Topic for Discussion
April 24, 2008 by John Morelli , and admin | Filed under: General,The EM as an Industrial Ecologist [1]
Our moderator for this topic has indicated his preference for a discussion relating to the difference between “resiliency” in engineering and ecosystems, so I think it would be good to work around this. Considering Greg’s questions:
- How does industrial ecology fit with the values of environmental management?
- What are the changing elements related to industrial ecology that the environmental
manager needs to prepare for? and
- Where should we apply the industrial ecology disciplines to maximize results?
. . . and, Frances comment that “The articles spoke a lot about the difficulty of emulating natural systems due to their multiple points of equilibrium and the fact that this multiplicity increases the resilience of the system. Engineered systems on the other hand focus on one point of equilibrium.” and question:
- Can our brains or computers even handle the complexity of designing around multiple
equilibrium?
It seems that a great topic for discussion would be: “What should the environmental manager know about the differences between ecological and engineering resiliencies and how can s/he put this knowledge to use in doing their jobs and guiding the organizations which they serve?”