Urban metabolism is a model to facilitate the description and analysis of the flows of the materials and energy within cities, such as undertaken in a material flow analysis of a city. It provides researchers with a metaphorical framework to study the interactions of natural and human systems in specific regions. From the beginning, researchers have tweaked and altered the parameters of the urban metabolism model. C. Kennedy and fellow researchers have produced a clear definition in the 2007 paper The Changing Metabolism of Cities claiming that urban metabolism is "the sum total of the technical and socio-economic process that occur in cities, resulting in growth, production of energy and elimination of waste." With the growing concern of climate change and atmospheric degradation, the use of the urban metabolism model has become a key element in determining and maintaining levels of sustainability and health in cities around the world. Urban metabolism provides a unified or holistic viewpoint to encompass all of the activities of a city in a single model.
With deep roots in sociology, Karl Marx and fellow researcher Friedrich Engels may have been the first to raise concerns around issues which we would now call urban metabolism. Marx and Engels concentrated on the social organization of the harvesting of the Earth's materials by "analysing the dynamic internal relationships between humans and nature." Marx used the metaphor of metabolism to refer to the actual metabolic interactions that take place through humans' exertion of physical labour to cultivate the Earth for sustenance and shelter. In short, Marx and Engels found that when humans exerted such physical labour they ultimately altered the biophysical processes as well. This acknowledgement of altering the biophysical landscape is the first stepping stone for the creation of urban metabolism within social geography. They also used metabolism to describe the material and energy exchange between nature and society in as a critique of industrialization (1883) which created an interdependent set of societal needs brought into play through the concrete organization of human labour.
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This course provides the bases to understand material and energy production and consumption processes. Students learn how to develop a material flow analysis and apply it to cases of resource manageme
We are living in an urban world and the design of sustainable cities is essential in order to decrease our energy footprint. This course provides the instruments to understand the complex urban metabo
Les enjeux environnementaux doivent être abordés de façon systémique. L'Analyse du Cycle de Vie (ACV) et l'Analyse de Flux de Matière (AFM) sont des méthodes permettant d'évaluer de façon globale les
Industrial metabolism is a concept to describe the material and energy turnover of industrial systems. It was proposed by Robert Ayres in analogy to the biological metabolism as "the whole integrated collection of physical processes that convert raw materials and energy, plus labour, into finished products and wastes..." In analogy to the biological concept of metabolism, which is used to describe the whole of chemical reactions in, for example, a cell to maintain its functions and reproduce itself, the concept of industrial metabolism describes the chemical reactions, transport processes, and manufacturing activities in industry.
Le métabolisme social ou métabolisme socio-économique est l'ensemble de flux de matériaux et d'énergie qui se produisent entre la nature et la société, et entre diverses sociétés entre elles, réalisée sous une forme culturelle spécifique. Les processus métaboliques sociaux commencent avec l'appropriation par les êtres humains de matériaux et d'énergie prélevés dans la Nature. Ceux-ci peuvent être transformés et circuler pour être consommés, éventuellement réutilisés et enfin excrétés de nouveau vers la nature.
Dematerialization is a term in economics and the social sciences that describes the process of making more goods with less material. The term itself possesses multi-accentuality, which allows it to be diversely explained by different fields of social science, such as Mainstream economics, which puts focus on the aspects of technological evolution and market demand shifts, and Ecological economics, which emphasizes the effect of dematerialization on the natural environment.
Explore l'évaluation environnementale systémique, les méthodes d'analyse des flux de matériaux, le métabolisme urbain et les concepts d'économie circulaire.
Explore le métabolisme urbain, l'économie circulaire, les approches comptables et les mesures politiques pour la gestion durable des ressources dans les villes.
Neonatal hypoxic-ischemic (HI) encephalopathy (HIE) in term newborns is a leading cause of mortality and chronic disability. Hypothermia (HT) is the only clinically available therapeutic intervention; however, its neuroprotective effects are limited. Lacto ...
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is the only technique that can detect endogenous metabolites directly and non-invasively in vivo. It allows to identify different metabolites and analyze the dynamic neurochemical processes in the brain, skeletal muscl ...
EPFL2023
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Approximately 2 billion people worldwide and a significant part of the domestic livestock are infected with soil-transmitted helminths, of which many establish chronic infections causing substantial eco-nomic and welfare burdens. Beside intensive research ...