SUPPORTING ENVIRONMENTALLY-BENIGN DESIGN - ELUCIDATING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT PROPAGATION IN CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PHASE BY SAPPHIRE MODEL OF CAUSALITY
Year: 2015
Editor: Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Gaetano Cascini, Marco Cantamessa, Dorian Marjanovic, Monica Bordegoni
Author: Acharya, Shakuntala; Chakrabarti, Amaresh
Series: ICED
Institution: Indian Institute of Science, India
Section: Design for Life
Page(s): 139-150
ISBN: 978-1-904670-64-3
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
Conceptual Design Phase is the most critical for design decisions and their impact on the Environment. It is also a phase of many ‘unknowns’ making it flexible and allowing exploration of many solutions. Thus, it is a challenge to determine the most Environmentally-benign Solution or Concept to be translated in to a ‘good’ product. The SAPPhIRE Model captures the various levels of abstractions present in Conceptual Design by Outcomes and defines a Solution-variant as a set of verifiable and quantifiable Outcomes. The Causality explains the propagation of Environmental Impact across Outcomes at varying levels of abstraction, suggesting that the Environmental Impact of an Outcome at a certain level can be represented as a collation of Environmental Impact information of all the Outcomes at each of its subsequent lower levels of abstraction. Thus a ball-park impact value can be associated with the higher-levels of abstraction, thereby supporting design decisions taken earlier on in Conceptual Design directing towards Environmentally-benign Design.
Keywords: Conceptual Design, Decision Making, Early Design Phases, Environmentally-Benign Design, Sapphire Model Of Causality