Wikinomic business model benefiting sustainable infrastructure and how to do it.

This post has more of a focus in a sustainable business model, rather than sustainable "design" as such. It then becomes interesting to see a sustainable business model can be "designed", at least for this stage in our period of our time. From a business perspective, a frequently heard buzz word or concept today is that business models need to evolve for companies to be more competitive. I have identified within the environmental industry that the business model used is still a very outdated one.

Having made this analysis it is amazing to see how things come around. At the end of 2004 I had to present my final year project for my degree, studying, in the Chilean Navy,  to be an Electronic Warfare Officer (Telecommunications), for civilians it may be easier to understand as a Naval Electronic Engineer.  The topic of my final year project, that presented with a friend and classmate of mine, who is a Naval Infantry Marine, was: "Network Centric Warfare and it's applicability to the Chilean Navy".

I was always interested in technology. As such the choice of topic was one that I could follow a personal interest that I could apply to my professional career. On starting my research I found an article that had been published in a magazine called Proceedings, published by the US Naval Institute, it was in essence what my paper was very much based on.

The article can be seen here:
https://acc.dau.mil/adl/en-US/37563/file/9068/NCW-Origin%20and%20Future.pdf

It was interesting in terms of seeing how Command and Control systems, could be taken "philosophically" to the next level. One of the points of the article that most impressed upon me was a side bar that told the story of Network Centric Retailing and the experience that Wal-Mart and General Electric had. This article was published in 1998. I would then find exciting my knowledge in the military could be translated to a civilian business environment, with technologies such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), etc... which are basically variations on the same topic.

Let's go forward a few years to December 2006, and we come a across a ground breaking book called Wikinomics. This book in a way further developed on this concept of network centricity, related to Metcalfe's Law, where collaboration, enabled by networks, is able to accelerate development and growth in whatever ever area of humanity.  So what has this got to do with Sustainability, with infrastructure, with business models? It has a lot. I would say that the world in general is a "faster" place, in every sense. Communications are much quicker. Where in South America, in the 1800s it took several months to know that Fernando VII had been deposed of by Napoleon in Spain, hence sparking the independence movement of Latin America, today we knew within minutes, if not seconds, that Hosni Mubarak had been deposed of in Egypt.

Well technology moves much faster today than it did yesterday, not only that, the market place too. Though the global market has become a "larger" market in geographic size as well as potential volume, it is also smaller. Communication with suppliers is something instantaneous, and anywhere, you don't have to be in your office next to a land line phone to communicate, the same is true with clients. Where time can also be "distance", the elimination or reduction of lost time has made our world "smaller".

As a company, or supplier or service provider, we are not alone in the world. As we embrace new technology and accelerate, so do our competitors. How is it possible to remain competitive, if the catch up cycle also becomes shorter and quicker? How can we have our clients also achieve more competitiveness in order that they may be more successful, that will in turn benefit us as a "provider".

In the world we live in today, this situation has become a fundamental challenge. Today it is, we could say, feasible that a one person operation can compete against "considerably larger" companies and have several competitive advantages. All the competitor has to do is sit on the side lines, poach and pick off business opportunities as they come along in terms of product supply. This is something that affects not only our industry, but we could say almost any product manufacturing industry.

However having said that, we are still tied to evermore sophisticated technologies that are always complex in their integration. However there is also another challenge associated to this, and that is the requirement of what is called "complexity masking". The client doesn't want to, or either needs to know, about the complexities of solutions, the client should be given a straight forward, "simple" solution that addresses the requirements they have.

Below we go into detail as to identify the short comings of this industrial age business model as well as to see what are the viable alternatives to it to be more competitive.

To return to the focus of our discussion, we need to analyse why it seems that environmental aspects of projects have difficulty in achieving the amount of success that they should have. Why is it that having several amounts and types of technologies, that these are not being used to maximum effect. We would say that it is mainly a result of an antiquated business model that is still to a large extent present in the industry. The way projects are generated, to how they are designed, executed, and how the materials are supplied.

This is beyond the mindset of having lineal wasteful technologies, instead of closed loop sustainable solutions. For many years, even till now, there are many water professionals that see stormwater as problem to get rid of as quickly and as far away as possible. This in stark contrast of seeing it as a valuable resource that can "easily" be reused, that is if we know how to reuse it with ease.

In larger and more complex projects, then one might see a consortium being established that can also include eventually developers.This serves to some measure what we previously described as "complexity masking".

