Transition engineering

Abstract: PROBLEM—Provision of electric services in remote communities operating a subsistence economy has been challenging both for policy-makers and engineers. The value of electricity services and the choice structures in remote economies are not well understood. NEED—There are several technical, economic, and environmental challenges to the top-down approach of electrification. There is a need for methods that can integrate multiple dimensions of social development that can fit the environmental, economic, and technical aspects of community development. APPROACH—To create a system that best fits with the rural community, a bottom-up approach is recommended; this depends on community participation to provide a coherent from-the-ground-up decision-making framework for rural residents, engineers, and policy-makers. OUTCOMES—We have developed a from-the-ground-up community participation approach to power system design, where the community activity system is studied before investigating energy development options and assessing the risks and benefits from the perspective of the people in the community. We present the approach called Community Access Resource for Electricity Sustainability (CARES), with its foundation in action research methodology to explore the values in the community, the valued electricity services (VES) that the community feel they need, and the way the community adopts the different value types through problem-solving. We conclude that the CARES approach provides rural residents, engineers, and policy-makers with a new bottom-up approach to rural electrification in remote economies. IMPLICATIONS—The implications of this design calls for designers to extend their workspace beyond the design office and to facilitate with remote communities in devising solutions that best fit their needs. ORIGINALITY—Original contributions are the identification of the different value types and VES from-the-ground-up, and the integration of these into a gamified, interactive, and virtual-reality setting for participants to play through and discuss major consequences from which prudent decisions for development can be made. Additionally, we have proposed a new cost index for the feasibility assessment of rural electrification projects.

Abstract: To solve the problems of upgrading existing systems and processes in various industries from concept and design to installation and startup, methods have been developed and techniques created to minimize the interruptions, outages and downtime associated with these upgrades. In some cases, no outages are experienced or needed because of these transition engineering techniques. Through the use of disciplined project management and technical expertise, transition goals are met at minimum of cost and time. These methods and techniques have successfully been applied in industries such as metal processing, petroleum production and data centers. Significant economic benefits are obtained with unique technical management techniques that include preplanning, proper scheduling, synchronized phasing-in of critical equipment, and optimum interfacing. Above all, it has been learned that successful installation of hardware and software in an existing system can only be accomplished with "humanware" involving the customer along with the supplier.

Abstract: This paper puts forward a simple idea describing the time, space and relationship scales of survival. The proposed survival spectrum concept represents a new way to think about sustainability that has clear implications for influencing engineering projects in all fields. The argument for the survival spectrum is developed sequentially, building on theory, definition, examples and history. The key idea is that sustainability can be effectively addressed by emergence of a new field, Transition Engineering. This is a parallel of safety engineering but with longer time scale, broader space scale, and more complex relationship scale. The past 100-year development of safety engineering is examined as a model for development of sustainability risk management and mitigation. The conclusion is that the new field, Transition Engineering, will emerge as the way our society will realize reduction in fossil fuel use and reduction in the detrimental social and environmental impacts of industrialization.