Creating and Using Social Impact Models for Engineered Products

每一种产品都对生产和使用者产生经济、环境和社会影响。虽然环境和经济影响相对来说是众所周知的，并且已经确定并实施了适当的措施，但很少有工作可以帮助指导工程师了解社会影响。因此，该项目的重点是创造方法来衡量和评估工程产品的社会影响。因此，在这个项目中追求的研究问题是：（一）如何影响工程决策的产品的社会影响，（二）可以进行哪些研究，以评估现有产品的社会影响？(iii)在现有产品中可以观察到的与工程决策相关的社会影响是什么？(iv)什么是一个适当的框架，以指导工程师“的预期社会影响的产品，他们正在设计的理解”这项研究承诺，以提高工业竞争力，使工程师占社会因素，往往决定了工程产品的成功，但目前工程师很难考虑正式。它还将促进可持续设计和工程的愿景，在不损害后代满足其自身需求的能力的情况下满足当前的需求。因此，本研究旨在通过改变如何在工程产品的设计和优化中理解，预测和考虑工程产品的社会影响，对工业和社会产生广泛的影响。这项研究将首先通过界定社会影响的界限来进行。这部分研究驯服了社会影响的笨拙概念，并将其与工程决策联系起来，使其对工程师切实可行，并为未来的可持续设计和工程研究奠定基础。其次，本研究将进行实证研究，以模拟现有产品的社会影响。这一重点领域涉及与世界各地的工业合作者一起研究各种产品/项目，他们同意为我们提供现有产品和项目数据的访问权限。这些合作者带来了从医疗产品到消费品再到人道主义项目的见解，他们将提供来自北美、南美、欧洲、非洲和亚洲的数据和见解。第三，本研究将从实证研究中提取原则，作为开发工程师改善其产品社会影响的框架的基础。在观察实证研究中的社会影响建模模式后，将提取和阐述关键原则。这些原则将是所创建的建模框架的基础。第四，该研究将创建一个基于原则的框架，以指导工程师开发社会影响模型--确定性和非确定性。这部分的研究旨在开发一个通用的框架，以确定一个产品？该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Every product has economic, environmental, and social impacts on those who produce and use it. While environmental and economic impacts are relatively well known and appropriate measures have been identified and implemented, very little work has been done to help guide engineers, understanding of social impacts. Therefore, this project focuses on creating ways to measure and evaluate the social impacts of engineered products. Accordingly, the research questions pursued in this project are: (i) How are social impacts of products influenced by engineering decisions, (ii) What studies can be carried out to evaluate the social impact of existing products? (iii) What are social impacts as they relate to engineering decisions that can be observed in existing products? (iv) What is an appropriate framework to guide engineers "understanding of anticipated social impacts of products they're designing" This research promises to improve industrial competitiveness by enabling engineers to account for social factors that oftentimes dictate the success of engineered products, but currently are difficult for engineers to consider formally. It also will promote a vision of sustainable design and engineering in which needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Thus, this research intends to have a broad impact on industry and society by transforming how the social impact of engineered products can be understood, predicted and considered in the design and optimization of engineered products. This research will be carried out by, first, defining the boundaries of social impact. This part of the research tames the unwieldy concept of social impact and frames it in a way that links it to engineering decisions, making it tangible to engineers and laying the foundation for future research in sustainable design and engineering. Second, this research will execute empirical studies to model the social impact of existing products. This area of focus involves examining a variety of products/projects with industrial collaborators all over the world who have agreed to provide us with access to existing product and project data. These collaborators bring insight ranging from medical products to consumer products to humanitarian projects and they will provide data and insight from North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Third, this research will extract principles from the empirical studies that act as a foundation for developing a framework for engineers to improve social impacts of their products. Key principles will be extracted and articulated after observing the social impact modeling patterns in the empirical studies. These principles will be at the foundation of the modeling framework created. Fourth, the research will create a principles-based framework to guide engineers in developing social impact models--deterministic and non-deterministic. This portion of the research seeks to develop a generic framework for identifying a product?s social impacts, converging on one or more social sustainability measures for the product, and linking those measures to the engineer-controlled parameters of the design.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.