Including Ecosystems in Process Design and Life Cycle Assessment for Environmental Sustainability and Innovation

将生态系统纳入流程设计和生命周期评估，以实现环境可持续性和创新

基本信息

批准号：
1804943
负责人：
Bhavik Bakshi
金额：
$ 36万
依托单位：
Ohio State University
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2018-08-01 至 2024-09-30
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1804943&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Including Ecosystems Process Design Life

项目摘要

Even though all human activities require goods and services from nature for their sustenance, conventional engineering has kept ecosystems outside its decision boundary. Ignoring or undervaluing these critical ecosystem goods and services (ES) has resulted in their over use and degradation, and can also mean lost opportunities for innovation and environmental sustainability. Recent efforts are accounting for the role of ecosystems in supporting human activities and are demonstrating the many economic, environmental and societal benefits of including nature in human decisions. Such advances related to engineering design and life cycle assessment have been demonstrated through case studies, but rigorous methods are needed for systematic inclusion of ecosystems in engineering decisions. This work will advance the framework of Techno-Ecological Synergy (TES), with specific focus on developing methods for, 1) integrated design of chemical processes and ecosystems on and around manufacturing sites while accounting for their temporal and spatial variation, 2) including ecosystem services in life cycle assessment (LCA) by means of a rigorous mathematical framework, 3) education and outreach activities to improve knowledge about ecosystem services among students and practitioners.Local TES design at a manufacturing site will be formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem that accounts for spatial and temporal variation of these systems such as the intermittent availability of many ecosystem services versus the continuous demand for these services from human activities. The mathematical framework for ES in LCA will explicitly include ecosystems in LCA along with their synergies and trade-offs in providing ES, and their interaction with technological systems. It will enable calculation ofsustainability metrics by comparing the demand and supply of ES at multiple spatial scales. This work will be in collaboration with an expert in ecosystem services, and will be applied to problems of interest to industry sustainability.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.

即使所有人类活动都需要自然界的商品和服务来维持其寄托，但传统工程仍将生态系统置于其决策范围之外。忽略或低估了这些关键的生态系统商品和服务（ES）已导致它们的过度使用和退化，也可能意味着创新和环境可持续性的失去机会。最近的努力是考虑到生态系统在支持人类活动中的作用，并证明了在人类决策中包括自然的许多经济，环境和社会利益。通过案例研究证明了与工程设计和生命周期评估相关的这些进步，但是需要严格的方法来系统地包含工程决策的生态系统。这项工作将推进技术生态协同（TES）的框架，特别关注开发方法，1）在制造地点和周围和周围周围的化学过程和生态系统的整合方法，同时又通过在生活周期中进行生态系统服务（LCA），以改进范围的教育，3），包括其时间和空间变化，包括其时间和空间变化，3）从业人员。制造地点的本地TES设计将作为一个多目标优化问题，可以解释这些系统的空间和时间变化，例如许多生态系统服务的间歇性可用性与人类活动对这些服务的持续需求。 LCA中ES的数学框架将明确包括LCA中的生态系统，以及它们在提供ES的协同作用和权衡，以及它们与技术系统的相互作用。它将通过比较多个空间尺度的ES的需求和供应来实现可持续性指标的计算。这项工作将与生态系统服务专家合作，并将应用于行业可持续性的关注问题。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子和更广泛影响的评估审查标准来通过评估来获得支持的。