Lincoln Center at ASU

1. Managing a Terraformed Planet:
Earth Systems Engineering
Esri GeoDesign Summit
January 5-6, 2012
Brad Allenby
Founding Director, Center for Earth Systems
Engineering and Management
Lincoln Professor of Ethics and Engineering
Professor of Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable
Engineering
CESEM
Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management

2. So long as we do not, through thinking,
experience what is, we can never belong
to what will be.
The flight into tradition, out of a
combination of humility and
presumption, can bring about nothing in
itself other than self deception and
blindness in relation to the historical
moment.
Source: M. Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology
and Other Essays, translation by W. Lovitt (New York, Harper
Torchbooks, 1977), “The Turning,” p. 49; “The Age of the
World Picture,” p. 136.

3. Why Earth Systems
Engineering?
• Age of human impact on global systems:
– Global climate change
– Major natural cycles: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous
– Biodiversity
– Economy
– Technology systems (e.g., human as design space)
– Social and cultural behavior (mass consumption)
– Water

4. Earth Systems Engineering and
Management: Climate Change- Carbon
Cycle Schematic
Nitrogen,
phosphorus, sulfur
cycles
Biosphere
Atmosphere and
Hydrologic Oceanic Systems Engineering/
cycle Management of
Earth system
relationships
Human systems:
economic, cultural,
Carbon cycle
Other cycles religious, etc Earth System
Engineering
Other
Geoengineering
Energy Ocean options
options Biomass
system fertilization
Genetic Other agriculture
Fish farming, Engineering/
engineering and Technology etc Management of
biotechnology systems carbon cycle
Information
technology and Fossil fuel Organic chemical
services (e.g., industry, etc. industry, etc.
telework)
Scope of traditional
engineering disciplines
Implementation at firm, facility, technology and process level

5. Why Earth Systems Engineering?
• These Earth systems are difficult in
themselves, but because they are
foundational, they are coupled to each other,
and to many others
• They integrate human, natural and built
components, and cannot be understood,
designed, and managed using just
information from one of those domains
• Water is quintessential Earth system

6. Global Freshwater Use
1700 - 2000
Withdrawals Withdrawals Use (in percent)
3
Year (km ) (per capita) Irrigation Industry Municipal
1700 110 0.17 90 2 8
1800 243 0.27 90 3 7
1900 580 0.36 90 6 3
1950 1,360 0.54 83 13 4
1970 2,590 0.70 72 22 5
1990 4,130 0.78 66 24 8
1]
2000 5,190 0.87 64 25 9
140
(est.)
1] In
richer countries, water use stabilized after the 1970’s. In the U.S., total
water use peaked around 1980 and had declined by a tenth as of 1995, despite
simultaneous addition of some 40 million people.
Source: Based on J. R. McNeill, 2000, Something New Under the Sun (New York: W. W. Norton &
Company), Table 5.1, p. 121, and sources cited therein.

7. Decoupling U.S. Water Consumption from
Economic Performance
10 1000
9 GDP trillion 2002 $ 900
8 800
7 700
6 600
5 500
4 Water consumption km3 per 400
year
3 300
2 200
Population
1 100
0 0
1885 1905 1925 1945 1965 1985 2005
Adapted from The Economist, “Priceless: a Survey of Water”,
July 19 2003, center section, Pg 4.

8. Water as Earth System
• It is a material
• It is a commodity (a material that can be
owned)
• It is a legal construct – “water rights”
• It is a cultural construct – “water as human
right”
• It is a technological construct (technology
makes “potable water” from “sewage”)

9. Water as Earth System
• It is transport (Roman empire: moving a
given load 1 mile by oxcart = 5.7 miles by
river = 57 miles by sea)
– Development economics theory that inland
countries are disadvantaged because of lack of
access to ocean shipping
• It is energy
• It is political power (cf. water wars)
• Essential for life (critical environmentally)

10. Water as Earth System
• It is something that can be used, but not
used up (form and quality matter)
• Availability in a particular circumstance is a
matter of pricepoint, infrastructure and
power, not “natural” constraints.
– Compare with climate change and ambient
atmospheric carbon capture

11. Water as Earth System
• Distribution challenges arise from
transitional regimes (e.g., climate change,
technology and infrastructure design and
construction) and cultural regimes (e.g.,
water as “human right” must be
economically free)
• Traditional definitions fail (e.g., factory beef
from stem cells as “water technology”)

12. Water as Earth System
• Like all critical earth systems, it can be
weaponized (cf: food as weapon in Darfur)
• It is provided, traded, and sold both as a
material (“water”) and as embedded in other
products (“virtual water”)
• Trade networks in virtual water (which
necessarily implicate similar networks for,
e.g., virtual N, or C, or S, or P) are not
“ancillary” to managing water issues, but
core.

13. Embedded Water Content of Selected Items
Product Embedded water content Embedded Water Content,
(liters) liters per gram
1 microchip (2 g) 32 16
1 sheet of A4-size paper 10 .125 (liters/m2)
(80 g/m2)
1 slice of bread (30 g) 40 1.33
1 potato (100 g) 25 .25
1 cup of coffee (125 ml) 140 1.12 (l/ml)
1 bag of potato crisps 185 .97
(190 g)
1 hamburger (150 g) 2,400 16
Based on Gradel and Allenby, Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Engineering,
2010, Prentice-Hall; A.Y. Hoekstra and A.K. Chapagain, Water footprints of
nations: Water use by people as a function of their consumption pattern, Water
Resources Management, 21, 35–48, 2007

14. Embedded Water

15. Embedded Water
• To produce:
– 1 ton of vegetables requires about 1,000
cubic meters of water
– 1 ton of wheat requires about 1,450 cubic
meters
– 1 ton of beef requires 42,500 cubic meters

