PREMISE: Emerging Materials and Future Global Resource Scarcity: Identifying Technologies with Impact

这个产品实现和环境制造创新系统（PREMISE）探索性研究项目的目标是通过提供对新兴技术的环境价值和市场潜力的理解，让政策制定者更好地分配研究资金。实现新兴材料的能源和资源效益取决于这些材料的市场成功。这种成功是由现有技术和新兴技术提供的一系列特征驱动的。虽然经典价值理论可以确定首选的替代品，但它在描述实际采用路径方面没有提供指导。单纯的回顾性分析也不适合描述面临重大结构性变化的市场（例如，革命性的材料）。需要一种方法来解决推动材料商业化潜力的问题，该方法将由本项目开发，包括：1）导致替代所需的成本和性能特性; 2）材料I工艺实现这些特性的潜力; 3）面对日益增长的需求，材料市场的演变方式;以及4）新兴技术对资源使用的净寿命影响。 规划活动将组建一个跨学科小组，以确定推动采用的问题和适合其研究的方法。规划工作将产生一项研究计划，以评估这些问题并确定初步案例研究，指导第二阶段的工作。该规划项目的另一个目标是将资源利用考虑和工业生态概念融入工程教育。该项目将侧重于开发跨学科的个案课程。这项工作产生的综合框架将使决策者能够确定那些最有可能对环境负担产生影响的材料和技术，并了解在什么条件下会发生这些替代。

The goal of this Product Realization and Environmental Manufacturing Innovative Systems (PREMISE) Exploratory Research project is to allow policy-makers to better allocate research funds by providing an understanding of both the environmental value and market potential of an emergent technology. Realizing the energy and resource benefits of emerging materials, depends upon market success for those materials. This success is driven by the bundle of characteristics provided by the incumbent and emergent technology. Although classic value theory can identify the preferred alternative, it provides no guidance in describing the actual path of adoption. Solely retrospective analyses are also inappropriate for describing markets confronted with significant structural changes (e.g., revolutionary materials). A methodology that addresses the issues that drive a material's potential for commercialization is needed and will be developed by this project, including: 1) the cost and performance characteristics necessary to lead to substitution; 2) the potential for a material I process to achieve those characteristics; 3) the manner in which material markets evolve in the face of increasing demand; and 4) the net lifetime impact on resource use provided by an emerging technology. The planning activity will assemble an interdisciplinary team to identify the issues which drive adoption and the methodologies appropriate to their study. The planning effort will yield a research plan for assessing such issues and identifying preliminary case studies to guide the second phase of work. Another objective of this planning project is the integration of resource use considerations and industrial ecology concepts into engineering education. The project will focus on the development of interdisciplinary, case-based courses. The integrated framework that will emerge from this work will allow decision makers to identify those materials technologies most likely to make an impact on environmental burden as well as to understand under what conditions those substitutions will occur.