From a conventional to a sustainable engineering design process: different shades of sustainability

This paper argues that the challenge of putting development on a sustainable trajectory concerns every sector, including engineering, and that conventional engineering design processes need to be modified so engineers can address sustainability issues directly. The authors review both conventional and existing sustainable design processes to identify the major differences between them, and find that several tasks considered important by sustainability science are missing from the sustainable design processes proposed so far. Combining these missing tasks with the useful contributions of the reviewed processes, they propose a new integrated sustainable engineering design process (ISEDP). Credits: Gagnon, B., Leduc, R., & Savard, L. (2012). From a conventional to a sustainable engineering design process: different shades of sustainability. Journal of Engineering Design, 23(1), 1-23. http://doi.org/10.1080/09544828.2010.516246