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CONSTRUCTING A GENERAL SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS THEORY
Citation:
Cabezas*, H C. AND B. D. Fath**. CONSTRUCTING A GENERAL SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS THEORY. Presented at Fourth Conference Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction, Florence, Italy, 5/20-23/2001.
Description:
Sustainability attracts enormous interest in the minds of the public and the scientific and engineering community because it holds the promise of a long-tem solution to environmental problems. Sustainability, however, is mathematically loosely defined. There is no widely accepted, precise, and testable definition of Sustainability, and there is no general theory of the subject. This is a problem because without guidance from mathematical definitions, a general theory, and testable hypothesis, it is virtually impossible to apply the scientific method to make progress. To address this question, a multidisciplinary group has been formed at the USEPA's NRMRL. The objective of this paper, based on the group's work, is to briefly summarize sustainability work, and to present a definition of Sustainability and elements of a general Sustainable Systems Theory. The definition and the theory draw on Information Theory and the concept of Fisher Information. The definition states the Fisher Information decreases over time in unsustainable systems, and that Fisher Information does not decrease over time in sustainable systems. Application of the theory will be shown for a ten-compartment closed food web. Future research directions will be discussed.