An approach for including social impact measures in systems design exploration

Engineered products have economic, environmental, and social impacts, which comprise the major dimensions of sustainability. This paper seeks to explore interactions between design parameters when social impacts are incorporated into the concept development phase of the systems design process. Socia...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Design Science 2023-07, Vol.9, Article e16
Main Authors: Richards, Daniel C., Stevenson, Phillip D., Mattson, Christopher A., Salmon, John L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aircraft
Airship
Airships
Design factors
Design parameters
Discrete event systems
Discrete-event simulation
Economic impact
Energy consumption
Environmental impact
Humanitarianism
Impact analysis
Product development
Social factors
Social impact
Society
Sustainable development
Systems design
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Summary:Engineered products have economic, environmental, and social impacts, which comprise the major dimensions of sustainability. This paper seeks to explore interactions between design parameters when social impacts are incorporated into the concept development phase of the systems design process. Social impact evaluation is increasing in importance similar to what has happened in recent years with environmental impact consideration in the design of engineered products. Concurrently, research into new airship design has increased. Airships have yet to be reintroduced at a large scale or for a range of applications in society. Although airships have the potential for positive environmental and economic impacts, the social impacts are still rarely considered. This paper presents a case study of the hypothetical introduction of airships in the Amazon region of Brazil to help local farmers transport their produce to market. It explores the design space in terms of both engineering parameters and social impacts using a discrete-event simulation to model the system. The social impacts are found to be dependent not only on the social factors and airship design parameters but also on the farmer-airship system, suggesting that socio-technical systems design will benefit from integrated social impact metric analysis.
ISSN:2053-4701
2053-4701
DOI:10.1017/dsj.2023.13