Design of Sustainable, Resilient Infrastructure Systems

Julie Beth Zimmerman, PhD Assistant Professor of Green Engineering School of Engineering and Applied Sciences School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Acting Director, Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering Yale University

Doing the right things wrong

•  Can we appropriately and successfully address sustainability challenges if our designs are not in themselves sustainable?

Doing the right things wrong

Biofuels from agricultural crops

Doing the right things wrong

Purifying water with acutely lethal substances

Doing the right things wrong

Precious, rare, toxic metals in

photovoltaics

Doing the right things wrong

Agricultural crop efficiency from

persistent pesticides

Doing the right things wrong

Energy saving compact fluorescent light bulbs reliant on

toxic metals

Net mercury emission reductions from CFL implementation

Eckelman, Zimmerman, Anastas, ES&T, 2008, 42, 8564-8570

Eckelman, Zimmerman, Anastas, ES&T, 2008, 42, 8564-8570

Net mercury emission reductions from CFL implementation

How did we get there?

•  Urgent and necessary challenges •  Noble goals •  Exciting science and technology •  Best of intentions

water

toxics climate energy

biodiversity

The necessary transformational change of engineering design

Principles of Green Engineering 1. Inherent rather than circumstantial. Green Chemistry

2. Prevention rather than treatment. 3. Design for separation. 4. Maximize mass, energy, space, and time efficiency. 5. “Out-pulled” rather than “input-pushed”. 6. View complexity as an investment. 7. Durability rather than immortality. 8. Need rather than excess. 9. Minimize material diversity. 10. Integrate local material and energy flows. 11. Design for commercial “afterlife”. 12. Renewable and readily available.

Anastas and Zimmerman, Environmental Science and Technology, March 1, 2003

Design criteria for sustainable solutions

“Performance” must evolve from

function, cost, quality, safety to include

environment, human health, social wellbeing

Starting from design

•  Typically, 70% of total cost is determined at design phase

•  Analogous for environmental impacts

Service oriented design

•  What function or service are we providing?

rather than

•  What is the greenest design for this product or process?

Towards sustainability

•  Design for a Dynamic World

•  Design for a Systems Context

•  Design for Inherency

Crutzen, P. J. The Anthropocene: The Current Human-Dominated Geological Era—Human Impacts on Climate and the Environment. In Climate Change and Its Effect on Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the Global Environmental Action International Conference, Tokyo, Oct 14–16, 2005; GEA: Tokyo, 2005.

Crutzen, P. J. The Anthropocene: The Current Human-Dominated Geological Era—Human Impacts on Climate and the Environment. In Climate Change and Its Effect on Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the Global Environmental Action International Conference, Tokyo, Oct 14–16, 2005; GEA: Tokyo, 2005.

Crutzen, P. J. The Anthropocene: The Current Human-Dominated Geological Era—Human Impacts on Climate and the Environment. In Climate Change and Its Effect on Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the Global Environmental Action International Conference, Tokyo, Oct 14–16, 2005; GEA: Tokyo, 2005.

Crutzen, P. J. The Anthropocene: The Current Human-Dominated Geological Era—Human Impacts on Climate and the Environment. In Climate Change and Its Effect on Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the Global Environmental Action International Conference, Tokyo, Oct 14–16, 2005; GEA: Tokyo, 2005.

Crutzen, P. J. The Anthropocene: The Current Human-Dominated Geological Era—Human Impacts on Climate and the Environment. In Climate Change and Its Effect on Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the Global Environmental Action International Conference, Tokyo, Oct 14–16, 2005; GEA: Tokyo, 2005.

Crutzen, P. J. The Anthropocene: The Current Human-Dominated Geological Era—Human Impacts on Climate and the Environment. In Climate Change and Its Effect on Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the Global Environmental Action International Conference, Tokyo, Oct 14–16, 2005; GEA: Tokyo, 2005.

Crutzen, P. J. The Anthropocene: The Current Human-Dominated Geological Era—Human Impacts on Climate and the Environment. In Climate Change and Its Effect on Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the Global Environmental Action International Conference, Tokyo, Oct 14–16, 2005; GEA: Tokyo, 2005.

