Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Transdisciplinary Expertise

Sustainability is an important concept for our society, economy, and the environment. In sustainability science, an emphasis is put on the importance of integrating diverse academic disciplines and promoting transdisciplinary expertise. But how can we bridge the existing gaps? In this contribution, the structure of sustainability science is visualized to discuss the gaps. At first, we consider the interdisciplinary characteristics of sustainability science, and discuss the key issues to integrate disciplines. The analysis indicated that interdisciplinary researches tend to focus on common problems, tools, frameworks, and social and political aspects bridge multiple disciplines. The second characteristics of sustainability science is transdisciplinarity. I will illustrate our recent activities including networking activity among policy scientists and policy makers and development of knowledge base for the design of sustainable city.