Human Settlements Review - Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Human Settlements Review, Volume 1, Number 1, 2010
Fundamental principles of advanced
sensory, computational and communications
systems, especially the integration of diverse
components into the ubiquitous and global
network – a particularly challenging set
of problems confronting computer- and
information-science engineering is how to
achieve reliability and security in a ubiquitous
network that collects and offers diverse
kinds of information in multiple modalities,
everywhere and instantly at any moment. In a
rapidly changing global environment, sensing
the environment and bio systems will become
essential in global environmental monitoring
and remediation (Roco & Bainbridge 2002:17).
Principles of Sustainable Design
While the practical application varies among
disciplines, some common principles include:
• Low-impact materials: choose nontoxic,
sustainably-produced or
recycled materials which require little
energy to process.
• Energy efficiency: use manufacturing
processes and produce products that
require less energy.
• Quality and durability: longer-lasting
and better-functioning products will
have to be replaced less frequently,
reducing the impacts of producing
replacements.
• Design for reuse and recycling:
“Products, processes and systems
should be designed for performance
in a commercial ‘afterlife’”.
• Design impact measures for total
earth footprint and life-cycle
assessment for any resource use are
increasingly required and available.
Many are complex, but some give
quick and accurate, whole-earth
estimates of impacts.
• Sustainable design standards and
project design guides are also
increasingly available and are
vigorously being developed by a
wide array of private organisations
and individuals. There is also a large
body of new methods emerging from
the rapid development of what has
become known as ‘sustainability
science’ promoted by a wide variety
of educational and governmental
institutions.
• Biomimicry: “redesigning industrial
systems on biological lines ... enabling
the constant reuse of materials in
continuous closed cycles...”
• Service substitution: shifting the mode
of consumption from personal
ownership of products to provision of
services that provide similar functions,
e.g., from a private automobile to a
car sharing service. Such a system
promotes minimal resource use per
unit of consumption (e.g., per trip
driven).
• Renewability: materials should
come from nearby (local or
bioregional), sustainably-managed
renewable sources that can be
composted (or fed to livestock) when
their usefulness has been exhausted.
• Healthy Buildings: sustainable building
design aims to create buildings that
are not harmful to their occupants or to
the larger environment. An important
emphasis is on indoor environmental
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