Crutzen, P. J. The Anthropocene: The Current Human-Dominated Geological Era—Human Impacts on Climate and the Environment. In Climate Change and Its Effect on Sustainable Development, Proceedings of the Global Environmental Action International Conference, Tokyo, Oct 14–16, 2005; GEA: Tokyo, 2005.

Performance over time: Engineered systems

Performance over time: Engineered systems

F(t) = 1 – R(t)

Time-dependent cumulative probabilities of failure for increase in traffic loads [2.3% annual increase in traffic volume, traffic load (mass) increases by 0.5% per annum].

Vu, K. A. T.; Stewart, M.G. Structural Safety, 22, 2000, 313-333

MG Ryan, D Binkley, JH Fownes - Advances in Ecological Research, 27:213–262, 1997

Performance over time: Tree stand

Performance over time: Palm oil production

Performance over time: Worker productivity

performan

ce‐‐‐‐‐>

-me‐‐‐‐‐>

current engineered system innovative engineered system 1 innovative engineered system 2 innovative engineered system 3

€

to performance(t)dt0

t∫

Shift design criteria

from maximum performance at t=0

Design for a Dynamic World

•  The stressors and impacts of the “hockey-stick world” come to suggest that we need to expand our design considerations, particularly in infrastructure systems that typically have useful lifetimes meant to last for decades (and often function beyond their designed lifetime).

Zimmerman, Mihelcic, Smith, ES&T, 42 (12), 2008, 4247-4254

Water and Nonwater-related Challenges of Achieving Global Sanitation Coverage Lauren M. Fry, James R. Mihelcic, and David W. Watkins Environ. Sci. Technol., 2008, 42 (12), 4298-4304

Freshwater stress by country (L) in 1995 and (R) projected for 2025 (13). UN Environment Programme. Global Environmental Outlook: Environment for Development; Report GEO-4; Progress Press: Valletta, Malta, 2007.

Enhancing performance over time

•  Adaption •  Resilience •  Emergence •  Evolution

Enhancing performance over time

•  This is not about each component necessarily performing better over the lifetime, this is about enhancing the performance of the system.

Towards sustainability

•  Design for a Dynamic World

•  Design for a Systems Context

•  Design for Inherency

Design for a Systems Context

Systems thinking

•  Reductionist approach – Hold everything constant and fully understand

each individual parameter individually

•  Synergies? •  Antagonism? •  Feedback mechanisms?

Peerenboom, Fisher, Whitfield, 2001, Presentation to the workshop on Mitigating Vulnerability of Critical Infrastructure to Catastrophic Failures, Alexandria, VA.

Resiliency

•  Traditional systems engineering try to anticipate and resist disruptions but may be vulnerable to unforeseen factors

Resilient systems

•  Resilience tends to increase if a system has diversity, redundancy, efficiency, autonomy, awareness, adaptability, cohesion, and strength in its critical components.

Resiliency

Fiskel, Designing Resilient, Sustainable Systems, Environmental Science and Technology, 37 (23), 5330-5339, 2003

Towards sustainability

•  Design for a Dynamic World

•  Design for a Systems Context

•  Design for Inherency

Design for Inherency

•  “The term ‘intrinsic nature’ does not indicate a factor’s temporal status, but rather refers to its underlying and defining nature.”

--Buddhist scholar

Circumstantial vs. Intrinsic

•  Circumstantial – Use – Exposure – Handling – Treatment – Protection – Costly

•  Intrinsic – Molecular design

for reduced toxicity – Reduced ability to

manifest hazard –  Inherent safety

from accidents or terrorism

Inherency

•  What if we found a value-added use for Cl- in concrete systems rather than spending enormous resources to control the circumstances surrounding Cl- exposure and subsequent concrete deterioration?

Towards sustainability

•  Design for a Dynamic World

•  Design for a Systems Context

•  Design for Inherency

Potential design strategies to get us closer to doing the right things right.