LMP Seminar: Ecological Guidance for Sustainable Industrial Network Design

Faced with increasing environmental demands on Earth’s resources and waste sinks, this talk discusses bio-inspiration as a design guide for creating more environmentally sustainable industrial resource networks. It briefly contrasts retrospective design approaches based upon life cycle assessment with one that emphasizes the potential of bio-inspiration. A series of network flow and structural metrics based on ecological concepts guide the design of a carpet tile manufacture, distribution, and reuse-recycling network. By simultaneously achieving low costs and reduced environmental burdens, this work suggests a design approach for more environmentally sustainable industrial resource networks, and it reveals opportunities to probe the underlying relationships between ecological and engineered networks.