A profile on R&D on sustainable technology [Alan Porter, ISSS 1998 Plenary Session, July 22/98]

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

Alan Porter, former editor of journal with Hal Linstone

• On the faculty of Georgia Tech

Background: UCLA psychology which puts into industrial psych and public policy.

Interested in technological forecast and assessment: working on a Society for Technology Assessment.

• Emerging area: SEA, Strategic Environmental Assessment

• Figure out the focus: Using an empirical approach, rather than theoretical or mathematical
• Timing: Will aim for 30 minutes, because forgot a power cord for Powerpoint presentation

• Instead of trying to define sustainable technology (as Ken Bailey did), have done a literature search on the terms
• Who's publishing what, on Engineering Index, 1986-1998, 3 million articles
• Will try to forecast
• Look at new method: bibliometrics, counting.

• 2730 articles, in 7 different areas
• Sustainable technology 267
• Waste minimization 328
• Life cycle production processes 838
• Production reuse 135
• Sustainable design
• Remanufacturing
• Production recycling 1207

• At Georgia Tech, call this technology opportunity analysis
• Written software to do basic counts, as well as co-occurences (i.e. within a few words of each other).

• George Tech 20, IBM 20, ...

• Spread atypical for literature: American emphasis right now, originally expected European leadership (which must be gone by now).

• 1.74 authors per paper, which means that these aren't massive projects, might have expected more on cross-disciplinary

• Means production reuse will be adopted more quickly.

• Cumulative fits a Gompertz-style curve: an area that is still growing.

• Environmental protection: median rank keyword for 7 areas -- 2nd
• Environmental impact -- ranks 3rd
• Recycle -- ranks 4th
• Product design -- ranks 7ths
• Waste $ -- splatters out, few interests
• Cost $ -- ranks 13ths, a measure of how it will be put into society.

• Principal component analysis of terms, which produces clusters.
• Some major industry areas: electronic products (to printed circuit manufacturing, metal waste) and automotive (to plastics and solid waste)
• Industries most concerned with research.
• Some success stories of automotive manufacturing looking at electronic products industries
• Information technology is large: computer aided software, modeling.
• Environment clustered with waste.

• Life cycle production concerns started low, and grow rapidly, from 10 articles per year to 150 over 10 years.

• There are a number of related research areas.
• Hot research area.
• U.S. is the place to be.
• Balance between industry, academia and government.
• Design processes are quite important.
• Handling of waste, processes and costs issues are prominent.