Sustainability:Sufficiency and Resiliency

Dr. Matthew J. RealffSchool of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Georgia Institute of TechnologyNational Science Foundation

Talk Objectives

Sufficiency Resiliency

Sustainability

Efficiency?

the logic of sufficiency, Thomas Princen,The MIT Press, 2005

C.S. Holling

Notions Underlying Resiliency

Resiliency as speed of return to equilibrium

Slope of potential well side wall

Less Resilient System

Effort required to perturb system to new steady state.

“Ecological Resiliency”

“Engineering Resiliency”

Idea that more than one steady state exists

Loss of Ecological Resiliency

The slow parameter drift causes the loss of engineering resiliency and ecological resiliency

It is sometimes the case that the system management causes the loss of resiliency.

Smaller perturbations lead to shifts in stability

E.g. Spraying of forests for insects.

Ecological System Behaviour

Clear Turbid

GrazingFish

Plankton

Herbivorous Zooplankton

Steady State “Flipping”

Planktonic AlgaeMacrophytes

Lake Systems

R1 R2

Hysteresis

Overall Ecological SystemResource Patterns

Rapid Colonization Conservation

Creative DestructionReorganization

Establish type and size of buckets

Empty the buckets

Disturbance

Fill the buckets

Positive Feedback strengthens connections

What buckets are in play?

Key role of diversity

Adaptive Cycle Outcomes

• Cyclical behaviour of stocks and flows•Oscillatory but long term stable system•Resilient to change

“Surprise is inevitable but the system absorbs them”A

B

• Flipping between different steady states

“Surprise is inevitable, system is disrupted to a new steady state”

These behaviours may require radically different management

Adaptive Capacity

Surprises are inevitable

Knowledge is always incomplete

Human interactions will always be evolving

Active Learning is required

“most policies are really questions masquerading as answers”

Structure action to evaluate hypotheses, make learning more efficient

PSE has delivered point solutions

PSE to deliver adaptive capacity?

Influencing the behaviour of a probabilistic system over time.

GOAL

Molecular Systems

Supply Chains

Coupled natural and human systems

Statistical averaging helps, samples many states, and many states acceptable, “under actuated.”

Repeated transactions help, samples states, many players

Rules of physics, not perfectly known

Contractual Rules, not perfectly designed

Interactions over many generations,

Rules incompletely understood

The role of connectivityHow does interconnectedness help?

•Indian Ocean Tsunami, Katrina, Kashmir Earthquake

Interconnection enables resources outside region to be utilized

•Financial•Human•Political

Enormous Impact and Benefit

Where can interconnectedness hurt?

•Co-location of assets for infrastructure operation•e.g. refineries and pipelines

•Choke points of interconnection•Port of New Orleans

•Agents that require connections to spread

Hurricane Katrina

Ports

Missippi Shipping Channel

Refinery Operations

Gulf of Mexico Oil Production

Eastern US Gasoline Pipeline

Mobilization of Industrial Pollutants

Agricultural Shipments

Industrial shipments

Long term channel changes

Short term oil stocks

Long term oil pipeline

repair

Petroleum Supply

Disruption

Energy Markets

Gambling Industry

Insurance Industry

Health Effects

Mosquito Breeding

Electrical Supply

Disruption

Airline Travel

Supply Chain Disruptions

Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Flooding

Heating Oil Prices

EPA Regulation Relaxaton on

Gasoline Standards

Emergency Relief

Agricultural Production

Oysters

Chickens

Missippi

Cotton

Market Disruptions

Agricultural Markets

Industrial Markets

Communications

Battery Powered Device

Recharging

Cellphone Towers

911 Call Centers

Refugees

Airline fuel Prices

Northwest

Delta

Flight Cancellations

Continental

New Orleans

Water Food

Medical Services

Floodwalls and levees

Goverment Agencies

Overlapping and Unclear

Responsibilities

Communications Disruptions

Changing Plans Leading to failure to dispatch relief

convoys

Tourist and Convention

Industry

Phone Lines

Helicopter Landing

Sites

Financial Markets

New Orleans Bonds

Municipal Revenues

Evacuation Planning

Satellite Trucks

Ham Radio Operators

Emergency Generators

Diesel Fuel Shortages

Sugar

Sugar Imports

Gasoline Prices

Natural Gas Prices

Availability of Dry Land

Retail Markets

Walmart

Shell

Displacement of People

Mobile Home Industry Boost

Shipments from

Europe

Refinery Repair

Temporary Office Space

Crow's Foot

Transportation Disruption

Bauxite

Failure of Law and Order

Loss of Wetland

Intensity of Storm

Zinc

Coffee

Construction Materials

Lumber

Bureaucratic Failures

Lack of Imagination

Outsourcing of Disaster

Planning and response

Rebound/Recovery

Vehicle Market

Drinking water contamination

Typhoid

West Nile Virus

Medical Equipment Operation

Kidney Dialysis

Ventilators

Diabetics

Water Quality

Social & Ecological Resilence

VOIP

Mud

Central New

Orleans

Eastern Districts

Hurricance

Predicted

New

Orleans

Mayor

Office

Refinery

Stocks

Entergy

MacroEconomic Effects

Inflation

Gasoline

Usage

Emigration

Who Has

Authority?

