Abstract
The industrial exploitation of engineering and technology over recent
centuries has had enormous impacts on the Earth’s ecosystems, ranging
from extraction of non-renewable resources to the deleterious effect of
many pollutants. This chapter first reviews such impacts by describing
human activities in terms of material flows, the factors that contain
them and the principal impacts that they engender, before considering
them in the context of recent development of Earth system models of the
interlinked physical, chemical, biological and human processes that
transport and transform materials and energy in complex dynamic ways.
The use of modelling of such systems is described, and the engineering
approaches to system change to reduce the impact of human activities are
outlined, ranging from efficiency improvements, sobriety and
substitution through addition of functions for improved control of
systems to servitisation and to the various approaches of the circular
economy. Transition engineering is introduced as a systematic approach
to the embedding of sustainability thinking into engineering practice.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the key questions faced by
those seeking to effect sustainable transitions and of the challenges
faced by engineering systems designers arising from the need for such
transitions.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Handbook of Engineering Systems Design |
Editors | A. Maier, J. Oehmen, P.E. Vermaas |
Place of Publication | Cham |
Publisher | Springer |
Publication date | 2022 |
Pages | 1011–1033 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783030811587 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9783030811594 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- Engineering systems
- Engineering systems design
- Earth system
- Climate
- Material flows
- Sustainability transitions
- Transition engineering