Designing Resilient, Sustainable Systems

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• 作者：Joseph Fiksel
• 刊名：Environmental Science & Technology
• 出版年：2003
• 出版时间：December 1, 2003
• 年：2003
• 卷：37
• 期：23
• 页码：5330 - 5339
• 全文大小：179K
• 年卷期：v.37,no.23(December 1, 2003)
• ISSN：1520-5851

文摘

Pursuit of sustainable development requires a systemsapproach to the design of industrial product and servicesystems. Although many business enterprises have adoptedsustainability goals, the actual development of sustainablesystems remains challenging because of the broadrange of economic, environmental and social factors thatneed to be considered across the system life cycle.Traditional systems engineering practices try to anticipateand resist disruptions but may be vulnerable to unforeseenfactors. An alternative is to design systems with inherent"resilience" by taking advantage of fundamental propertiessuch as diversity, efficiency, adaptability, and cohesion.Previous work on sustainable design has focused largelyupon ecological efficiency improvements. For example,companies have found that reducing material and energyintensity and converting wastes into valuable secondaryproducts creates value for shareholders as well as for societyat large. To encourage broader systems thinking, adesign protocol is presented that involves the followingsteps: identifying system function and boundaries,establishing requirements, selecting appropriate technologies,developing a system design, evaluating anticipatedperformance, and devising a practical means for systemdeployment. The approach encourages explicit considerationof resilience in both engineered systems and the largersystems in which they are embedded.