Industrial Ecology: Technology-Environment Interaction  |
11.6.2011 Guest of the Week: Professor Mansour Rahimi, University of Southern California Host: Dr. Kamran Abedini |
The global industrial economy can be viewed as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into commodities which can be bought and sold to meet the needs of humanity. Industrial ecology seeks to quantify the material flows and document the industrial processes that make modern society function. Industrial ecologists are often concerned with the impacts that industrial activities have on the environment, with use of the planet's supply of natural resources, and with problems of waste disposal. Industrial ecology is a young but growing multidisciplinary field of research which combines aspects of engineering, economics, sociology, toxicology and the natural sciences. A more dramatic approach to reducing these impacts is to reduce consumption or increase the efficiency of material and energy use. The other is concerned with the shifting of industrial process from linear (open loop) systems, in which resource and capital investments move through the system to become waste, to a closed loop system where wastes can become inputs for new processes. We will discuss some of these options and their usefulness in saving the natural resources of our planet.
Mansour Rahimi was born in Kermanshah and moved to Tehran when he was 5 years old. His love of nature became apparent at early age, while traveling to several local fishing trips with his older brothers. Like many youngsters of his age in Iran, he was encouraged to pursue education in technical fields. After entering the Sharif University of Technology, he was given an opportunity to pursue his education in U.S. After studying for his B.S. and M.S. in industrial engineering, he became more interested in the human side of engineering. So, he went on to earn his PhD in Human Factors Engineering at Virginia Tech. He has been with the University of Southern California since 1985. In mid 1990s, he felt the need to broaden his interests from the human side of technology to an overarching problem of our time: protecting the environment. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation in industrial ecology and now concentrating on the environmental impacts of transportation system.
His new PhD student is working on whether or not using electric vehicles in the Port of Los Angeles will achieve its goal of reaching zero emission in 2030.
