"managing a terraformed planet: earth systems engineering

Managing a Terraformed Planet: Earth Systems Engineering

Esri GeoDesign Summit January 5-6, 2012

Brad Allenby

Founding Director, Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management

Lincoln Professor of Ethics and EngineeringProfessor of Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable

Engineering

Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management

CESEM

So long as we do not, through thinking, experience what is, we can never belong to what will be.

The flight into tradition, out of a combination of humility and presumption, can bring about nothing in itself other than self deception and blindness in relation to the historical moment.

Source: M. Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translation by W. Lovitt (New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1977), “The Turning,” p. 49; “The Age of the World Picture,” p. 136.

Why Earth Systems Engineering?

• Age of human impact on global systems: – Global climate change– Major natural cycles: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous– Biodiversity– Economy– Technology systems (e.g., human as design space)– Social and cultural behavior (mass consumption)– Water

Earth Systems Engineering and Management: Climate Change- Carbon

Cycle Schematic

Carbon cycle

Hydrologic cycle

Nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur

cycles

Other cycles

Geoengineering options Energy

systemOcean

fertilizationBiomass

agriculture

Fossil fuel industry, etc.

Fish farming, etc

Organic chemical industry, etc.

Implementation at firm, facility, technology and process level

Engineering/ Management of Earth system relationships

Engineering/ Management of carbon cycle

Scope of traditional engineering disciplines

Earth System Engineering

Atmosphere and Oceanic Systems

Biosphere

Human systems: economic, cultural, religious, etc

Genetic engineering and biotechnology

Information technology and services (e.g.,

telework)

Other Technology systems

Other options

Why Earth Systems Engineering?

• These Earth systems are difficult in themselves, but because they are foundational, they are coupled to each other, and to many others

• They integrate human, natural and built components, and cannot be understood, designed, and managed using just information from one of those domains

• Water is quintessential Earth system

Global Freshwater Use 1700 - 2000

YearWithdrawals

(km3)Withdrawals(per capita) Irrigation Industry Municipal

1700 110 0.17 90 2 8

1800 243 0.27 90 3 7

1900 580 0.36 90 6 3

1950 1,360 0.54 83 13 4

1970 2,590 0.70 72 22 5

1990 4,130 0.78 66 24 8

2000(est.)

5,190 0.871] 64 25 9140

1] In richer countries, water use stabilized after the 1970’s. In the U.S., total water use peaked around 1980 and had declined by a tenth as of 1995, despite simultaneous addition of some 40 million people.

Source: Based on J. R. McNeill, 2000, Something New Under the Sun (New York: W. W. Norton & Company), Table 5.1, p. 121, and sources cited therein.

Use (in percent)

Decoupling U.S. Water Consumption from Economic Performance

01

23

45

67

89

10

1885 1905 1925 1945 1965 1985 2005

1000

900

800

700

600

500

400

300

200

1000

Adapted from The Economist, “Priceless: a Survey of Water”, July 19 2003, center section, Pg 4.

Population

Water consumption km3 per year

GDP trillion 2002 $

Water as Earth System• It is a material• It is a commodity (a material that can be

owned)• It is a legal construct – “water rights”• It is a cultural construct – “water as human

right”• It is a technological construct (technology

makes “potable water” from “sewage”)

Water as Earth System• It is transport (Roman empire: moving a

given load 1 mile by oxcart = 5.7 miles by river = 57 miles by sea) – Development economics theory that inland

countries are disadvantaged because of lack of access to ocean shipping

• It is energy• It is political power (cf. water wars) • Essential for life (critical environmentally)

Water as Earth System• It is something that can be used, but not

used up (form and quality matter)

• Availability in a particular circumstance is a matter of pricepoint, infrastructure and power, not “natural” constraints.– Compare with climate change and ambient

atmospheric carbon capture

Water as Earth System• Distribution challenges arise from

transitional regimes (e.g., climate change, technology and infrastructure design and construction) and cultural regimes (e.g., water as “human right” must be economically free)

• Traditional definitions fail (e.g., factory beef from stem cells as “water technology”)

Water as Earth System• Like all critical earth systems, it can be

weaponized (cf: food as weapon in Darfur)• It is provided, traded, and sold both as a

material (“water”) and as embedded in other products (“virtual water”)

• Trade networks in virtual water (which necessarily implicate similar networks for, e.g., virtual N, or C, or S, or P) are not “ancillary” to managing water issues, but core.

Embedded Water Content of Selected ItemsProduct Embedded water content

(liters)1 microchip (2 g) 32

1 sheet of A4-size paper (80 g/m2)

10

1 slice of bread (30 g) 40

1 potato (100 g) 25

1 cup of coffee (125 ml) 140

1 bag of potato crisps (190 g)

185

1 hamburger (150 g) 2,400

Embedded Water Content, liters per gram

16

.125 (liters/m2)

1.33

.25

1.12 (l/ml)

.97

16

Based on Gradel and Allenby, Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Engineering, 2010, Prentice-Hall; A.Y. Hoekstra and A.K. Chapagain, Water footprints of nations: Water use by people as a function of their consumption pattern, Water Resources Management, 21, 35–48, 2007

