Fall 2004
Tuesdays
12:00 GWC 604
Seminar
Schedule:<http://math.la.asu.edu/~tom/cognition/math+cogsched.html>
On
Tuesday, October 12, at 12:00 Noon
in GWC 604,
the Mathematics and Cognition Seminar will
present brief discussion with Prof. John Crittenden,
Richard Snell
Presidential Chair of
Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering
on the topic of
"Sustainability Science: Research
Opportunities and the Emergence of a New Metadiscipline"
Abstract
| Changes in the discipline of
environmental science and engineering (ESE) are reviewed and a case is
made for continued growth of a new metadiscipline of Sustainability
Science. This new field embraces economics, social processes,
environmental processes, and industrial ecology. Research
opportunities and examples of previous successes are discussed in the
areas of: (1) sustainability metrics, (2) coupling of industrial
ecology, economics and environmental impacts, and (3) decision support
for individual, organizational and societal choices. Multiple skills
and capabilities required to support the new metadiscipline of
Sustainability Science are summarized. It is clear that pollution
prevention and industrial ecology alone are not sufficient to achieve
sustainability, because even systems with efficient material and energy
use can overwhelm the carrying capacity of a region, or lead to other
socially unacceptable outcomes. A critical aspect of Sustainable
Science will be to understand the flow of information that supports and
motivates the decisions that control material and energy flows and the
consequent system sustainability, and it is this integration that will
motivate many of the advances in our field in the 21st |