CAREER: Multidisciplinary and Life Cycle Holistic Sustainable Design

这项学院早期职业发展计划(Career)基金研究了一种解决产品设计可持续性问题的新方法。通过设计具有多个视角和更长时间范围的产品，公司可以更有利可图，消费者可以获得更好的产品，环境和社会福利将得到改善。当前的可持续设计方法侧重于产品生命周期的各个阶段(例如，生产、使用、处置)、特定利益相关者(例如，制造商、消费者、政策制定者)的决策或特定的可持续性指标(例如，碳足迹、用水量、颗粒物排放)。该项目超越了这些重点方法，利用系统工程和工程设计研究社区的工具和技术，开发了一种全面的可持续设计方法，考虑到所有生命周期阶段、利益相关者和可持续发展成果。这种全面的方法有望产生更全面、更普遍的可持续设计实践，以及从系统角度影响长期环境、社会和经济可持续性的商业战略和政策。此外，通过提高各级相关教育材料的质量和可用性，以及更好地了解人们对可持续发展的看法，学生和专业人员的渠道将更好地为应对复杂的可持续发展挑战做好准备。本研究的目标是通过利用面向市场系统设计(DMS)和并行工程(CE)领域的系统建模和协调技术，在可持续发展设计(DFS)中同时考虑产品的相关生命周期阶段、可持续发展指标、利益相关者需求和子系统分析。研究方法将：(1)评估CE和DMS的协调和建模策略，以连接与可持续发展相关的设计参数和跨产品生命周期的利益相关者决策；(2)调查CE方法的应用，以测量这些决策参数、生命周期阶段、指标和模型的耦合强度；以及(3)调查从业者，以引发和验证现实世界的可持续设计需求。这将导致一种新的整体方法，促进设计更可持续和更成功的产品和系统。为了在广大学生和专业人士中加强可持续设计概念的知识传递和可获得性，该项目包括三个相互关联的教育和外展活动：(1)通过新的GK-12合作项目，提高大学预科学生对可持续设计和系统思维的认识；(2)通过以项目为基础的研究生课程，传播和反复更新整体可持续设计方法；以及(3)评估不同群体的可持续设计思维。这些教育和推广活动将导致在不同层次教授可持续设计的新的有效技术，学生生成的支持研究框架的案例研究，以及对人们如何处理与可持续发展相关的决策的基础性理解。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。

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant investigates a new way to address sustainability in product design. By designing products with multiple perspectives and a longer time horizon in mind, companies can be more profitable, consumers can get better products, and environmental and social wellbeing will improve. Current sustainable design methods focus on individual phases of the product life cycle (e.g., production, use, disposal), decisions of particular stakeholders (e.g., manufacturers, consumers, policy makers), or specific sustainability metrics (e.g., carbon footprint, water consumption, particulate emissions). This project goes beyond these focused methods by developing a holistic approach to sustainable design that accounts for all life cycle phases, stakeholders, and sustainability outcomes, using tools and techniques from the systems engineering and engineering design research communities. This holistic approach is expected to lead to more comprehensive and ubiquitous sustainable design practices, as well as business strategies and policies that influence long-term environmental, social, and economic sustainability from a systems perspective. Additionally, by enhancing the quality and availability of related educational materials at various levels, and by better understanding how people think about sustainability, the pipeline of students and professionals will be better prepared to address complex sustainability challenges.The objective of this research is to enable simultaneous consideration of a product’s relevant life cycle stages, sustainability metrics, stakeholder needs, and subsystem analyses in Design for Sustainability (DfS) by leveraging systems modeling and coordination techniques from the Design for Market Systems (DMS) and Concurrent Engineering (CE) fields. The research approach will: (1) assess coordination and modeling strategies from CE and DMS to connect sustainability-related design parameters and stakeholder decision-making across the product life cycle; (2) investigate the application of CE approaches to measure coupling strength across these decision parameters, life cycle phases, metrics, and models; and (3) survey practitioners to elicit and validate real-world sustainable design needs. This will lead to a new holistic approach that facilitates the design of more sustainable and successful products and systems. To improve knowledge transfer and accessibility of sustainable design concepts with a broad audience of students and professionals, this project includes three interconnected education and outreach activities: (1) raise awareness of sustainable design and systems thinking among pre-college students through a new GK-12 partnership program; (2) disseminate and iteratively update the Holistic Sustainable Design approach through a project-based graduate course; and (3) assess sustainable design thinking across diverse groups of individuals. These education and outreach activities will lead to new validated techniques for teaching sustainable design at various levels, student-generated case studies to support the research framework, and a foundational understanding of how people approach sustainability-related decisions.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.