A Multi-Entity Input Output (MEIO) Approach to Sustainability - Water-Energy-GHG (WEG) Footprint Statements in Use Cases from Auto and Telco Industries

Abstract

A new Input-Output model, called the Multi-Entity Input-Output (MEIO) model, is introduced to estimate the responsibility of entities and actors of an ecosystem on the footprint and actions of each other. It assumed that the ecosystem is comprised of end users, service providers, and utilities. The proposed MEIO modeling approach can be seen as a realization of the Everybody-in-the-Loop (EitL) framework, which promotes a sustainable future using behaviors and actions that are aware of their ubiquitous eco-socio-environment impacts. In this vision, the behavioral changes could be initiated by providing all actors with their footprint statement, which would be estimated using the MEIO models. First, a naive MEIO model is proposed in the form of a graph of actions and responsibility by considering interactions and goods transfers among the entities and actors along four channels. In this model, the unnormalized responsibility and also the final responsibility among the actors are introduced, and then are used to re-allocate immediate footprint of actors to those who are implicitly responsible. The footprint in the current model is limited to three major impacts: Water usage, Energy consumption, and GHG emissions. The naive model is then generalized to Provider-perspective (P-perspective) and End User-perspective (E-perspective) MEIO models in order to make it more suitable to cases where a large number of end users are served by a provider. The E-perspective modeling approach particularly allows estimating the footprint associated to a specific end user. In two use cases from the auto and Telco industries, it has been observed that the proposed MEIO models are practical and dependable in allocating footprint to the provider and also to the end user, while i) avoiding footprint leakage to the end users and ii) handling the large numbers end users. In addition, it will be shown that the MEIO models could implicitly provide some features of the Scope-3 and LCA approaches. This would make the MEIO models an interesting candidate for integrating and merging various concepts that are otherwise incompatible.

The Service-Bond Paradigm—Potentials for a Sustainable, ICT-enabled Future

“…We do not stop there, and we consider every recognizable entity of nature (such as a lake or a forest) or every recognizable entity of economy (such as the businesses collocated on a street) as an actor. The combination of all these five categories of actors is denoted as the Sustainability Pentagon [11].…”

“…The three hours used to calculate the mean of a particular day is chosen to be prime time, i.e., those three hours associated with the maximum Netflix streaming per that ISP on that day. 11 The selection of peak hours of the Netflix prime time puts this index within the scope of an rXd distance.…”

“…The term Entity is used to refer to anything that can be distinct from other entities, i.e., anything that is to some degree self-contained. We will interchangeably use the two terms entity and actor [11]. 5) Footprint.…”