Practicum that brought 15 DUSP graduate students to Malaysia and matched them up with UTM graduate students to assist the international practitioners. Focus on Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Johor Bahru, George Town, and Kuching.

New England Climate Adaptation Project

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Science Impact Collaborative worked with the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) and the Consensus Building Institute to test an innovative way to help coastal communities understand and prepare for the potential impacts of climate change. With a grant from the NERRS Science Collaborative, the team engaged four at-risk New England towns in testing the use of role-play simulations as a means to educate the public about climate change...

Public Health Risk of Climate Change Impacts

The City of Cambridge faces daunting climate change-related risks. The health impacts of local climate changes are likely to be devastating if no action is taken to prepare. A team led by Professor Lawrence Susskind and doctoral student, Ella Kim, investigated new ways of helping the city formulate public health risk management plans using community-based role play simulations. The Science Impact Collaborative team used a tailored role play to engage community activists, business leaders...

Sacred Lands Project

The Sacred Lands Project (SLP) of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program explores the idea of sacred lands disputes as a subset of public conflicts. We expect that mediators need an understanding of and sensitivity for the concept of sacred lands and the symbols that attach to them. Our hope is to develop a set of teachable practices for mediators working in the context of sacred land conflicts specifically, as well as when sacred land disputes are embedded in larger conflicts. SLP will explore...

Socially Responsible Real Estate Development

The massive Forest City mixed use project, located in Johor Bahru, Malaysia is being developed by one of China’s largest real estate developers, Country Garden Holdings, Ltd. Possible environmental, social and economic impacts of the project have generated substantial controversy, within Malaysia, and internationally, specifically with neighboring Singapore. A team led by Professor Lawrence Susskind is preparing an in-depth analysis of the political, social, ecological and economic aspects of...

Water Affordability in American Cities

The Flint water crisis has radically questioned the current status of drinking water safety in the United States. Besides exposing instances of environmental injustice, the crisis has unveiled the massive infrastructure challenges that the country must address in the near future. According to EPA estimates, fixing America’s outdated water and wastewater infrastructure will require close to one trillion dollars over the next 20 to 25 years. Faced with these projections, urban water utilities...