Herman E. Koenig

Principles of Ecosystem Design and Management

Basic principles of engineering, ecology, and economics are synthesized into logically consistent theoretical and computational procedures for a coordinated multilevel analysis of the tradeoffs in the static mass-energy and economic characteristics of alternate ecosystems (life support systems) and subsystems. Ecologically consistent pricing mechanisms are discussed as a means for regulating physical and technological succession.

Engineering for Ecological, Sociological, and Economic Compatibility

Industrial societies have evolved under the influence of a political-economic reward system and a technological revolution that literally views the environment as infinite in its waste absorbing capabilities, if not in resource producing capability as well. As such they are not ecologically feasible in the long term. It is precisely their inconsistencies with the laws of material and energy balance under the pressures of an expanding human population that are generating the environmental crisis. The thesis of this paper is that man, as a dominating species on the surface of the earth, must learn to engineer the developments of industry, agriculture, and human habitats, giving explicit consideration to the effects of these developments on the environment. Environmental components are viewed as conceptually similar to industrial production processes, having many possible alternative uses. Since alternative uses are often mutually exclusive, the choice of use is critical. Some of the ecological and sociological considerations implicit in the problems of choice are demonstrated herein along with some of the problems of economic regulation.

Quantitative industrial ecology

The base of the engineering sciences must be expanded to the realm of industrial ecosystems, in which discrete technologies are characterized as design and innovation parameters in organized networks of economic production and consumption processes. The objective of industrial ecosystem design and innovation is to deploy resources with minimal risk to the integrity of natural processes of the biosphere. Industrial and natural ecosystems and their interactions can be characterized by hierarchies of bounded networks of biotic and abiotic resource acquisition, conversion and transfer processes. The ecology of each resource conversion process within a bounded network of processes is characterized in terms of the principles of material and energy balance. Design equations are developed that map the ecologies of bounded networks of ecological processes into the ecology of the network at its boundary, thereby providing operational procedures for mathematically defining hierarchical network structures. At the lowest level of ecological organization, all constituent network processes are observable first-order natural processes or engineered technologies. The economics of a given industrial enterprise are evaluated as an explicit mathematical function of its network of production technologies, its ecological organization and its ecological boundary prices, thereby providing procedures for the coordinated design, management and accounting of its technological, ecological and economic dimensions. Sustainable industrialization is achievable through online, risk-control pricing mechanisms.

Stability of a class of interconnected systems

Sufficient conditions are given for exponential stability of the equilibrium of systems of interconnected components taken from a class of nonlinear, time-varying, multi-terminal, differential, algebraic and mixed components. The analysis is based on the mathematical models of the unconstrained components and the linear constraints imposed by the interconnections between the components. A Liapunov function is constructed for the interconnected system from Liapunov functions for the individual components. A parameter vector appearing in the Liapunov function is selected in a prescribed optimal manner. The Liapunov function so constructed can be used to establish a lower bound on the rate of decay of the system. An example of a ninth-order, non-linear system is included to demonstrate the application to design.

Sustainable ecological economies

Abstract A brief accounting is presented of the evolution of natural ecosystems and human cultures including industrialization and its ecologically-significant interactions with natural abiotic and biotic processes of the earth. These accounts show, among other things, that excess resource harvest rates and material releases into the natural environment have been ecological risks of growing scope and scale throughout the history of political economies. The growing ecological risks of industrialization are attributed to disparities between the rates and directions of evolution in the ecological features of process and structure of corporate and political economies relative to the rates and directions of evolution in their cultural institutions of control. Many social and political organizations are now calling for adaptations toward sustainable industrialization by promoting evolution in the cultural institutions of control through research, education, ethics, politics and government. What is required are on-line institutional processes for effectively translating emerging ecological risk assessments into economic incentives for feasible adaptations throughout the systems. Institutionalization of such on-line adaptive processes requires broad moral-ethical enlightenment and social-political commitment to make the emerging scientific, technological and economic dimensions productive (Faber et al., 1996). This paper presents on-line strategies of ecological risk assessment and control which are believed to be superior to alternatives that require a prior consensus on economic valuations of natural resource stocks, natural processes and environmental damages; and incentives have advantages over prescriptive regulations. When viewed in their greater economic context, the proposed strategies are formulated as coordinated institutions of on-line ecological and fiscal control processes on what is here defined as the ecological economies of corporate and political economies. The objective of the proposed control strategies is to pursue trajectories of joint ecological and cultural evolution toward systems that are ecologically and culturally both satisfying and sustainable.

