Preliminary empirical research conducted by the leading author has shown that design students using biological analogies, or models across different contexts, often misinterpreted these, intentionally or unintentionally, during design. By copying shape or form without integrating the main function of the mimicked biological model, students failed to consider the process or system directing that function when attempting to solve the design need. This article considers the first step in the development of an applicable educational model using distant analogies from nature, by means of biomimicry thinking methodology. The analysis examines results from a base-line exercise taken by students in the Minor Design with Nature during the Spring semester of Industrial Design Engineering at The Hague University of Applied Sciences in 2019, verifying that students without biomimicry training use this hollow approach automatically. This research confirms the gap between where students are at the beginning of the semester and where they need to be as expert sustainable designers when they graduate. These findings provide a starting point for future interventions in biomimicry workshops to improve systematic design thinking through structural and scientifically based iterations of analogical reasoning.

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The challenge of sustainable development requires cities to aim for drastic improvements in the systems that support its vital functions. Innovating these systems can be extremely hard, and might take lots of time. A transparent and democratic strategy is important to guarantee support for change. Such a process should aim at developing consensus regarding a basic vision to guide the process of systems change. This paper sketches future options for the development of sanitation- and urban drainage systems in industrialized economies. It will provide an analysis of relevant trends for sewage system innovation. In history, sewage systems have emerged from urban sewage and precipitation removal systems, to urban sewage and precipitation removal and cleaning systems. The challenge for the future is recovering energy and resources from sewage systems while maintaining/improving its sanitary service and lowering its emissions.

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Innovations are required in urban infrastructures due to the pressing needs for mitigating climate change and prevent resource depletion. In order to address the slow pace of innovation in urban systems, this paper analyses factors involved in attempts to introduce novel sanitary systems. Today new requirements are important: sanitary systems should have an optimal energy/climate performance, with recovery of resources, and with fewer emissions. Anaerobic digestion has been suggested as an alternative to current aerobic waste water treatment processes. This paper presents an overview of attempts to introduce novel anaerobic sanitation systems for domestic sanitation. The paper identifies main factors that contributed to a premature termination of such attempts. Especially smaller scale anaerobic sanitation systems will probably not be able to compete economically with traditional sewage treatment. However, anaerobic treatment has various advantages for mitigating climate change, removing persistent chemicals, and for the transition to a circular economy. The paper concludes that loss avoidance, both in the sewage system and in the waste water treatment plants, should play a key role in determining experiments that could lead to a transition in sanitation.

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Global society is confronted with various challenges: climate change should be mitigated, and society should adapt to the impacts of climate change, resources will become scarcer and hence resources should be used more efficiently and recovered after use, the growing world population and its growing wealth create unprecedented emissions of pollutants, threatening public health, wildlife and biodiversity. This paper provides an overview of the challenges and risks for sewage systems, next to some opportunities and chances that these developments pose. Some of the challenges are emerging from climate change and resource scarcity, others come from the challenges emerging from stricter regulation of emissions. It also presents risks and threats from within the system, next to external influences which may affect the surroundings of the sewage systems. It finally reflects on barriers to respond to these challenges.

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Duurzame ontwikkeling in het ingenieursonderwijs blijkt geen snelle conflictloze strategie voor verduurzaming. Met als gevolg dat het breder leren denken van de ingenieur in opleiding nog in de kinderschoenen staat.@en

The ‘Grand Challenges’ of our times, like climate change, resource depletion, global inequity and the destruction of wildlife and biodiversity can only be addressed by innovating cities. This paper will analyse major options for innovating cities, main barriers for these innovations that are rooted in the paradigms of the experts running urban systems and educational reforms that might contribute overcoming these barriers. @en