Embedded Water

Embedded Water

• To produce:– 1 ton of vegetables requires about 1,000

cubic meters of water– 1 ton of wheat requires about 1,450 cubic

meters– 1 ton of beef requires 42,500 cubic meters

Water as Earth System

sust


WATER SYSTEMS

Production Technologies

Nitrogen Cycle

Carbon Cycle

Phosphorous Cycle

Biodiversity

Recycling TechnologiesTreatment Technologies

Efficient Use Options

Agriculture

Global Trade

WATER ECONOMICS Culture/LawOTHER TECHNOLOGY

SYSTEMS

E A R T H

S Y S T E M S

USUALFOCUSOF WATER POLICY

Human Health

Relevant ESEM Considerations• Development of robust technological

options at all scales.– Such options are a public good, in that private parties have

little incentive to invest in developing them.– Highly likely that society as a whole is seriously under-

investing in water technology option spaces (and in terraforming technologies generally).

• Examples for water include technologies to– Recycle water at the household level– Blend appropriately treated wastewater with potable water– Reduce water use in agriculture in low technology

environments.

Relevant ESEM Considerations

• Development of water efficient technological options in relevant coupled technologies.– Water efficient agricultural practices to reduce

virtual water in food, fibre, bioenergy• Biotech designed cultivars that use less and lower

quality (e.g., saline) water• Satellite and sensor technologies to reduce direct

demand for agricultural water, and indirect demand for demand for agricultural chemicals, which contain their own embedded water.


– Water efficient energy production• Engineering methods that include reduction in water per

unit energy produced, not just CO2 emissions, as important design consideration.

• Energy efficiency programs that quantify water use, not just CO2 emissions, avoided.

• Consider water quality and quantity impacts in economy- wide energy technology and site choice decisions.

• Encourage stable trade relationships (thus enhancing embedded water trade, especially in food)

Relevant ESEM Considerations• Encourage non-traditional technological evolution

– Factory meat from stem cells– Reduced food waste (= water waste) – therefore

better transportation/storage infrastructures and information systems

• Encourage pricing with distributional equity tools – Market pricing necessary to develop and manage complex

adaptive system information on water– Geographic information needs to be mapped onto complex

system patterns generated by earth systems of many different kinds

Relevant ESEM Considerations• Development of robust cultural options

– At what pricepoint can water consumers be shifted to treated wastewater, in whole or in part?

– At what pricepoint can homeowners in places like Phoenix, Arizona, be encouraged to shift from lawn to xeriscaping?

– At what pricepoint do legal regimes shift to becoming more economically rational?

– Should “water footprint” techniques be used to socially engineer attitudes towards water? Why or why not?

Relevant ESEM Considerations– Are large scale water redistribution projects

culturally acceptable, and if so at what social and environmental cost?

– What distributional equity options are appropriate for what circumstances?

– Does it matter in terms of water availability and price whether water is culturally perceived as a “right” or as a commodity appropriate to private firm provision?

• In either case, should public views be shifted to support more effective provisioning systems, and if so, how?

Relevant ESEM Considerations• Can we develop integrated long term

supply and demand curves that include in their construction:– Perturbations to existing natural regimes

(such as potential climate change effects)– Reasonable estimates as to the pricepoint at

which different technologies will be drawn into the market?

– Pricepoint at which different legal regimes created?


• In addition to foundational supply and demand curves, need to understand and manage:– Transitional paths as new options are

implemented; infrastructure – both built and legal – cannot be constructed instantaneously.


– Flexibility as transitions occur to respond to unanticipated instability in supply, demand, and system function.

– Developing such flexibility will require a more rigorous understanding of technological change with respect not just to water systems, but to coupled natural, built, and human systems.

“He, only, merits freedom and existencewho wins them every day anew.”

(Goethe, 1833, Faust, lines 11,575-76)

BACKUP SLIDES

ESEM Principles

Relevant Earth Systems Engineering and Management Principles

• Only intervene when required and to the extent required (humility in the face of complexity).

• ESEM projects and programs, such as managing hydrologic systems at regional and global scales, are not just technical and scientific in nature, but unavoidably have powerful legal, cultural, ethical, and even religious dimensions. Complex adaptive integrated human/built/natural systems are necessarily involved, and design and management must also integrate across all relevant domains.

• Because ESEM involves such complex, multi-domain issues, the only appropriate governance model under these conditions is one which is democratic, transparent, and accountable. Social engineering by elites is questionable under this principle.


• Major shifts in technologies and technological systems should be evaluated before, rather than after, implementation.

• ESEM initiatives should all be characterized by explicit and transparent objectives or desired performance criteria, with quantitative metrics which permit continuous evaluation of system evolution (and signal when problematic system states may be increasingly likely).

• ESEM projects should be incremental and reversible to the extent possible.


• ESEM should aim for resiliency, not just redundancy, in systems design. Resiliency should be both short term (e.g., a year long drought) and long term (e.g., resilient in the face of unpredictable changes in hydrologic regimes associated with climate change)

• ESEM deals with complex adaptive systems that are inherently unpredictable, and thus of necessity becomes a real time dialog with the relevant systems, rather than a definitive endpoint. This requires development of appropriate institutional capability, with such institutions characterized by a high level of institutional flexibility and adaptability.

• The ESEM environment and the complexity of the systems at issue require explicit mechanisms for assuring continual learning, including ways in which learning by stakeholders can be facilitated.

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