Sustainability as the Ultimate Form of Loss Prevention: Implications for Process Design and Education

摘要

During the last third of the 20th century, the critical importance of safely and environment has become increasingly clear to society. Reacting to this challenge, engineers have been developing the field of Loss Prevention. One direction in the continuing development of Loss Prevention is towards consideration of increasing time and distance. Thus, while early techniques concentrated on local events of short duration, such as explosions, later techniques were developed to handle effects involving longer times and distances, such as emissions of toxic substances within plants and to water and soil. Most recently, techniques are being developed that consider even larger time and spatial scales, such as Environmental Impact Assessment and Life Cycle Assessment. However, while these methods are absolutely necessary, they are in themselves insufficient to address a major issue affecting humanity in the 21st century: achieving sustainable development. Considering present rates of pollution and resource use, future population growth, and economic development necessary to alleviate poverty, safe and clean technologies are necessary whose use of non-renewable resources and emissions of pollutants is reduced by at least an order of magnitude. Such fundamental changes require radical innovation in product and process design methodology. The concept of sustainability is logically related to safety, health and environment through time and distance scales. However, from an engineer's point of view, in addition to ecological criteria, sustainability also includes more unfamiliar areas, such as economic and social criteria. This article relates the concepts of safety, health and environment ('SHE') to that of sustainable development. It also complements and expands Loss Prevention, which integrates safety, health and environment, by adding design criteria for sustainable development; in other words, taking ecological, economic and social aspects into account. The article also presents unique educational approaches developed at Delft University.