With population growth, urbanization, and rapidly changing environments, challenges to meeting basic human and societal needs are becoming increasingly complex. In many cases, the 20<sup>th</sup> century model of technologies and infrastructure systems – often characterized by robust but inflexible components that are energy- and chemical-intensive – is no longer viable. Moving beyond maximizing efficiencies and minimizing cost, industries are seeking technological solutions that will meet societal needs in a way that is financially viable while supporting the pursuit of broader goals for sustainability (e.g., resource circularity, carbon neutrality, equity). This transition has become a catalyst for research and development, but a critical challenge to achieving rapid and transformative innovations has been the expansive landscape of technology development pathways and the lack of a transparent and consistent framework to target investment.<br/><br/>This presentation will introduce a standardized process – Quantitative Sustainable Design (QSD) – to identify, prioritize, and pursue opportunities for innovation to advance technologies and infrastructure systems. Leveraging examples related to bioproducts (lactic acid from lignocellulosic biomass) and resource recovery sanitation (nutrient and energy recovery in resource-limited communities), we will walk through the QSD process, including (i) establishing the simulation space, (ii) modeling the construction, operation, and maintenance of technologies under uncertainty, and (iii) tracking progress toward sustainability goals across multiple dimensions of sustainability (e.g., economic, environmental, social, health). We will then demonstrate how the outcomes from this analysis can be used to prioritize research, development, and deployment of technologies. Ultimately, the results of QSD analyses can be leveraged to elucidate drivers of system outcomes, identify performance gaps, evaluate tradeoffs and optimize across alternatives, and assess context-specific implications of technology advancement and deployment. It is our hope that this presentation will make the process of QSD more accessible to researchers and technology developers across disciplines.

Quantitative sustainable design (QSD): A methodology for the prioritization of technology research, development, and deployment

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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