In the case of simple industrial age materials and supplies, this model might not be that bad. However in our current age, where we have seen the necessity of implementing materials and technologies that are more advanced and beyond the scope and normal education of professionals involved in the infrastructure industry, we have seen that closer support is required. At the end of the chain are the supposed beneficiaries, who make use of the infrastructure, it must be asked though if they are really benefited, if they are subject to flooding, fires, high urban temperatures, water restrictions, etc..

What are the effects that this Industrial Age Business Model.

Having looked at the Industrial Age model, we can see and analyse, as well as extensively comment on its effects. Of the most notable ones we see that there has been as a consequence significant environmental degradation.

We can say that this is an effect, of not only that type of business model, but also the technology and techniques of that period. However what must be said is that, even if there is newer and more modern technology, if the this business model is still in place, then not much can be achieved until the business model advances to be able to take the most advantage of the technology that is advancing at such a quick pace.

Aside from this we also see that the beneficiaries are not really benefited, as they suffer the consequences of poorly designed infrastructure that creates detriment, not only to the environment, but also to the humans that inhabit those locations.

Today as society and technology advances we have seen in general we have seen how industrial age institutions and governments that are based and work on the same models have not been able to provide adequate solutions to a modern world.

Today we have seen that the power of the internet has been able create viable collaborative models, that through new communication techniques have been able to not only provide a replacement to old methods of communication, but have been able to surpass them in performance.

This fact is something that can be extended to practically every aspect of life. In fact nowadays, unless we are hermits, it is very difficult to not come into contact with some aspect of this collaboration process where we benefit positively from this, whether it is directly or indirectly. As such, and as society starts engaging this model more and more, often unconsciously, businesses will also follow this path, hence to remain competitive it becomes a prime necessity to be able to not only join this tendency, but the smarter and more successful companies will also have to be leaders in this aspect. Those who fall behind will also see their success affected.

So how does this new business model look like for the industry that is involved in Sustainable Infrastructure? I have come to name it a Wikinomic Business Model as it closely follows, out of necessity this collaboration model.

In the above model we see the appearance of a new element called an Integrated Solution Provider. This new entity is something not really seen before as it is not a traditional supplier, it is not a traditional consultant or designer either, as normally these two parties would normally be separated and segregated, if not for "accidental" reason, but also for transparency. Maybe for the past it was a viable and feasible option, however the situation now no longer allows this, if at the same time one expects to be a market leader, in their respective industry.

So how specifically is this new model applied to the infrastructure industry and it’s associated entities and stakeholders, that interact with it. In the diagram we can see that to a certain extent we are already implicitly seeing the effects of a Wikinomic business model, however this is a situation that has come about more by accident than by purpose.

Though we can say that users, buyers or we could be more general in saying consumers, are the generators as their demand generates the requirement from infrastructure, that the market should demand something could be argued stems back to when Adam Smith had talked about the “invisible hand”. However this not totally true as governments sometimes create artificial situations, in Australia there is a fantastic example to illustrate this: Canberra. The existence or foundation of Canberra is obviously a situation that is not in any way related to an "Invisible Hand", but rather an artificial political decision.

The executors become more integrated as they try to achieve economies of scale, working more as team if not purposefully at least it is done on a practical level with many cases of companies, doing Design and Construct, as well others such as EPC, EPCM, etc…

 

EPC and EPCM do not consider an Integrated Solution Provider within their model, the supplier is external to the “execution”, simply supplying material, if not conforming to a specification in more complex applications given by the designing consultant. If we look at the most “complex” applications in buildings such as elevators, electrical systems, or similar, the supply of these components is done conforming to specifications that are given, there is not that much that  a supplier does to add or multiply value to a project.

That a supplier should also participate in the design of a piece of infrastructure is practically unheard of, again even if were are talking about interesting structural composite elements, at most specific characteristics are taken account such as weight, strength, flexibility, etc… however these aspects are simple compared to systems that have apart from having structural and physical characteristics, that also have influences much beyond these in terms of: water management, HVAC design, energy consumption, biology, the list can go on, it is very difficult for even a multi-disciplinary team to manage, with competence, all of these considerations.

For people involved in the business of the environment or sustainability it is time to simply realize that with what has been done till now, the way projects have been undertaken, they are simply not sustainable at several levels. Trying not to preach to the choir, the equation is very simply, if we want to build infrastructure that is sustainable it has to be precisely that. In a world of finite resources, and where human presence more often than not brings damage to the environment where it is, the objective is very clear.

Today technology is inherently different from what it used to be, and in the case of environmental applications they are much more efficient in many more ways at many more levels. This is not a coincidence though.