Quantitative Industrial Ecology & Ecological Economics

This article presents a theoretical foundation for integrating three otherwise disparate areas of human thought and understanding: technology, ecology, and economics. The article presents the mathematical foundations for quantifying the biophysical (mass, energy, and informational) aspects of economic production systems and their interaction with natural systems. These mathematical relationships are required for the on‐going ecological and economic design of technological production networks by enterprise management, thereby extending the scope and scale of quantitative engineering design from the domain of individual technologies to networks of technologies at enterprise, corporate, and industrial levels of technological organization. The analytical framework extends the practical utility of ecology, as an applied natural science, from passive environmental monitoring and prediction to active institutional participation in an informational feedback control strategy pursuant to economically abating the ecological risks of industrial growth, development, and modernization at local, regional, and global levels of ecological organization. And it provides the applied natural‐science underpinnings and the informational feedback control institutions required to support economics as an applied social science. In this context ecological risk‐control pricing is presented as a supplement to conventional economic policies at local, regional, and national levels of economic organization.

A prototype planning and resource allocation program for higher education

Abstract A state-space model describes the behavioral characteristics of a system as a set of relationships among time-functions representing its inputs, outputs, and internal state. The model presented in this paper describes the utilization of a universitys basic resources of personnel, space and technological equipment in the production of degree programs, research, and public or technical services. It is intended as an aid in achieving an optimal allocation of resources in higher education, and in predicting future needs. The internal state of the system is defined as the distribution of students into levels and fields of study, with associated unit “costs” of education received. The model is developed by interconnecting, with appropriate constraints, independent sub-models of major functional segments of university activity. The development of computer programs for estimation of parameters with continual up-dating, and for simulation of the system behavior, is described. This description includes a review of machine-addressable data files needed to implement the programs. The state model provides an effective basis for approaching problems of system optimization and control. The paper discusses the question of control inputs, and the feasibility of developing a formal optimal control policy, with respect to the internal state, for a university with essentially “open door” admissions.

Process Network Theory and Implementation for Technology Assessment in Manufacturing

This paper describes a theoretical framework called Process Network Theory and its implementation for evaluating the economic, technical and environmental performance of manufacturing systems. Historically, performance of manufacturing enterprises has been measured largely in monetary terms such as cash, value added and net return on investment. Achieving and maintaining a long-term competitive position in a global economy requires looking beyond monetary performance measures and financial accounting systems. It is necessary to evaluate alternative technologies in the context of their economic performance, technical performance and environmental loading. Technical performance, as defined here is the physical performance of manufacturing systems in terms of physical flows of materials, products and energy. Many companies recognize the crucial role of technical performance measures such as defect and scrap rates, yields, throughput time and resource efficiencies in retaining competitive position in the economy. They are experimenting with processes and procedures that stress quality control (TQC), reduce throughput time (JIT), improve process efficiencies, and others. Process network theory provides the ability to determine the technical and economic performance of manufacturing systems by following a two step procedure. As a first step, the physical part of the manufacturing system is represented as a network of elemental processes whose basic function is to transform the technical state of materials using physical energy and skill-specific human time. The models of the elemental processes are parameterized by a set of feasible technologies which are selected based on constraints and opportunities available for the exchange of materials and energies between the manufacturing system and its economic and natural environment. Linear graph theory is used to obtain the overall model of the manufacturing system as a function of the technologies and the network structure. The model is then used to obtain technical, economic and environmental performance as a function of the technologies involved.

Variable Parameter Structures in Technology Assessment and Land Use

All too often in systems science we become so fascinated by the mathematical niceties of abstract models that we loose sight of some of the real and, indeed, profoundly urgent practical systems problems that surround our everyday activities- systems problems that as yet have not or perhaps cannot be abstracted and refined into the well-behaved linear and bilinear forms we all enjoy so much. In many cases a mathematical model in any form is unattainable, yet we must deal with these problems too.