Date post: | 17-Jul-2015 |
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A Pluralistic Understanding of Sustainable
Engineering Science
Thomas P. Seager
Sustainable Engineering & the Built Environment
Arizona State University
Donora PA, 1948
Sustainability is an
essentially contested concept.
dogmatism (“My answer is right and all others are wrong”),
scepticism (“All answers are equally true (or false); everyone has a right to
his own truth”), and eclecticism (“Each meaning gives a partial view so the
more meanings the better”)
Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a
concept (e.g., "fairness"), but not on the best realization thereof.[4]
(wikipedia.org)
Number of disasters
each year increasing.
Financial losses from
these disasters also
increasing each year.
As defined in this report, resilience is the
ability to prepare and plan
for, absorb, recover from and more
successfully adapt to adverse events.
Enhanced resilience allows better
anticipation of disasters and better
planning to reduce disaster losses—rather
than waiting for an event to occur and
paying for it afterward.
Inherent in building the culture of resilience
is the ability to incorporate scientific
information, data, and observing systems
to ensure the availability of reliable
information, decision support tools, and
data sources to decision makers.
In 1983 the „Red Book‟ envisioned research, risk assessment, and
risk management as separate activities, with a one-way flow of
information from research through assessment to management.
This 2009 report from the NRC
emphasizes integration of risk
analysis research with scoping and
problem formulation
In 2009, the Science & Decisions book
envisioned an expanded scope of relevant
information and a less linear flow.
However, Science & Decisions
structures only risk-analytic aspects of
risk management, not decision
analytic. Information feedback loops
from decision-makers are still
inadequate to effective implement a
research strategy.
Note that in the VOI box at
left, information flows in, but never
flows out. Consequently, research
strategy is never fully informed by
decision priorities.
Resilience is better
understood as a series
of interacting processes
than a property of state.
More like a verb, and
less like a noun.
new system stresses are
incorporated into current
understanding.
foresee possibilities
response taken
after information
from sensing and
anticipation are
incorporated into
understanding.
Learning is the process
by which new
knowledge
is created and
maintained by
observation of past
actions