In my experience, it has been very difficult to meet a designer that has been able to do justice to the possibilities that integrated environmental applications offer. This even if it passes economic viability evaluation, which one might say should be one of the main factors to consider. Genuine environmental companies have been successful not because they have applications that are good for the environment, they have been successful because they provide cost effective solutions.

The only way then to implement this technology to maximum effect is to do so directly with the people who create the technology.

Though there are obstacles to this model...

There are powerful elements that oppose efficient and effective solutions, that challenge the status quo or that moves someone’s “cheese”.

It is interesting to see that civilisation might be again individually in control of their most basic resources such as water.

I propose a 3rd model of service utility administration, “Consumer Owned Decentralized Solutions”, this is the 3rd iteration, depending on the reference one takes, of how utilities are given to consumers. From the first iteration of centralized state owned distribution services, to the 2nd iteration of these being privatised, today the technology exists for individuals or families to supply themselves with not only water, but also energy. This model is one much more efficient than the previous 2 and it has come about not only because of economic forces, but also environmental and political ones.

The Intellectual Legacy is one that is critical. It often happens, though fortunately, not always, that with more education the more "certain" people become of things, which sometimes are not true, nor good either. The other inherent problem is that the educational model is one that specializes and hence fragments the mind, someone studying water in more depth might learn more about hydraulics and less about botany, geology or soil mechanics though they are fundamental aspects necessary for correct and integral water management. This is not the fault of the student though.

 

Water models where developed at the beginning of the 20th century, which was before modern geosynthetics existed.

They consider Runoff expressed in coefficients, however there exists technology such as what provides has performance that goes beyond simple runoff. An example are some horizontal applications such as a modular cells on a roof garden, this application beyond taking the runoff coefficient from 0.95 to a “worst case” scenario of 0.20 with just grass, also beyond reducing the runoff, once the soil has become “saturated” the hanging water will drop into the cell, this water can also made be made use of, this create another phenomenon I have come to call an “Inverse Compensated Runoff Coefficient”. I have not seen a model yet to incorporate this concept.


Anaerobic digestion is something often portrayed as sustainable. Anaerobic digestion though produces several unsustainable situations, it creates methane that is a greenhouse gas, even if it burnt to produce energy, as it now being done the burning produces carbon dioxide which is again a greenhouse gas. Anaerobic digestion produces sludge, which has to be processed, it can be dried by burning the greenhouse gas methane that the same process provides, however this is very energy intensive, even if the dried sludge is used as fertilizer it still generates a carbon footprint as it transported to where it will be used…It is best to purify water using sustainable techniques that do not produce sludge, that do not produce methane and then carbon dioxide, that do not generate a larger carbon footprint than the already considerable inputs it receives.

In addition to the above we not only have the challenge of the increasing speed of change of technology, but also the integration of this technology is also compounded in its complexity as several factors have to be taken into account for them to be used to maximum efficiency, though the outcomes may be very and extremely simple.

This graph shows how not only the speed of change in terms of technology has increased rapidly, to be able to integrates these leaps in technology. To make maximum use of this technology has become increasingly challenging, though the rewards have also become increasingly beneficial.

One of the reasons we had identified of why the industrial age model occurs, is due to the they way professionals are educated, and then how they are made to work. This till now has been in fragmentation, which is the contrary to collaboration. The closest approximation of collaboration would be a multi-disciplinary team, however this still does not address the core and fundamental aspect that needs to be dealt with. We forget that Universities should teach Universal knowledge, which is why they have that name. This then poses not only a challenge to the industry that makes use of these professionals, but should also engage the education system, at every single level, from national governments down, going to the education providers too.

One of the main sources of the why there is so much of a challenge in terms of being able implement integrated solutions is because the professionals that should design and/or implement them do not have integrated knowledge, the closest thing that can approximate that capacity could be an integrated multi-discipline team, however there is still the challenge of transferring knowledge from the application developers to the designers, and as we have seen this process at this stage can hardly be done quickly enough, and there will be no slowing in pace, only the contrary. As such once more we see the necessity of incorporating Integrated Solution Providers as a fundamental part of a project, through it’s life cycle.

To summarize and conclude then, basically what we see is the necessity for stakeholders in the environmental and sustainable infrastructure industry to understand and then engage in this new business model. This model may not be a perfect one, however it is definitely one much better than the industrial age one, that had or has problems not only in its' functionality but also in its effects.

Enviormental and Sustainable Technology for Export

Was recently interviewed by the Australian Business Funding Centre (www.australiangovernmentgrants.org), as Atlantis has been able to make use of the Export Market Development Grant Scheme (EMDG).

