CESEM Research Themes

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

Electronic waste (E-waste)/Reverse Supply Chains

Globalization continues to transform forward supply chains. The scope of mining and manufacturing activities has expanded around the globe, accompanied by massive material and monetary flows between nations, which entail profound environmental, economic and social effects. While a degree of consideration has been given to the sustainable management of international forward supply chains, almost no attention has been paid to the globalization of reverse supply chains. By reserve supply chain we mean the network of activities carrying out the reuse, recycling and final disposal of products and their associated components and materials. Understanding and managing international reverse supply chains is important on multiple levels. One is that any hope to achieve a cyclic industrial system as envisioned in Industrial Ecology must now, due to globalization of forward supply chains, also consider product/material return loops from an international perspective. Also, used goods markets and reuse/recycling industries apparently play an important role in many developing economies, yet also entail environmental risks. Are there ways to manage international reverse flows such as to realize opportunities and manage risk? This project works to develop the intellectual infrastructure needed to engineer and manage international reverse flows from a sustainability perspective. This is explored through a case study of end-of-life personal computers in the US. The first component of the project is a material flows analysis to understand the current state of flows of end-of-first-life computers from the U.S. internationally. The second component involves exploration of the environment and development characteristics of different international paths for the reverse chain for computers. A third component combines of engineering design at product and system level and policy considerations to explore reuse/recycling systems achieving different societal objectives.

People involved: Eric Williams, Ramzy Kahhat, Yan Yang

Sustainability Network Theory (SNT)

Network theory has developed considerably since beginning in the 1950’s. It has been used widely in electrical engineering, computer science, engineering economics, social science, business applications (for example, modeling increasingly complex inventory and logistics systems) and biology, where it has increasingly proven to be a powerful tool in systems ecology and in enabling understanding of complex metabolic pathways and processes (Chen, 1990; Song, 2005; Heyman, 2006). We are developing sustainability network theory (SNT) as a rigorous theory applying network modeling and theory to industrial systems, with industrial systems understood in a holistic sense to include social and industrial dimensions, manufacturing and service components, and consumption and end-of-life activities. Figure 1 shows a conceptual SNT framework made up of a social, cultural and regulatory network (SCRN); an economic and financial network (EFN); and a material, energy and environmental network (MEEN).

People involved: Brad Allenby, Junbeum Kim

Resiliency of Complex Urban Systems

In this era of Anthropocene where major natural systems has been increasingly affected by human activity (Nature Editorial, 2003), scholars must "go beyond panaceas" (Ostrom et al., 2007) to deal with both predictable and unpredictable disturbance in complex, adaptive, and integrated systems whose complexities vary across space, time, and organizational units (Oltvai and Barabási, 2002; Liu et al., 2007). Principles of ecology have been used in the study of sustainability for industrial and economic systems (Graedel and Allenby, 1995; Ayres and Ayres, 1996; Allenby, 1999). The study of sustainability still needs to borrow from ecology the idea of resilience which has been substantially emphasized for its role over the last decades (Gunderson and Holling, 2002; Fiksel, 2003; Allenby and Fink, 2005). The emerging field of earth systems engineering and management (ESEM) has been developed to study the complex, adaptive, and highly integrated human/built/natural systems (Allenby, 1998; Schneider, 2001; Allenby, 2007). The research attempts to formalize a general framework of evaluating and engineering resilience in integrated human/built/natural systems.

People involved: Brad Allenby, Ming Xu

Industrial Ecology/Life Cycle Assessment/Material Flow Analysis

Hybrid LCA of a laptop through reverse engineering

People involved: Eric Williams, Callie Babbitt, Liqiu Deng

Energy Systems

People involved: Eric Williams, Chris Harto, Liqiu Deng

Water Sustainability

People involved: Jim Holway

MFA of e-waste in the higher education sector

People involved: Eric Williams, Callie Babbitt, Ramzy Kahhat

Sustainable Engineering

Center for Sustainable Engineering

The Center for Sustainable Engineering is a consortium among Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Arizona State University supported by the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. As the global population grows
and standards of living improve, there will be increasing stress on the world’s limited resources. Thus engineers of the future will be asked to use the earth’s resources more efficiently and produce less waste, while at the same time satisfying an ever-increasing demand for goods and services. To prepare for such challenges, engineers will need to understand the impact of their decisions on built and natural systems, and must be adept at working closely with planners, decision makers, and the general public. The Center for Sustainable Engineering emphasizes these and related issues.

People involved: Brad Allenby, Eric Williams, Bruce Marsh, Junbeum Kim, Ramzy Kahhat, Ming Xu, Carolyn Mattick