Most sustainability problems are system problems (for example, transport or food consumption) and almost insoluble without completely new ways of thinking. To address sustainability issues, which in broad terms are the key issues of our times, designers need to be able to understand design problems in context, envisage and describe better future systems and then design products that could be part of a new improved system.

This resource has been developed at the University of Leeds as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering supported scheme of Visiting Professors in Engineering Design for Sustainable Development and is intended for teachers, tutors, lecturers, academics and researchers. A major aim of the Royal Academy of Engineering scheme is to create transferable case studies.

The resource contains materials needed to deliver and assess a sustainable design project where students research a problem area, envision a future in the problem domain, define a brief for a product that could be part of that future and design a product that responds to the brief. It has been developed as a 100 study-hour project as part of the University of Leeds undergraduate programme in Product Design.

[Description and screenshot taken from the University of Leeds' website for this resource. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 2.0 Licence.]

The course focuses on the use of mathematical models to assess interactions between humans and the natural environment. By the end of the course, students should be able to formulate and use mathematical models to assess human impacts on the environment and assess the economic value of natural resources.
This course provides a review of physical, chemical, ecological, and economic principles used to examine interactions between humans and the natural environment. Mass balance concepts are applied to ecology, chemical kinetics, hydrology, and transportation; energy balance concepts are applied to building design, ecology, and climate change; and economic and life cycle concepts are applied to resource evaluation and engineering design. Numerical models are used to integrate concepts and to assess environmental impacts of human activities. Problem sets involve development of MATLAB® models for particular engineering applications. Some experience with computer programming is helpful but not essential.

[Description and screenshot taken from MIT OCW page for this course. (c) MIT used under the terms of their CC-NC-SA license.]

The course considers the growing popularity of sustainability and its implications for the practice of engineering, particularly for the built environment. Two particular methodologies are featured: life cycle assessment (LCA) and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). The LCA methodology is a rigorous, quantitative approach to environmental impact evaluation that tallies the impacts of products throughout their lifetimes; it has been used successfully in a number of industries (particularly packaging and manufacturing) but less frequently in the built environment. The LEED rating system awards points to projects for achieving specific goals considered relevant to sustainable design, and rates built projects according to the total number of points achieved. The fundamentals of each approach will be presented. Specific topics covered include water and wastewater management, energy use, material selection, and construction.

[Description and screenshot taken from MIT OCW page for this course. (c) MIT used under the terms of their CC-NC-SA license.]