Topic outline

  • General

    Thursday 18th February: 

    Today, Deniz Koca from Lund University will again be talking about systems modeling! 

    I hope you will all be able to join the class, beginning at 12:15! To join, please follow the instructions below. 

    Kind regards,

    Mark

    Join Zoom Meeting: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/65138831040


    Changes in the 2021 course due to Covid-19

    Regrettably, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions on teaching activities, the 2021 edition of this course will be held entirely online. All lectures and other sessions will be organized via Zoom or other appropriate platforms. 

    I hope that despite these restrictions, you will find the course interesting and informative and I look forward to "meeting" you virtually in January!     


    About the course

    As the song by Madonna goes, we are “living in a material world” – literally! Our culture and economy is intimately linked to the transformation of materials into products for our use – for construction, for transportation and for the host of other artefacts deemed necessary by current society. With our use of raw materials, and the energy used in their transformation, we are now irrevocably changing our environment, to such an extent that a new geological epoch has been espoused – the Anthropocene.

    Historically, we learned to use the natural materials around us, or those derived from the animals hunted for food - stone, wood, vegetable fibers, leather, bone, horn, sinew etc. Later, we learned to produce metals from ores, and in the past century or so to synthesize polymers and resins from fossil oil. Through the scientific study of materials, we have become adept at creating new materials with radically new properties – properties never before seen, nor even dreamed of.

    Despite our undoubted ingenuity at developing new materials and producing new products from them, we still take little account of the impact that our materials’ use has on the environment and, in many cases, on our fellow humans. This paradigm needs to change. Recognizing this, new policy, at national and EU level has been developed, embodied in the concepts of the Circular Economy and the Bioeconomy, the aim of which is to change the current situation to a (more) sustainable use of materials. Even with these intentions, a gulf remains between the status quo and a sustainable materials economy.

    In this course, we will explore the nexus between materials and sustainability, adopting a systems thinking approach to materials cycles.  We will look at how the use of material and the choices we make in their selection, and the design of materials and products, affect sustainability. We will look at how we can improve resource efficiency and will explore the limits to this. We will look at material flows and the stakeholders involved in often highly complex value chains.

    Draft schedule:

    Week #

    Date

    Topic

    Teacher

    2

    11.1

    Introduction: Living in the material world

    Mark

    14.1

    Materials and their properties

    Mark

    3

    18.1

    Materials, flows and systems

    Mark

    21.1

    Impacts and strategies

    Mark

    4

    25.1

    Resource efficiency & circular economy

    Mark

    28.1

    Materials and the bioeconomy

    Mark

    5

    1.2

    Life cycle thinking

    Ashraful Alam, Aalto University

    4.2

    Life cycle analysis

    Ashraful Alam, Aalto University

    6

    8.2

    The ‘S’ Word

    Callum Hill, JCH Industrial

    11.2

    Thermodynamics

    Callum Hill, JCH Industrial

    7

    15.2

    Materials and systems thinking

    Deniz Koca, Lund University

    18.2

    Systems modelling

    Deniz Koca, Lund University