16. Water as Earth System
sust

17. Water as Earth System

18. Water as Earth System
Biodiversity Human Health E
A
Nitrogen Cycle R
Phosphorous Cycle Agriculture T
H
Carbon Cycle
Global Trade S
Y
S
WATER
OTHER TECHNOLOGY T
ECONOMICS Culture/Law
SYSTEMS E
M
WATER SYSTEMS S
Treatment Technologies Production Technologies Recycling Technologies
USUAL
FOCUS
OF
Efficient Use Options WATER
POLICY

19. Relevant ESEM Considerations
• Development of robust technological
options at all scales.
– Such options are a public good, in that private parties have
little incentive to invest in developing them.
– Highly likely that society as a whole is seriously under-
investing in water technology option spaces (and in
terraforming technologies generally).
• Examples for water include technologies to
– Recycle water at the household level
– Blend appropriately treated wastewater with potable water
– Reduce water use in agriculture in low technology
environments.

20. Relevant ESEM Considerations
• Development of water efficient technological
options in relevant coupled technologies.
– Water efficient agricultural practices to reduce
virtual water in food, fibre, bioenergy
• Biotech designed cultivars that use less and lower
quality (e.g., saline) water
• Satellite and sensor technologies to reduce direct
demand for agricultural water, and indirect demand for
demand for agricultural chemicals, which contain their
own embedded water.

21. Relevant ESEM Considerations
– Water efficient energy production
• Engineering methods that include reduction in water per
unit energy produced, not just CO2 emissions, as
important design consideration.
• Energy efficiency programs that quantify water use, not
just CO2 emissions, avoided.
• Consider water quality and quantity impacts in economy-
wide energy technology and site choice decisions.
• Encourage stable trade relationships (thus
enhancing embedded water trade, especially in food)

22. Relevant ESEM Considerations
• Encourage non-traditional technological evolution
– Factory meat from stem cells
– Reduced food waste (= water waste) – therefore
better transportation/storage infrastructures and
information systems
• Encourage pricing with distributional equity tools
– Market pricing necessary to develop and manage complex
adaptive system information on water
– Geographic information needs to be mapped onto complex
system patterns generated by earth systems of many
different kinds

23. Relevant ESEM Considerations
• Development of robust cultural options
– At what pricepoint can water consumers be
shifted to treated wastewater, in whole or in part?
– At what pricepoint can homeowners in places like
Phoenix, Arizona, be encouraged to shift from
lawn to xeriscaping?
– At what pricepoint do legal regimes shift to
becoming more economically rational?
– Should “water footprint” techniques be used to
socially engineer attitudes towards water? Why
or why not?

24. Relevant ESEM Considerations
– Are large scale water redistribution projects
culturally acceptable, and if so at what social and
environmental cost?
– What distributional equity options are appropriate
for what circumstances?
– Does it matter in terms of water availability and
price whether water is culturally perceived as a
“right” or as a commodity appropriate to private
firm provision?
• In either case, should public views be shifted to support
more effective provisioning systems, and if so, how?

25. Relevant ESEM Considerations
• Can we develop integrated long term
supply and demand curves that include in
their construction:
– Perturbations to existing natural regimes
(such as potential climate change effects)
– Reasonable estimates as to the pricepoint at
which different technologies will be drawn into
the market?
– Pricepoint at which different legal regimes
created?

26. Relevant ESEM Considerations
• In addition to foundational supply and
demand curves, need to understand and
manage:
– Transitional paths as new options are
implemented; infrastructure – both built and
legal – cannot be constructed
instantaneously.

27. Relevant ESEM Considerations
– Flexibility as transitions occur to respond to
unanticipated instability in supply, demand,
and system function.
– Developing such flexibility will require a more
rigorous understanding of technological
change with respect not just to water systems,
but to coupled natural, built, and human
systems.

28. “He, only, merits freedom and existence
who wins them every day anew.”
(Goethe, 1833, Faust, lines 11,575-76)

29. BACKUP SLIDES
ESEM Principles

30. Relevant Earth Systems Engineering and
Management Principles
• Only intervene when required and to the extent required (humility in
the face of complexity).
• ESEM projects and programs, such as managing hydrologic
systems at regional and global scales, are not just technical and
scientific in nature, but unavoidably have powerful legal, cultural,
ethical, and even religious dimensions. Complex adaptive
integrated human/built/natural systems are necessarily involved, and
design and management must also integrate across all relevant
domains.
• Because ESEM involves such complex, multi-domain issues, the
only appropriate governance model under these conditions is one
which is democratic, transparent, and accountable. Social
engineering by elites is questionable under this principle.

31. Relevant Earth Systems Engineering and
Management Principles
• Major shifts in technologies and technological systems should be
evaluated before, rather than after, implementation.
• ESEM initiatives should all be characterized by explicit and
transparent objectives or desired performance criteria, with
quantitative metrics which permit continuous evaluation of system
evolution (and signal when problematic system states may be
increasingly likely).
• ESEM projects should be incremental and reversible to the extent
possible.

32. Relevant Earth Systems Engineering and
Management Principles
• ESEM should aim for resiliency, not just redundancy, in systems
design. Resiliency should be both short term (e.g., a year long
drought) and long term (e.g., resilient in the face of unpredictable
changes in hydrologic regimes associated with climate change)
• ESEM deals with complex adaptive systems that are inherently
unpredictable, and thus of necessity becomes a real time dialog with
the relevant systems, rather than a definitive endpoint. This requires
development of appropriate institutional capability, with such
institutions characterized by a high level of institutional flexibility and
adaptability.
• The ESEM environment and the complexity of the systems at issue
require explicit mechanisms for assuring continual learning,
including ways in which learning by stakeholders can be facilitated.