 

The video is quite good, if I may say so myself, because apart of speaking about the government grants, I am also able to talk a bit about our sustainable technology and how we capture and reuse water, using recycled raw materials.

Creating hanging water for more sustainability

One might think that having a few pot plants at home may not have a very big effect in terms of sustainability. In this blog post I want to illustrate several things though. One is that we can have plants that manage water more efficiently, and hence grow better and more vigorously, that not only benefit the home environment, but that this idea is applicable to a much wider scale, and can be applied to whole cities and agriculture.

One would first have to explain what is "hanging water". Hanging water is literally water that hangs, one might think it could be perched water, however this is another concept, and is defined in the following way:
A perched water table (or perched aquifer) is an aquifer that occurs above the regional water table, in the vadose zone. We can illustrate it as in the photo that we see below:

source: http://img.sparknotes.com/figures/3/31ebea601a7d05e9ec8d0854cec9b406/earthscience_f21.jpg

The above situation then is water that sits on top of an impermeable surface. It is not really hanging.

Hanging water, as we had said, is water that hangs.

What does a hanging drop of water on a finger have to do with sustainability and good water management? This is the amazing thing of how small things can have enormous effects, I first understood a bit about this when my electronics professor who was an electronic engineer, like I would later become, loved to explain to his student that the difference between an Electrical Engineer and an Electronic Engineer was that the first can do big things with big voltages, and the the second does it with small voltages, hence having more merit. I cannot help but feel the same sort of thing and draw a simile with water, alas there is no real distinction as yet, to make a differentiation in water related careers. My experience with water engineers and professionals from around the world, shows that there is a tremendous amount of ground to be covered. Water engineering even till today focuses most of there effort on hydraulics managing volumes of water in quantities, paying very little attention to quality of water, and those that look at quality do so often with total disregard of undesired consequences.

Going back to hanging water then...
The fact that the water hangs in this way has tremendous implications in many applications. If the water had not found the end of my finger it would have continued it's journey downwards following the pull of gravity. What we are doing in essence is "conserving water".  If we are able to create similar "fingers" that hang water across vast areas we would be conserving huge amounts of water. How much? Experience has shown up to 76 litres per square metre. Quite a bit and just with a the same effect that a finger has with a drop of water.

The water hangs because it adheres to the surface it is on. This adhesion, that is much related to capillary action, poses a force that exceeds the pull of gravity. This adhesive power can be used to benefit.

The idea then is being able to hang water close to plan root structures, making it immediately available to vegetation. That the water should hangs arrests the "loss" of water travelling further down the soil profile. Water is conserved in the soil profile while it hangs in a state of "ideal" saturation, it is ideal because in the moment it becomes over saturated the hanging water drop will fall, plants will consume as much water as they need.

This hanging water can be created for a practical purpose in a "micro" implementation as is pot plant. One may say that what I am going to show is just another what have become to be called a "self watering pot", to an extent it is, though I think that the name is foolish to begin with. My design however does have a twist.

This is a typical pot for a plant. I am going to convert how we can apply hanging water.

In the base of the pot there are 2 small holes, which I insert with geotextile strips. This is to provide capillary action and a physical connection to the pot tray and the inside of the pot.

Here we can see the geotextile strip on the outside.

The base of the pot is lined with geotextile, this is to provide a layer of capillary action.

One cuts a piece of Atlantis Drainage Cell, to the size of the base of the pot.

The Drainage Cell gets a strip of geotextile for further capillary action.

The piece of Drainage Cell is placed on the bottom of the pot.

The piece of Drainage Cell is covered with another layer of geotextile, this serves the purpose of creating a separation media so that the soil we will add does not fill the drainage cell, and is what provides our much mentioned hanging water.

We fill around the plant with compost, here I very proudly show my own compost bin, where we can clearly see how the vegetable waste gets turned into very nutritive soil. Of course composting is something very sustainable, apart from being economical as one saves money on having to buy potting mix.

Here we can our pot plant ready with and Golden Cane or Areca Palm (Dypsis lutescens).

Here we can see 2 other pots that I had prepared and how the system works. One can observe that instead of thin strip connecting to the tray, I have laid a layer or square piece of geotextile. The plants can "never" be over watered, because as soon as the soil over saturates the excess water falls and is contained in the tray. In the measure that the plant needs water, through the capillary action infrastructure that we have provided, it access "sucks" that water. We have done in essence, for practical effects, is extend the root structure of the plant. On the left is pot where we see that the tray is dry and could with some water. This does not necessarily mean that the soil is dry as it could very well be at its point of saturation, what it does indicate is additional water capacity in the pot.

