CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 831Sustainable Design and DevelopmentSystems Engineering Methodologies and ApplicationsSustainability and Climate Change Governance

Designing Resilient, Sustainable Systems

Fiksel, Joseph·2003·Environmental Science & Technology
DOI 10.1021/es0344819
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Pursuit of sustainable development requires a systems approach to the design of industrial product and service systems. Although many business enterprises have adopted sustainability goals, the actual development of sustainable systems remains challenging because of the broad range of economic, environmental and social factors that need to be considered across the system life cycle. Traditional systems engineering practices try to anticipate and resist disruptions but may be vulnerable to unforeseen factors. An alternative is to design systems with inherent "resilience" bytaking advantage of fundamental properties such as diversity, efficiency, adaptability, and cohesion. Previous work on sustainable design has focused largely upon ecological efficiency improvements. For example, companies have found that reducing material and energy intensity and converting wastes into valuable secondary products creates value for shareholders as well as for society at large. To encourage broader systems thinking, a design protocol is presented that involves the following steps: identifying system function and boundaries, establishing requirements, selecting appropriate technologies, developing a system design, evaluating anticipated performance, and devising a practical means for system deployment. The approach encourages explicit consideration of resilience in both engineered systems and the larger systems in which they are embedded.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1021/es0344819

Cites

34 of 34 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Sustainability can be viewed as a change process that can be influenced by individuals throughout initiatives by continuing to develop and adapt in response to the needs of the system.

    “This lens allows sustainability to be viewed as a change process that can be influenced by individuals throughout initiatives by continuing to develop and adapt in response to the needs of the system [15–17].”

    From Navigating the sustainability landscape: a systematic review of sustainability approaches in healthcare (2018) · cites this paper as [17]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Fiksel, J.
Affiliations
Eco-Nomics LLC, 2351 Kensington Drive, Columbus, Ohio 43221
Corresponding author
Fiksel, Joseph
ORCID
Fiksel, Joseph
Venue
Environmental Science & Technology
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Published
2003-11-04
Volume
37
Issue
23
Pages
5330-5339
ISSN
  • 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
  • 1520-5851
DOI
10.1021/es0344819
OpenAlex
W2022159321
Cited by
831
References
34
Citations by year
2026: 28 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 55 · 2023: 47 · 2022: 61 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 63 · 2019: 61 · 2018: 58 · 2017: 46 · 2016: 56 · 2015: 50 · 2014: 43 · 2013: 36 · 2012: 23
FWCI
1.36
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Environmental Science & Technology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Building and Construction › Sustainable Design and Development
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Control and Systems Engineering › Systems Engineering Methodologies and Applications
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
Keywords
sustainable design, resilience engineering, systems engineering, system life cycle, design protocols, diversity, adaptability, eco-efficiency, waste valorization, sustainability goals, system deployment
MeSH terms
Commerce, Conservation of Energy Resources, Engineering, Industry, Organizational Innovation, Social Conditions, Systems Analysis

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review