The reduced environmental footprint of bicycle sharing systems (BSS) is one of the reasons for their rapid growth in popularity. BSS have evolved technologically, transitioning from smart dock systems to smart bicycle systems, and it is not clear if the increased use of electronics in BSS results in a net environmental benefit. This article provides an evaluation of the impact of incorporating additional technology into BSS and uses that analysis as guidance for future BSS development. By comparing the impacts of a private bicycle, a smart dock BSS, and smart bike BSS using a life cycle assessment (LCA), this work reveals breakeven points and tradeoffs between the technologies. This study is also the first published empirical LCA of a smart bike known to the authors. In the production phase, smart bikes generate approximately three times the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to the smart dock bikes per kilometer ridden over the lifetime, and when considering the endpoint categories of human health, ecosystem, and resources, smart bikes have approximately 2.7 times the environmental impact. The results suggest that shifting from smart dock to smart bike requires an increase in ridership by a factor of 1.8 to overcome the increased environmental impact based on the GHG emissions. We find that smart docks become preferable at a population density between 1,030 residents/km2 (in a bike friendly city) and 3,100 residents/km2 (in a city that is less likely to bike).
Networking complex sociotechnical systems into larger Systems of Systems (SoS) typically results in improved performance characteristics including sustainability, efficiency, and productivity. The response, or lack thereof, of many SoS to unexpected constituent system failures undermines their effectiveness in many cases. SoS performance after faults can be improved by improving the SoS's hard (physical design) or soft (human intervention) resilience. The effectiveness of these approaches is limited due to the cost and level of human response increasing non-linearly with SoS Scale. These limitations require a novel design approach to improve SoS resilience. We hypothesize that biologically inspired network design can improve SoS resilience. To illustrate this, a systems dynamics model of a Forestry Industry is presented and an optimization search over potential hard and soft resilience approaches is compared to a biologically inspired network improvement. SoS resilience is measured through the newly developed System of System Resilience Measurement (SoSRM). Our first result provides evidence that biologically inspired network design provides an approach to increase SoS resilience beyond hard and soft resilience improvements alone. Secondly, this work provides evidence that incorporating detrital actors increases SoS resilience. Third, this paper documents the first case study using the new SoSRM metric to justify a design decision. By comparing biologically inspired network redesign and optimized traditional resilience improvements, this paper provides evidence that biologically inspired intervention may be the needed strategy to increase sociotechnical SoS resilience, improve SoS performance, and overcome the limitations of traditional resilience improvement approaches.
Biologically Inspired Design implements natural features into technologies to improve performance. Given the success of Biologically Inspired Design we are interested in the research question: How is Biologically Inspired Design currently employed? Answering this question can help design the tools used to support Biologically Inspired Design, provide an understanding of the current “state of Biologically Inspired Design”, and identify where Biologically Inspired Design solutions have not been widely utilized. Identifying gaps in utilization could prompt investigation into Biologically Inspired Design methods in fields that have not incorporated this approach into their design methodology. To answer this research question, 540 Biologically Inspired Design examples was gathered equally from three data sources: Google Scholar, the Asknature.org “Innovations” database, and Google News. The data were coded across 5 categories and 42 sub-categories. The results of our coding provide insights into two areas. First, we identify subcategories that have been underexplored by Biologically Inspired Design. For example, 63% of the biomimicry examples were applications to physical artifacts and 82% of the examples impacted the usage phase of a product’s Life Cycle. Secondly, by comparing BID results between sources (news, scholarship, and practitioners) we have insight into mismatches between the three. This solution survey and analysis provides Biologically Inspired Design researchers and practitioners valuable insight into the current state of the field, with the goal of motivating future research, outreach, and application.
In industry and academia, designers and engineers use prototyping at various stages in the design process to evaluate progress, archive process, assess viability, and communicate mental models to a team. Cognitive processes not only play a huge role during the design process, but also have causal relationships with various prototyping strategies. However, these causal relationships are not well understood in the design field. This paper presents a review of design-field literature related to cognitive processes, prototyping strategies, and modeling processes to identify literature consensus, consolidate experimental results, and expose gaps in the literature. After analysis of the literature, Fixation, Team Cognition, Iterative Prototyping, and Rapid Prototyping are the most well researched areas, especially when compared to their effects on cognitive processes. Sunk Cost, Requirement Relaxation, and Expertise are areas that could be better understood. The relationships between relevant cognitive processes, prototyping strategies, and modeling processes are consolidated into a data visualization that invites researchers and novices alike to explore the field of design in a fresh way that could spark new research endeavors or provoke interest in the field. This literature review and analysis reveals trends in design research through a novel approach with an emphasis on cognition, as well as provides a consolidated cannon of work that gives a sense of what has already been done on these topics and what is still left to explore.
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