Lecture nu 10 Presented by: Dr: Zeinab Osman Saeed

 is the interdisciplinary part of science, dealing with analysis of sets of interacting entities, the systems, often prior to their automation as computer systems, and the interactions within those systems. It is also "an explicit formal inquiry carried out to help someone, referred to as the decision maker, identify a better course of action and make a better decision than he might have otherwise made."interdisciplinarysciencesystems

 System is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole. entities  Most systems share common characteristics, including:  Systems have structure, defined by parts and their composition;structure  Systems have behavior, which involves inputs, processing and outputs of material, energy or information;behavior  Systems have interconnectivity: the various parts of a system have functional as well as structural relationships between each other.interconnectivity

 Systems theory views the world as a complex system of interconnected parts. We scope a system by defining its boundary; this means choosing which entities are inside the system and which are outside - part of the environment. We then make simplified representations (models) of the system in order to understand it and to predict or impact its future behavior. These models may define the structure and/or the behavior of the system. Systems theoryboundaryenvironmentmodelsstructurebehavior

 EIA has been defined broadly as an investigation of impacts on environment and human wellbeing resulting from policies and legislative proposals and more narrow as a means of assessing environmental effects of a project. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe has a short and easy definition: “an assessment of a planned activity on the environment”

 *Scoping  *Description of project and alternatives  *Description of environmental baseline  *Identification of key impact  *Prediction of impacts  *Evaluation of significance of impacts  *Identification of mitigation measures

 *Presentation of EIA document  *Review of document  *Decision-making  Monitoring  *Audit of predictions and mitigation measures

 Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) can be seen as an improvement of and a complement to the EIA, which is mainly performed on project level. As it often proved unsatisfactory to achieve changes in basic questions leading to considerable environmental improvements at the stage where EIA is applied, there was a need for a tool usable earlier in the decision-making process.

 SEA is the environmental assessment of a strategic action, and strategic actions are defined as policies, plans and programmes (PPP). Other, less common international descriptions of this kind of method are policy environmental assessment, sectoral environmental assessment, programmatic environmental assessment

 Setting objectives and targets of PPP.  Identifying alternative PPPs  Describing the PPP  Scoping.  Establishing environmental indicators  Describing the baseline environment.  Predicting impacts  Evaluating impacts and comparing alternatives  Mitigation.  Monitoring.

 LCA is in theory covering potential environmental impacts of a product/service during its entire lifetime, “from cradle to grave”. This includes extraction of raw material, energy use and waste release, as well as all associated transports. Obviously this is a rather tough assignment, which is often reduced to a more manageable study. It is of great importance that 17 boundaries set around the system is transparently stated in the document produced. If some flows are not followed all the way to their origin or “grave” this must also be clearly stated.

 PA is based on institutional economics and general systems theory.Interdisciplinarity is central in the analysis looking at environmental, economical and social aspects, which leads to the probable conclusion that more then one person should be assigned for an analysis of this kind

 The positional analysis aims to clarify the decision making process, to make visible conflicts of different interests and to openly discuss different valuational standpoints.

 It is a method trying to estimate the total impact of a project on society by calculating social costs and benefits. Environmental impacts are included by valuation of these, converting them into monetary terms.

 An assumption is that ”a ’better’ allocation of resources is one that meets people’s preferences”. An obvious difficulty here is how to define ”people’s preferences”, which of course are not homogenous. CBA measures preferences as ”willingness to pay” (WTP) for something (or, less common, to avoid something) and also ”willingness to accept” (WTA) compensation for loss of welfare. There are other ways to value environmental impacts in monetary terms as well, but ”willingness to pay” is the most used and well developed method.

 Identification of problem and alternative solutions. Identification of social costs and benefits for each alternative Valuation of costs and benefits (usually in monetary terms). Allocation of costs and benefits over the project time. Calculation of net present value (NPV) as described above. Ranking alternatives by NPV. Sensitivity analysis should be performed. Presenting recommendation.

 In a MIPS study all the material used/affected to produce a defined service or function is added together. Inputs are accounted for from both before and after the service-life phase, which means inputs to manufacturing, use, repair, recycling and disposal as well as infrastructure are added (waste and emissions are not directly considered, but generally reducing total inputs simultaneously reduces the outputs.

 The ecological footprint introduces a way of looking at the total area needed to continuously support a certain population or economy. A city does not only occupy the actual ground that is covered by buildings and infrastructure. It also needs sea area (for fishing, denitrification of sewage water, etc.), forests to assimilate CO2 released from combustion of fossil fuels and to produce wood products, etc.; agricultural land for food; and much more which is often not included in our usual idea of a city

Area appropriated is divided in categories of ecologically productive sectors, they are usually the following. Fossil energy land,  Arable land, producing crops (the ecologically most productive areas) Pasture, grazing land Forest, plantations or natural forests that may yield timber products and also provide many other ecological services. Built-up areas used for human settlements, roads, etc. Sea, where surface area determines the productivity of the sea.

 Estimate an average person’s annual consumption of particular items. When an economy is studied, production-, import – and export figures can be used. Estimate the land area needed per capita for the production of each major consumption item. Dividing average annual consumption of the item by the average annual productivity or yield, the yield can be world average or local. When several inputs are considered areas are estimated separately for each input. The areas of the items are added for one person (not adding overlapping areas). The footprint of the defined population is calculated from the per capita value.