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University of Engineering and Techonology, Mardan: Entrepreneurship Assignment # 4

The document discusses sustainable engineering principles and their importance in technology development and scale-up. It outlines that sustainable engineering should consider environmental, social, and economic values to generate balanced solutions. Traditional engineering focuses on technical issues and immediate problems, while sustainable engineering considers the whole system, non-technical issues, and solving problems for infinite future. A framework is presented that classifies sustainable engineering principles based on their relationship to environmental, social, and economic criteria. The principles aim to benefit stakeholders in all three areas.

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Sanam Khan
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37 views4 pages

University of Engineering and Techonology, Mardan: Entrepreneurship Assignment # 4

The document discusses sustainable engineering principles and their importance in technology development and scale-up. It outlines that sustainable engineering should consider environmental, social, and economic values to generate balanced solutions. Traditional engineering focuses on technical issues and immediate problems, while sustainable engineering considers the whole system, non-technical issues, and solving problems for infinite future. A framework is presented that classifies sustainable engineering principles based on their relationship to environmental, social, and economic criteria. The principles aim to benefit stakeholders in all three areas.

Uploaded by

Sanam Khan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING AND

TECHONOLOGY, MARDAN

ENTREPRENEURSHIP ASSIGNMENT # 4

SUBMITTED BY:
MUHAMMAD HAMZA
(17MDSWE0692)

SUBMITTED TO:
ENGR SHAHARYAR
Impact of a sustainable engineering solution in societal and
environmental context

Sustainable engineering should be based on principles that support sustainable development, as


defined in the upper sections of this lesson. Engineering forms an interface between the design (i.e.,
the idea how to provide a sustainable solution to a technical problem) and implementation and
production. In case of technology development, engineering phase is linked to almost every level of
technology readiness spectrum. Sustainable engineering principles should be contemplated and
applied early to ensure that technology development and scale-up follow the environmentally benign
route. It will be hard to turn back to redo and redesign things from later stages! In that sense, the
sustainable engineering principles should be taken into account in decision making for both research
and industrial projects as well as in policy making and decisions regarding funding of technological
research.
There have been multiple attempts by academic and industrial institutions to formulate sustainable
engineering principles. All of them fall within the triangle with Environmental, Social, and Economic
values as cornerstones. The overarching goal is to generate a balanced solution to any engineering
problem. If an engineering project benefits one of these three aspects but ignores the others, we
have a lopsided system which creates tension, instability, and new problems in the long run.
Here are some of the aspects that differentiate the traditional and sustainable approaches in
engineering:

Sustainability Approaches in Engineering


Traditional Engineering Sustainable Engineering
Considers the whole system in which the object or
Considers the object or process process will be used
Considers both technical and non-technical issues
Focuses on technical issues synergistically
Strives to solve the problem for infinite future
Solves the immediate problem
(forever?)
Considers the local context Considers the global context
Assumes others will deal with political, Acknowledges the need to interact the experts in ethical, and
societal issues other disciplines related to the problem

The diagram in Figure 1 presents a consolidated framework for sustainable engineering principles,
Figure 1 Classification of sustainable engineering principles versus environmental, social, and
economic criteria. Click on image to see a full version.

Figure 1 lists the various principles of sustainable engineering versus environmental, social, and
economic poles. Some of these principles clearly gravitate towards one of the corners of this triangle
and thus address particularly societal, environmental, or economic concern. But some others, which
are placed along the sides of the triangle, have connections to two of the poles of the diagram and
address both societal and economic, or both economic and environmental concerns in some
proportion. Those principles placed in the center of the diagram combine all three aspects of
sustainability to a certain degree and hence their implementation would benefit all societal,
environmental, and economic stakeholders. We should not consider this collection of principles set in
stone. Many sources and organizations build on the existing documents and provide their own
visions. I invite you to reflect on this diagram and provide your comments for making it more
complete and more concrete for our future consideration.
These principles can be viewed as guidelines for a specific engineering project. We are going to look at
a specific example where the engineering solution was able to address the need and benefit
sustainability, not sacrificing one for the other.

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