While sustainability issues are a global problem, they can be better addressed and understood when parsed by scale. By taking a global, regional and local look at the problems, it’s easiest to assign responsibilities. And, the way that the issues of sustainability are assessed are distinctly different at these three different scales.
Sustainability from a spatial process approach is a matter of function. If you’re assessing water quality issues, there are typically inputs and analysis at the global hydrosphere scale, at the regional watershed scale, and at the local drinking water scale. Each level of assessment and management requires different monitoring techniques, science and technology tools—yet it will be increasingly critical to weave together the observations at different scales to gain better insight into complex systems.
In order to illustrate the scale-based approaches and toolset, I’ll focus in on the monitoring and remediation of greenhouse gas emissions at the three different scales. While this is just one of many sustainability issues, the discussion of this problem at all three scales can be extrapolated to other issues.
Global
Tackling greenhouse gas from the global perspective deals with large system science. The increasing levels of greenhouse gases are measured and monitored in the atmosphere through a large network of observations. Observations are fed into large-scale complex climate models to understand the global effects that global warming have on climate, weather and oceans.
While it’s been scientifically proven that the build-up of gases has raised the global temperature, and the feedback loop will compound temperature rise, it’s still not clear what the repercussions are on the biosphere. The effect on plants, trees and species needs to be assessed and aggregated on the global scale. Collaboration between scientists around the world is critical in order to get a handle on the large-scale picture.
The web of remote sensing satellites and other sensor networks provide the tools to give us big-picture measurements of how the changing atmosphere is affecting Earth’s surface. While computer models have come a long way, we have yet to adequately model the complex systems of our planet. There’s a growing need to pull together our knowledge and to share insights in order to prioritize our actions.
Carbon markets are one means for a global response to greenhouse gas emissions. This tool will require large-scale assessments of the world’s forests and other carbon sinks that can be traded to offset carbon emissions. The geospatial toolset is uniquely poised to measure and monitor the performance of the emerging carbon market.
Regional
When we get to the regional and local level, there’s greater opportunity for action through policy. Mandates are a likely necessity to change how we manage our impacts.
Regional monitoring and modeling allows us to understand the inefficiencies of our transportation and logistics networks, which are largely responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. Through better monitoring and analysis of the emissions from our vehicles, we’ll see the need for greater efficiencies. We’ll also gain more appreciation for mass transportation and other means to curb the impact of our mobility on the atmosphere.
At the regional or country scale, action is underway to curb our use of fossil fuels and to regulate the emissions of industry. Energy and electric utilities generally operate at the regional scale, and it is in these industries that the need for efficiency gains is the greatest. Increasing pressure will be placed on industries to curb their impacts, and geospatial tools will play a large role toward increasing efficiencies at the regional scale.
Local
The local perspective on greenhouse gas emissions gets down to the city, neighborhood and individual building level. There are a great number of interesting initiatives aimed at increasing the efficiencies of where we live and work—decreasing impacts while increasing quality of life.
The fact that buildings are the number one consumer of electricity, and that they produce a large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions, means that there’s a lot of work to be done on the individual building scale. Awareness of this problem is increasing, and green building has an increasingly high profile based on its potential to dramatically reduce the impacts of where we live.
Building information modeling (BIM) provides the means to create intelligent models to adequately measure the performance of our buildings. Weaving these intelligent models into a larger neighborhood or city-wide intelligent model will provide the tools necessary to envision and create a city with minimal environmental impacts, while maintaining a vibrant economy.
While there are distinct approaches at the different scales, there’s also the need to combine the outputs of our monitoring and management systems for cross-cutting exploration of sustainability topics at the different scales. The issues of sustainability play heavily on these individual scales, for inputs and actions, yet we could do a much better job of meshing our knowledge for a more holistic view if the tools and data analysis were better aligned. By combining these systems, we’ll gain a greater understanding of how global pressures affect individuals, and how local action can help alter the global picture.
Read what Jeff Thurston has to say no this topic here.
References
Scale, Systems and Sustainability, U.S. Forest Service
Warming Climate is Changing Life on Global Scale, Earth Institute News
Sustainable Buildings and Construction Initiative, UNEP SBCI
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