Medium

Term

Redevelopment

ExxonMobil

BHP

Corn

Insurance

Insurance for

Oil

Installations

Equipment

Restoration

Problems

Katrina ~ Linkages between Infrastructure

Connections between Infrastructures as identified by analysis of Wall Street Journal Articles in two weeks following Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Ports

Missippi Shipping Channel

Refinery Operations

Gulf of Mexico Oil Production

Eastern US Gasoline Pipeline

Agricultural Shipments

Petroleum Supply

Disruption

Gambling Industry

Insurance Industry

Health Effects

Mosquito Breeding

Flooding

EPA Regulation Relaxaton on

Gasoline Standards

Emergency Relief

Agricultural Production

Communications

Battery Powered Device

Recharging

Cellphone Towers

911 Call Centers

Refugees

Northwest

Delta

Water Food

Medical Services

Floodwalls and levees

Tourist and Convention

Industry

Phone Lines

Helicopter Landing

Sites

Diesel Fuel Shortages

Availability of Dry Land

Displacement of People

Shipments from

Europe

Transportation Disruption

Outsourcing of Disaster

Planning and response

West Nile Virus

Medical Equipment Operation

Kidney Dialysis

VOIP

Hurricance

Predicted

ExxonMobil

Part of the Infrastructure Interactions

Connectivity & VulnerabilitySpreading by connection

• Cascading “failures” due to load shifts•Electrical networks•Water networks•Transportation networks•Natural gas networks

• Infection by contact•Disease spread

•SARS•foot and mouth•Bird flu

•Information spread•Markets•Terrorist cells•Rumors

•Computer virus spread

Behaviour of ONE of these networks is complex

Need to understand how these networks interact

Research Challenge: How to develop models and decision making support for long term infrastructure choices.

Resiliency

Efficiency & Society•Resource Use and access have been fundamental driving forced for societal organization

• A companion principle is efficiency ~ more efficient resource extraction is a common pattern of development

Selective logging vs clear cutting

Purse seine vs drift nets

History of Efficiency

Aristotle Effectiveness = Efficiency

Matching of skills to task, means to ends

Middle Ages

Industrial Age

Modern Age

Effectiveness

Efficiency

Managerial Principle“The Age of Efficiency” Benefit to cost ratio

ratio =Physical constraint

Output

“The Age of Craft”

Greater Good Increased Productivity

Efficiency as RatioIn general there is no principle for choosing the ratio

Dollar Profit

Barrel of Oil

MJ of Extracted Energy

Barrel of OilVs.

Bushels of grain

Acre

Capital Expenditure

Bushel of grainVs.

We choose simple ratios

Children/Classroom Learning/ChildVs.

We assume “all else being equal”

Higher Efficiency More Good

Given Bad

Whose Good?

Who accepts the bad?

Efficiency & Extent

Miles/Gallon

Assumes by increasing fuel efficiency you will improve environmental impact

Ignores the extent of driving activity and how increases in efficiency change behavior

- Is Email a more efficient means of communication?

My (sent messages/hr) increases

Everyone’s efficiency increases

My received messages/hr increases are far greater (Gain > 1)

Network Externality may overwhelm efficiency gains as a sender

Street Light Efficiency in UK

Lamp Efficiency (lumens/watt)

0

50

100

150

200

250

Lamp Efficiency(lumens/watt)

1764% increase in lamp efficiency

Sodium Lamp

UK Street Light ConsumptionStreet Lamp Electrical Consumption

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Street Lamp ElectricalConsumption

3530% increase in electricity consumption

The underlying reason?Lumens/Mile

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Lumens/Mile

35% increase in lighted miles47374% increase in lumens/mile

Have we engineered an efficient solution to lighting roadways?

Next Technology Shift?

Sodium/Mercury Lamps

White LED’s

?

Will the next increase in efficiency cause any decrease in electrical consumption?

Efficiency

Time

Age of SufficiencyReconciling to a Finite Planet

•Better science, better pricing, better enforcement

“more of the same”

•Long term societal investment

•Sense of excess

•Environment as life support

•Self organization and innovation for restraint

Change the Terms of the Argument

SustainabilityResiliency is needed

Highly interconnected state of human affairs

Significant accumulations of resources

Translates to management of surprises through adaptive capacity.

Sufficiency is needed

Sufficiency can avoid the trap of racing resource consumption.

Racing resource consumption leads to reduction of adaptive capacity and weakening of resiliency.

What does a Sufficient and Resilient Process Industry look like?

A Sufficient Process Industry

•Must measure its extensive variables

•Must examine the quality and extent of its connections to infrastructures.

•Must understand how societal positive feedback mechanisms can be managed in light of environmental and ecological constraints.

Increased demand for computation

Reduced feature sizes on silicon

Increased purity of materials

Increased demand for energy and water

What is a sufficient silicon industry?

Resiliency and Sufficiency

Water

Land

Atmosphere

Agricultural Infrastructure

Chemical InfrastructureFuels Infra

structu

re

Hydrocarbons

FinancialHuman

EcologicalInfrastructure

Is buffered against surprise disturbances in basic resources

Has the ability to recapitalize on its resources during creative destruction

Implications for PSE

• Conceptualizing and modeling the interactions between infrastructures.– Modes of Failure (cascading, correlated)– Nature of Feedbacks

• Formulating resiliency and sufficiency objectives for process systems

• Design methods for process networks to recover from shocks and surprises.

Predict, prescribe, advocate