(194f) Teaching Sustainability As a Complex Systems Approach

Many problems of the present such as the need for water, food, and energy have first been attempted to be solved through one-sided solutions, e.g. intensive agricultures or exploiting fossil fuels.¹ As identified by Rittel and Webber (1973) however, such a class of social-ecological global dilemmas should be considered as wicked problems.² Wicked problems are complex issues, which lack clear definition and which may not be solved through traditional modes of decision-making. One may want to contrast them to tame problems, for which our scientific knowledge and common procedures have been developed so far.^1,2 Working with such problems requires, amongst others, an education that equips students to handle cross-disciplinary and macro-level thinking,³with the ability to handle interconnections and dependencies, and to work with dynamic rather than static structures.⁴ Fenner et al.⁵ follow a similar line of argumentation when outlining that within engineering education, understanding complexity and its relationships should be the starting point as sustainability problems require a system view of the world. Altogether, educators must find a different educational paradigm, which prepares students for the new challenges faced,⁶ not only in engineering but in every academic discipline.⁷

One of the main challenges faced by the educator is finding appropriate means (terminology as well as methodological approaches) that allow interdisciplinary work, discussions, and communication. We argue that sustainability problems must be regarded as complex systems and indicate that they should be studied with methodologies allowing for the complexity. One well-established approach to handle complexity is through Network Science. Within Network Science, real-world systems are represented by two basic units; nodes commonly represent any object and/or subject in the system, and edges, that represent relationships. A street network, the brain, water distribution, energy grids, and the internet – we recognise networks everywhere.⁸Network Science offers a common language for scientists to deal with complexity especially when experts from different areas are needed. Besides a common language, it provides both a mathematical formalism and data driven computational tools to quantify aspects and behaviour of a complex system.⁹

Herein, we introduce an interdisciplinary workshop outline which was developed as course material for an extracurricular teaching activity for a group of 17 participants during a three-day full-time workshop. We explain the basics of Network Science and its terminology and how we guide the participants towards using this analysis for a sustainability case study. The participants were asked to identify and characterise synergies and trade-offs between the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by using network metrics. We recognised the importance of interdisciplinarity because both Network Science as a tool and also its simplifications were thoroughly discussed between the disciplines. The participants defined a synergetic relationship as a link in the network and discussed circular structures where the enhancement of one goal leads to a theoretically infinite enhancement of a substructure. Previous scientific work ^10,11 was compared and discussed with the ideas and models of the participants at the end of the sessions. Feedback possibilities during the course and a reflection forum at the very end led to a qualitative assessment of the teaching method; it showed high contentment both with learning more about sustainability and learning a new methodological approach in an interdisciplinary group.

This work introduces a novel methodological approach in order to understand, discuss, and critically evaluate sustainability problems and their complexity. It offers a teaching possibility which bridges gaps between disciplines, and which has the potential to contribute towards solving most challenging questions of this century.

Acknowledgments:

JMW and CPL gratefully acknowledge the German National Scholarship Foundation as funding body for the seminar as well as Tim Deisemann and Lisa Oswald as co-organisers. They thank all participants of the workshop, who made their ideas become reality, and all other lecturers, who have committed much time and effort for similar course concepts. CPL acknowledges Goldbeck Solar for all their support and JMW the Department of Chemical Engineering for funding of her PhD studentship.

References:

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