LT: Modeling the Industrial Ecosystem

最近对工业生态学研究方向的调查表明，生物生态系统和工业生态系统之间的相似性是工业生态学研究中有待探索的中心问题。生物系统通常是通过系统行为模型和描述该行为的数据之间的迭代来研究的。作为一个新兴的领域，工业生态学已经产生了一些可用的数据，但在模型开发方面还没有多少启发。然而，如果工业生态学要从生物生态学中得到有用的信息，就有必要开始从生态系统的角度探索其行为模型。在这样一个系统中，资源由萃取者提供，由一层“有机体”（冶炼厂、精炼厂、化学变压器）加工，由更高一层“有机体”（制造商）利用，由“顶级捕食者”（客户）获取，最终由回收者回收。这里提出的工作旨在收集城市地区选定资源、物质流动和“生物”的相关数据，并生成所需的数学关系，以开发描述水库、其中资源流动和控制这些流动的驱动力的工业生态模型。由此产生的模型将是第一个明确设计用于计算研究工业生态系统中材料、能源和资本流动的模型。即将构建的工业生态模型将利用耶鲁大学计算生态中心开发的“壁虎”生态系统生态模型作为框架。描述资源流动的方程将包括资源约束和经济相互作用参数。参与调查的人员包括一位工业生态学家（也是一位经验丰富的复杂化学系统建模师）、一位自然资源经济学家（也是一位供水经济学专家）和一位人口生态学家（也是壁虎模型的共同开发者）。这项研究的结果将是一个模型，可用于调查工业生态学感兴趣的具体问题，例如“在工业生态系统中是否存在最佳的地理模式或“生物”混合？”“改善产业生态系统实现的障碍是什么？”“如何才能克服这些障碍？”“如果(a)自然资源基础发生变化（例如，由于资源枯竭），结果将如何改变；(b)经济结构发生了变化（例如，开始实施新的关税）；(c)制度边界发生了变化（例如，从一个城市区域到一个国家或次大陆）？”更重要的是，我们有理由期待这些模型有助于构建工业生态领域的思维，就像在许多其他专业领域发生的那样。然后，人们可以希望采取一种更开明的方法来看待工业活动（广义上包括服务业、运输业等）在我们这个高科技社会中的作用。这种框架对于动态模型尤其重要，因为动态模型有可能与全球地圈-生物圈模型相互作用，并阐明我们作为一个社会和一个星球所处的位置以及我们可能走向的方向。＊＊＊

9727295 Graedel A recent survey of directions for research in industrial ecology identifies the analogy between biological and industrial ecosystems as the central question to be explored in industrial ecology research. Biological systems are customarily studied by iterations between models of system behavior and data describing that behavior. As a newly- formed field, industrial ecology has generated some usable data, but has yet to have inspired much in the way of model development. However, if industrial ecology is to be usefully informed by biological ecology, it is necessary to begin to explore models of its behavior from an ecosystem perspective. In such a system, resources are provided from virgin reservoirs by extractors, processed by one stratum of "organisms' (smelters, refiners, chemical transformers), utilized by a higher stratum of "organisms" (manufacturers), acquired by "top predators" (customers), and eventually reclaimed by recyclers. The work proposed here seeks to gather relevant data for selected resources, materials flows, and "organisms" in an urban area and to generate the mathematical relationships needed to develop an industrial ecology model describing reservoirs, the flows of resources among them and the driving forces governing those flows. The resultant model will be the first designed explicitly to computationally investigate the flows of materials, energy, and capital in an industrial ecosystem. The industrial ecology model that will be constructed will utilize as a framework the "Gecko" ecosystem ecology model developed at the Yale University Center for Computational Ecology. The equations describing the flows of resources will incorporate both resource constraints and economic interaction parameters. The investigators that will be involved include an industrial ecologist (also an experienced modeler of complex chemical systems), a natural resources economist (also a specialist in water supply economics), and a populati on ecologist (also a co-developer of the Gecko model). The result of this research will be a model that can be used to investigate specific questions of interest to industrial ecology, such as "Are there optimal geographical patterns or mixes of "organisms" in an industrial ecosystem?"; "What are the barriers to improved industrial ecosystem realization?"; "How might these barriers be surmounted?" "How are the results altered if (a) the natural resource base is changed (by the exhaustion of a resource, for example); (b) the economic structure is changed (by the initiation of a new tariff, for example), (c) system boundaries are changed (from an urban region to a state or subcontinent, for example)?" More important, it is reasonable to expect the models to help frame the thinking of the industrial ecology field, as has happened in so many other specialty areas. One can then hope to take a more enlightened approach to the role of industrial activity (broadly defined to include the service industries, transportation etc.) in our highly technological society. This framing will be especially important with the dynamic models that have the potential to interact with global geosphere-biosphere models and illuminate where we as a society and a planet have been and where we might be headed. ***