AN APPROACH FOR PREDICTING SOCIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND ECONOMIC PRODUCT IMPACTS AND NAVIGATING THE ASSOCIATED IMPACT TRADE-SPACE IN ENGINEERING DESIGN

There is a growing demand for sustainable products and systems. Sustainability encompasses environmental, social, and economic aspects, often referred to as the three pillars of sustainability. To make more sustainable design decisions, engineers need tools to predict the environmental, social, and economic impacts of products and navigate potential impact trade-offs. To capture societal adoption of technology, this article uses agentbased modeling (ABM) to predict impacts across all three pillars of sustainability and how to navigate the multidimensional impact trade space. The approach described in this article is based on three main components for the predictive modeling of product impacts and impact trade-space navigation, i) ABM of product adoption, ii) the assessment of product impacts, and iii) an approach for design decisions in the presence of impact trade-offs. The trade-space navigation uses a visual approach to find the non-dominated solutions in the product impact space. To illustrate and describe howto use the method, a case study is presented that predicts the impact of residential solar panels in a region of the United States under various scenarios. The findings of the case study can help policymakers understand suitable implementation strategies for residential solar panels while considering the impact trade-offs involved.