Conceptual Modeling of the Impact of Smart Cities on Household Energy Consumption

AbstractSmart cities provide citizens with information on various urban services and allow them to track the impact of their resource consumption on the overall sustainability of their city. The premise of smart cities is that with improved access to information on resource consumption, residents make better use of those resources, resulting in increased sustainability of the city.This paper explores the influence of the smart city technologies on individuals’ resource consumption behavior, in particular on energy consumption, aiming at achieving environmentally sustainable development. This approach combines systems thinking with existing social science theories, such as cognitive and learning theories, to explore the impact of smart city information on individual decision-making and behavioral change. Using a CLIOS (complex, large-scale, interconnected, open, and sociotechnical) model, a conceptual soft systems model, the paper explores the impact of smart city technologies on behavioral change of households with regards to energy consumption

Stakeholder-assisted modeling and policy design for engineering systems

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2005.Page 462 blank.Includes bibliographical references.There is a growing realization that stakeholder involvement in decision-making for large- scale engineering systems is necessary and crucial, both from an ethical perspective, as well as for improving the chances of success for an engineering systems project. Traditionally however, stakeholders have only been involved after decision-makers and experts have completed the initial decision-making process with little or no input from stakeholders. This has resulted in conflict and delays for engineering systems with brilliant technical designs that do not address the larger context of the broader social goals. One of the fears of experts is that the involvement of stakeholders will result in technical solutions that are of poor quality. The hypothesis of this research is that an effective involvement of stakeholders in the decision-making process for engineering systems from the problem definition stage through the system representation can produce a system representation that is superior to representations produced in an expert-centered process. This dissertation proposes a Stakeholder-Assisted Modeling and Policy Design (SAM-PD) process for effectively involving stakeholders in engineering systems with wide-ranging social and environmental impact. The SAM-PD process is designed based on insights from existing engineering systems methodologies and alternative dispute resolution literature. Starting with a comprehensive analysis of engineering systems methodologies, the role of experts in engineering systems decision-making and existing stakeholder involvement mechanisms, this research explores the role of cognitive biases of engineering systems representation through actual experiments,(cont.) and concludes that the process of defining a system through its boundaries, components and linkages is quite subjective, and prone to implicit value judgments of those participating in the system representation process. Therefore to account for stakeholder interests, concerns and knowledge in engineering systems decision-making, it is important to have a collaborative process that enables stakeholders to jointly shape the problem definition and model outputs necessary for decision-making. Based on insights from the literature, this research developed a collaborative process for engineering systems decision-making, and explored its merits and drawbacks in applying it to the Cape Wind offshore wind energy project involving actual stakeholders in the system representation process. It further explored the potential application of such a process to the Mexico City transportation/air pollution system and the Cape and Islands Renewable Energy Planning project. The Cape Wind case study showed that a stakeholder-assisted system representation was superior to the equivalent expert-centered system representation used by the permitting agency as a basis for decision-making, in that it served as a thought expander for stakeholders, captured some effects that the expert-centered representation could not capture, better took into account social, economic and political feasibility and was more useful in suggesting better alternative strategies for the system. The case studies also highlighted the importance of the convening organization, institutional readiness for collaborative processes, the importance of stakeholder selection and process facilitation, the potentials of system representation as a basis for stakeholder dialogue and the importance of quantification versus evaluation of system representations.(cont.) The basic implication of this research is that it would be myopic of engineering systems professionals to shift the burden of stakeholder involvement to decision-makers, and keep the analysis a merely expert-centered process. Due to the many subjective choices that have to be made with regards to system boundaries, choice of components, inclusion of linkages, nature of outputs and performance metrics and assumptions about data and relationships, system analysts are in fact not producing the analysis that will help the decision-making process. The best airport designs done with multi-tradeoff analysis and intricate options analysis may lead to nowhere if stakeholders affected by the project do not see their interests reflected in the analysis. The notion is that a good systems analysis is not one that impresses other engineering systems professionals with its complexity, but one that can actually address the problems at hand.by Ali Mostashari.Ph.D

Cotton in the new millennium: advances, economics, perceptions and problems

Cotton is the most significant natural fibre and has been a preferred choice of the textile industry and consumers since the industrial revolution began. The share of man-made fibres, both regenerated and synthetic fibres, has grown considerably in recent times but cotton production has also been on the rise and accounts for about half of the fibres used for apparel and textile goods. To cotton’s advantage, the premium attached to the presence of cotton fibre and the general positive consumer perception is well established, however, compared to commodity man-made fibres and high performance fibres, cotton has limitations in terms of its mechanical properties but can help to overcome moisture management issues that arise with performance apparel during active wear. This issue of Textile Progress aims to: i. Report on advances in cotton cultivation and processing as well as improvements to conventional cotton cultivation and ginning. The processing of cotton in the textile industry from fibre to finished fabric, cotton and its blends, and their applications in technical textiles are also covered. ii. Explore the economic impact of cotton in different parts of the world including an overview of global cotton trade. iii. Examine the environmental perception of cotton fibre and efforts in organic and genetically-modified (GM) cotton production. The topic of naturally-coloured cotton, post-consumer waste is covered and the environmental impacts of cotton cultivation and processing are discussed. Hazardous effects of cultivation, such as the extensive use of pesticides, insecticides and irrigation with fresh water, and consequences of the use of GM cotton and cotton fibres in general on the climate are summarised and the effects of cotton processing on workers are addressed. The potential hazards during cotton cultivation, processing and use are also included. iv. Examine how the properties of cotton textiles can be enhanced, for example, by improving wrinkle recovery and reducing the flammability of cotton fibre

STAKEHOLDER-ASSISTED MODELLING AND POLICY DESIGN PROCESS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING

Environmental planning and policy analysis, design and implementation are complicated by the fact that environmental problems are almost always part of a complex sociotechnical system, the behaviour of which is not intuitive. The complexity of the problem necessitates a technical and scientific analysis process, which by its nature excludes the majority of the stakeholders in the given problem. To overcome these challenges, this research proposes the engagement of stakeholders from very early on in the process using computer-assisted visualisation and representation of complex sociotechnical systems. Specifically it proposed the use of system dynamics simulation in illustrating the complex interactions of the different sociotechnical system elements. Using computer simulation of the system, stakeholders can then decide on the best strategies to address the issue on a more objective basis. Ubiquitous computing enables the assessment of a vast number of strategies in a relatively short time.Collaborative processes, group model-building, stakeholder participation, science-intensive decision-making, computer-aided decision-making, joint fact finding, complex large-scale integrated open systems