In the current discourses on sustainable development, one can discern two main intellectual cultures: an analytic one focusing on measuring problems and prioritizing measures, (Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Mass Flow Analysis (MFA), etc.) and; a policy/management one, focusing on long term change, change incentives, and stakeholder management (Transitions/niches, Environmental economy, Cleaner production).These cultures do not often interact and interactions are often negative. However, both cultures are required to work towards sustainability solutions: problems should be thoroughly identified and quantified, options for large change should be guideposts for action, and incentives should be created, stakeholders should be enabled to participate and their values and interests should be included in the change process. The paper deals especially with engineering education. Successful technological change processes should be supported by engineers who have acquired strategic competences. An important barrier towards training academics with these competences is the strong disciplinarism of higher education. Raising engineering students in strong disciplinary paradigms is probably responsible for their diminishing public engagement over the course of their studies. Strategic competences are crucial to keep students engaged and train them to implement long term sustainable solutions.

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The metabolic flows of cities have to be reduced. Thus far, efforts have been mainly directed to providing the city with renewable resources, diminish resource consumption, and/or reuse the wastes and emissions. The dense fabric of urban infrastructures does not only provide a high level of services. By the proximity of infrastructures symbiosis might be created between them. This urban symbiosis might lead to a considerable reduction of resource consumption and/or carbon- and other emissions of all systems involved. However, developing symbiosis between urban infrastructures implies that the owners/operators of the infrastructures are able to align their interests too. This might be problematic as infrastructure operators developed a culture of autonomy. Moreover, they are nowadays owned by various public and private entities that pursue different agendas. The top down planning model of infrastructures appears to be at the end of its life cycle; citizens, businesses and NGO’s request participation. Early participation, using future methods and workshops might contribute to align actors for promising urban symbiosis options. The paper analyses barriers in developing urban symbiosis and sketches strategies how to deal with them. It uses the example of urban waste water systems to sketch strategies to develop symbiosis between urban infrastructures. @en

Urban symbiosis is a strategy to create a more efficient metabolism of cities. However, urban symbiosis requires the integration of different systems, which is hard to achieve. Actors involved in existing systems can hardly develop ‘the bridges’ that are required to connect the thus far unrelated worlds of pre-existing systems. This paper analyses two cases of urban symbiosis and focusses on the process of building new actor networks. Urban symbiosis projects are generally complex and involve various stakeholders. The authors conclude that the introduction of additional actors or an additional institutional framework might be an effective means to create bridges between actors that could facilitate a more efficient metabolism of cities.@en

The state of technology is often used to characterise societies: the names of Stone-, Bronze-and Iron Age reflect this. The twentieth century has been called the “Automobile Age” (Flink, 1990), and our own time is often referred to as the “Information age” (Castells, 1997). Technology appears as a major determinant of society. This suggests that technical change has more far-reaching consequences than just replacing a device with something better: technological change creates structural change in society, which leads to new opportunities for some and new threats to others. Impacts of new technology are often unforeseen. At the moment of introduction, new technologies are generally just perceived as replacements of inferior predecessors. Impacts that a technology might have for society at large, as well as impacts that affect specific groups in society often come over time and unnoticed. An early awareness of these impacts might prevent later problems. However, it is not only relevant to assess impacts of new technology; it might be as important to translate societal problems into challenges for technological innovation, and involve stakeholders in the technological innovation process to create opportunities to mold innovations to their needs. The “fit” between technology supply and societal demand for new technology could be improved and social resistance might be prevented. Technology Assessment (TA) aims at societally optimizing the process of technological change. This chapter will first examine how various debates on technologies gradually broke the grounds for Technology Assessment in the 1970s (the second section of this chapter). Afterwards, Technology Impact Assessment is discussed, which aims at systematically analyzing the impacts of new technologies (the third section). These impact studies signaled problems, but were insufficient to guide developments toward solutions. Stakeholder involvement might both lead to adjustments of a technology and to more stakeholder appreciation of the technology. Some new technologies are important for everybody, as they relate to core human values. Especially in those cases it is very important to involve the general public in the debates. Stimulated public debates on emerging technologies are covered in the fourth section. Improving the fit between emerging technologies and the (future) stakeholders, called Constructive Technology Assessment, requires imagination and analysis as it is about a “world coming into being” and is covered in the fifth section.@en