LT: Modeling the Industrial Ecosystem

9727295 Graedel最近的一项工业生态学研究方向的调查确定了生物和工业生态系统之间的相似性作为工业生态学研究中要探索的中心问题。 生物系统通常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。 作为一个新兴的领域，工业生态学已经产生了一些有用的数据，但还没有在模型开发的方式启发很多。 然而，如果工业生态学是有用的通知，生物生态学，它是必要的开始，从生态系统的角度来探讨其行为模式。 在这样一个系统中，资源由开采者从原始储层中提供，由一个“有机体”阶层（冶炼厂、精炼厂、化学转化厂）加工，由更高一层的“有机体”阶层（制造商）利用，由“顶级掠食者”（客户）获取，并最终由回收者回收。 这里提出的工作旨在收集选定的资源，材料流，并在城市地区的“有机体”的相关数据，并产生所需的数学关系，以开发一个工业生态模型描述水库，其中的资源流量和驱动力的控制这些流量。 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。 将构建的产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式将包括资源限制和经济相互作用参数。 将参与的调查人员包括工业生态学家（也是复杂化学系统的经验丰富的建模者），自然资源经济学家（也是供水经济学专家）和人口生态学家（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，可用于研究工业生态学感兴趣的具体问题，如“在工业生态系统中是否有最佳的地理模式或“生物体”的混合？“;“改善工业生态系统实现的障碍是什么？如何克服这些障碍？““如果（a）自然资源基础发生变化（例如，资源枯竭）;（B）经济结构发生变化（例如，开始实行新的关税）;（c）系统边界发生变化（例如，从城市地区到国家或次大陆），结果会如何改变？“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学领域的思维，就像在许多其他专业领域发生的那样。 然后，人们可以希望对工业活动的作用采取更开明的态度（广义上包括服务业、运输业等）。in our highly高technological技术society社会. 这一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的过去和未来。 ***

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. ***