François Chung, Ph.D.
Sustainability in practice

Sustainability in practice

Coursera training, MOOC (2015). Given online by The School of Design (PennDesign) of the University of Pennsylvania (US), this training provides an introduction to the ideas and practices that people are using to understand and change connections, including connections across time, that create systems that are greater than the simple sums of their parts, with consequences that are often unexpected. The objective is to pursue more sustainable processes and communities.

Week 1: Connections

Main topics:

  • Climate change;
  • Brundtland Report;
  • Systems thinking;
  • Design thinking;
  • Sketching.

Week 2: Allocation

Main topics:

  • Efficiency;
  • Natural capital;
  • Externality;
  • Lifecycle accounting.

Week 3: Resilience

Main topics:

  • Climate change;
  • Adaptability, transformability and diversity;
  • Collaboration.

Week 4: Emergence

Main topics:

  • Complex systems;
  • Informal settlements;
  • Computational models;
  • Innovation.

Week 5: Jurisdiction

Main topics:

  • Carbon Tracker;
  • Confirmation bias;
  • Product-service system.

Week 6: Performance

Main topics:

  • Benchmarking;
  • Energy efficiency;
  • Awareness raising;
  • Big data.

Week 7: Disruption

Main topics:

  • Disruptive innovation;
  • Integrated design;
  • Triple bottom line.

Reference

Learn more