Sustainable manufacturing and biomimicry
The concept here is to develop a major, innovative and interdisciplinary, line of research under the generic heading of Sustainable Manufacturing Systems. This theme would represent a synthesis of three, seemingly disparate, lines of investigations where CIAM already has an established track record:
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Effect of "singular" perturbations on solutions to operations research and optimization problems
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Systems with multiple time scales
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Environmental Modelling
With the ultimate goal of shedding light on certain "big questions" of sustainable development in addition to progressing the understanding of each of these topics.
The concept underlying the above synthesis aim is contained in the following, somewhat provocative, quotation from R. Anderson's motivational book attempting to describe a sustainable enterprise :
Someone has said "A computer, that's mundane, but a tree, that's technology!" A tree operates on solar energy and lifts water in ways that seem to defy the laws of physics. When we understand how a whole forest works, and apply its myriad symbiotic relationships analogously to the design of industrial systems, we'll be on the right track.
The goal is to attempt to convert the above "science fiction" to science fact by connecting environmental topics with operations research via an idea that an ecosystem such as a forest is "successful" (that is, sustainable) in the ecological sense because:
(i) it is a diverse dynamical system where the time scales of certain variables (life cycles of various species of flora and fauna) are in a sense optimally synchronized with the time scales of other variables (eg. the decay of one type of plant becomes a food source for another) resulting in a system that is virtually free of waste, and
(ii) it is a system that is robust under perturbations in the sense that it recovers from storms, flooding, fires etc.
Important
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There is potential to link this research line with interests of people in TRC (e.g., S. Pullen) and the Australian branch of Interface. Indeed, an ARC Linkage proposal on product stewardship involving this company and a branch of SA govt. is being finalised this week.
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There is clearly potential to involve other colleagues from UniSA's engineering schools.
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Finally, there is some hope of eventually obtaining more significant funding from Andersons US based organization.