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

尽管人类的所有活动都需要来自大自然的商品和服务来维持生存，但传统工程将生态系统挡在了它的决策边界之外。忽视或低估这些关键的生态系统产品和服务导致了它们的过度使用和退化，还可能意味着失去创新和环境可持续性的机会。最近的努力说明了生态系统在支持人类活动方面的作用，并展示了将自然纳入人类决策的许多经济、环境和社会效益。这些与工程设计和生命周期评估有关的进展已通过案例研究得到证明，但需要采取严格的方法，将生态系统系统地纳入工程决策。这项工作将推进技术生态协同(TES)的框架，特别关注于开发方法，1)在考虑其时间和空间变化的同时，对生产现场及其周围的化学过程和生态系统进行集成设计，2)通过严格的数学框架将生态系统服务纳入生命周期评估(LCA)，3)教育和推广活动，以提高学生和实践者对生态系统服务的认识。制造现场的本地TES设计将被描述为一个多目标优化问题，该问题考虑到这些系统的时空变化，例如许多生态系统服务的间歇性可获得性与人类活动对这些服务的持续需求。生命周期评估中生态系统的数学框架将明确包括生命周期评估中的生态系统，以及它们在提供生态系统方面的协同作用和权衡，以及它们与技术系统的相互作用。它将通过在多个空间尺度上比较生态系统的需求和供应来计算可持续发展指标。这项工作将与生态系统服务专家合作，并将应用于与行业可持续发展相关的问题。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.