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The University of Southampton
Geography and Environmental Science

TECHNO-ECOLOGICAL SYNERGY: A FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE ENGINEERING  Seminar

Time:
16:00
Date:
9 December 2015
Venue:
Shackleton Building 44, Lecture Theatre B

For more information regarding this seminar, please email Nathaniel O'Grady at N.O'Grady@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

Even though there is little agreement on a denition of sustainability, dening unsustainability is much easier: it is a state where the impact of human activities exceeds nature's carrying capacity. Avoiding such a situation is even included in many denitions of sustainability. However, this carrying capacity is rarely considered in methods for sustainable engineering, including life cycle assessment, and methods for designing sustainable chemical processes. Ecological footprint does account for biocapacity, but in a highly aggregated manner that is not very useful for guiding decisions. Given the degradation of ecological processes highlighted in several studies, accounting for the dependence and impact of human activities on ecosystems is an urgent need. Techno-ecological synergy is a recently proposed framework for Sustainable Engineering that explicitly accounts for the demand for ecosystem services generated by human activities, and the supply of ecosystem services available from natural capital at multiple spatial scales. The demand for ecosystem services is quantied by information about resource consumption and emissions, whereas supply of ecosystem services is determined from knowledge about available ecosystems at the selected spatial scale. In this talk I will talk about previous efforts to connect engineering design and sustainability, describe the principles of TES, and present ongoing research demonstrating TES in a case study of a biodiesel production plant in Ohio State, and a country-wide analysis across the US. REFERENCE: Techno-Ecological Synergy: A Framework for Sustainable Engineering BR Bakshi, G Ziv, MD Lepech, Environmental science & technology 49 (3), 1752-1760 6 (2015) Chair: Steve Darby

Speaker information

Dr Guy Ziv, University of Leeds. School of Geography

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