Akbar Adhiutama

Materials Selection in Appropriate Technology Four Focuses in Design Thinking

Appropriate technology is widely recognized as a good solution in providing alternative technology for underdeveloped people who live in a very limited circumstance. However, it is often seen as an idea without clear explanation from engineering perspective. One of critical process in appropriate technology design process is materials selection. This study aims to provide applied logic for selecting materials in the design process. The logic is constructed by surveying previous notions from researchers. Reasoning techniques are explored by using design thinking. This study reveals that there are four focuses which must be applied to find sufficient materials for an appropriate technology. This study also concludes that, unlike pure engineering efforts which tend to substitute materials given in a technology design with locally available ones, appropriate technology start from existing resources to produce its design. It requires soft selection by involving local people in exploring any potential materials which already available in their own area. By looking at previous studies which tended to ignore the contribution from local people in exploring potential materials, this study embraces their involvement and then emcourages insights for further research around it.

Delivering Value of Composting and Recycling in Household Waste Management System: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach

Community and government have different perspectives and roles in conducting household waste management system. On one hand, the government generates a policy to decrease waste to be sent to final disposal; on the other hand, the community will accept that, and without community involvement, sometimes the policy will not run well. Household waste management system policies focus on delivering value of composting and recycling in community. One of the policies is waste bank which lets the community turn their waste into money in the form of savings like in a bank. Efforts from different household waste supply chain parties such as government and communities must be coordinated. This research aims to find the exact coordination between government and communities in order to adopt household waste policies especially waste bank. This research considers possibilities to produce policies by determining community needs previously (bottom-up technologies). Agent-based modeling presents three kinds of community: the careless community (not willing to adopt waste management technologies/policies even it is profitable for them), arguing community (not willing to adopt waste management technologies/policies when it is not profitable for them), and adapting community (willing to adopt waste management technologies/policies whether it is profitable or not for them). The simulation shows that the number of adapting communities is increasing; meanwhile the number of arguing communities is decreasing. However, the number of careless communities is increasing in the first half of simulation and starts decreasing in the second half of simulation. According to this result, communities socially interact with and influence each other because in the first half, the number of arguing communities was larger than that of adapting communities, which affects the increasing number of careless communities, and then in the second half, the number of adapting communities was larger than that of arguing communities, which influence the decreasing number of careless communities. It also shows that the role of government to maintain policies profitable for community is important.