Scope

Today, there is a consensus that complex social-ecological challenges require solutions that are not amenable to separate single-discipline investigation, but require collaboration between many types of traditional disciplines. There is a need for more transdisciplinary practice: where research has a real world impact. This is the essence behind Interdisciplinary Solutions (InterSol); an international conference dedicated to the advancement of interdisciplinary researches that address people’s needs in underserved areas. It is intended to (1) encourage innovative interdisciplinary research, development and education that focus on solving problems in underserved areas in Africa and beyond, and (2) create an international research and development community around “interdisciplinary solutions”, which meets annually, publish in international forca, and incentivize members of the community to initiate interdisciplinary research projects that address needs.

The fourth edition of the conference (InterSol2020) will be held on March 8-9, 2020 in Nairobi, Kenya. This conference calls for rigorous interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary solutions. The purpose is to highlight the strong voices of African social, natural, and physical scientists. Questions range from the impacts of infrastructure developments, to what is the current state of climate change disaster risk preparedness, and how is this evidence base translated into decision-making processes that result in flourishing biodiversity, and prosperous, meaningful livelihoods.

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Topics

The works that will be presented at this year’s conference will focus on the following topics:

- Building disaster resilience to extreme events: translating the local to global
- Land use transitions and spatial modelling
- Scenarios, complex systems thinking, and muti-criteria decision analayis
- Human health and pollution in the total environment
- Nature-based and ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change
- Ecological infrastructure, green and blue spaces and ecosystem services
- Environmental justice and role of civil society making resilience equitable
- Balancing development and conservation agendas
- The role of Artificial Intelligence in solving Africa’s grand challenges
- Challenges and opportunities to curving career attrition of African women in STEM - (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics)
- Environmental migration, gender and the food-water-energy nexus
- Innovations in adapting to water scarcity and abundance
- ICT and innovative connectivity as enabler for sustainable development

We invite unpublished contributions and innovations that address these issues via an interdisciplinary approach to research for development, and contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and the African Union Agenda 2063. To broaden our forms of participation we allow different submission types and involving local communities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, industry practitioners, African Institutions of Higher Education, Science and Technology. A high-level panel discussion will be centered on these themes.

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Publication
All registered papers will be submitted for publication by Springer and made available through SpringerLink Digital Library.

Proceedings will be submitted for inclusion in leading indexing services, Ei Compendex, ISI Web of Science, Scopus, CrossRef, Google Scholar, DBLP, as well as EAI’s own EU Digital Library (EUDL).

All accepted authors are eligible to submit an extended version in a fast track of:

- EAI Endorsed Transactions on Smart Cities