Come join us for our Sustainable Systems Forum series. The SS Forum is intended to explore topics of interest to those involved in the Sustainable Systems field of study, but all are welcome to attend these events. Speakers will present on topics in sustainability with opportunities for the audience to engage in the discussion.

SPEAKER: Mikhail (Mike) Chester, Assistant Professor at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment and an Affiliate Faculty in the School of Sustainability

ABSTRACT:
With increasing populations, remote resource and waste networks, and complex hard and soft infrastructure systems, sustainability policies often target cities as catalyzing agents for regional environmental change. The predominant approach for analyzing the sustainability of cities, Urban Metabolism, has provided value in understanding how resources are used, transformed, accumulated, and discharged, but does not provide a rigorous framework for understanding human health, environmental impacts, or social equity outcomes. This talk will present several new approaches for advancing urban sustainability assessment. These approaches use life-cycle assessment to assess infrastructure systems as enablers of emergent behaviors that are sustainable or unsustainable. Research projects from Los Angeles and Phoenix will be presented and the approaches will show the importance of understanding infrastructure interdependencies and high-resolution analyses that allows for meaningful socio-demographic assessment. The projects will highlight how bottom-up systems-oriented energy and environmental assessments can be positioned to assist urban sustainability policy and decision makers.