The ability to control soil humidity to "ideal" levels is something that some agricultural methods use extremely sophisticated sensor technology that then activates watering circuits and so on, here we have in a pot, created a much more effective, simple and sustainable method and technology that should never fail, that has no real moving parts, except for the water, that requires no power.

This sort of technology can be applied on mass scales and has already been done so in examples of roof garden technology. However this technology  that been used almost exclusively for roof gardens has to advance to another level, and that should be into agriculture.

I believe the way we do agriculture has to make its next step, what I would call Natural Sustainable Agriculture. Though one can argue that hydroponics is a step forward in agriculture, it can be said that it makes more efficient use of water, however I personally find few thing s more unsavoury that hydroponically grown tomatoes, that have a texture like plastic, not much colour, and less flavour. There is nothing like a succulent field grown tomato ripened on the stalk bursting with flavour, juice and texture.

To cover a last point and respond a question often asked, and respond to some raised eyebrows when we say that hanging water can mean providing storage of water of 76 litres per square metre. How can this be measured? Very simply, we get box with a base one square metre, on the bottom we put drainage cell, cover it with geotextile, and fill the box with soil media. Obviously the type of soil media will affect the result, but is to provide a typical soil profile that can be sand and organics. The depth could be any depth, but as we already have a reference it can be done with lets say 1 metre depth. We start filling the box with water and measuring the amount of water we are adding. The water should not drop down from the geotextile until it reaches a level of saturation, where the "weight" of the water exceeds that adhesive capacity of the water on the soil media, and capillary action of the same, and eventually a drop will fall. That falling drop will give the water bearing capacity that this concept, or rather implementation of creating hanging water has.

Indigenous Biomass in underground water tanks.

What is indigenous biomass? Biomass has a few acceptions, one of the most simple ones is : "mass of living biological organisms", it also has a connotation from a renewable fuel source perspective. In any case our first definition encompasses this too. The indigenous component of the term comes from the definition: "Originating and living or occurring naturally in an area or environment." So basically we can say that it is life forms that occur naturally, and in the case of this topic, in underground water tanks.

Having defined the above we can discuss about how we can manage Indigenous Biomass to an advantage, as it can have very good or very bad effects on the quality of water.

Why is this question relevant?
It is a frequent question I get related to what happens in underground water tanks being related to appearance of biological matter in the tanks and how it affects the water quality. In addition to this we often get questions associated to the maintenance of the system, in relation to the previous phenomenon. I stress that if a system is properly and correctly designed, it should not require maintenance, this is the first point of a correct Environmental Sustainable Design, if it requires maintenance, it is not sustainable.

Beyond the specific design of a particular project, one obviously needs good components to achieve sustainable outcomes. So once again, we have to look at integral design considerations. In addition to this we have to look at the quality of the water that is going into the system, because no matter how fantastic is our design and the quality of the components, in terms of their functions if we put in water that is beyond the scope of the design we will not have the desired outcomes.

It is often heard and said, that where there is water there will be life. In fact it is not a coincidence that the first thing scientists look for in space exploration, searching for habitable environments, is the presence of water so that it may be able to sustain life.

We can start by saying that water, unless it is contained in sterile conditions, will invariably "generate" biomass. Keeping large amounts of water in sterile conditions is very difficult and not very cost effective. What happens then is a situation that we see very often, water, unless it managed correctly, will become stagnant.

Water as soon as precipitates from the sky, where it is normally free from biological matter, and touches the ground it immediately becomes subject to conditions that can be "good" or "bad" for it's quality. The words good or bad are purposefully subjective. 

We must first define what is good water quality, this is normally done, among other parameters by presence of Fecal Coliforms (FC), Coliforms, E Coli, pH (acidity), Heterotrophic Plate Count, Turbidity, Heavy Metals, BOD, COD, TN, TP, etc...

To be simple in our explanation we can say that water can be kept in two sorts of environments, one that is entropic or one that is negentropic. As entropy is associated with degradation, in this case of water, we should be looking to create a negentropic environment. I have addressed the subject of Negentropy from an ESD perspective in a previous blog post.

The important thing is that if the water enters a negentropic state or environments it becomes subject to a compounding effect that creates a vicious cycle if you wish.

There are things that are not "too" complicated and achieve several desired outcomes can be things like the following:
Keep water underground

Effects: Keeps water temperature low
Keeping water underground normally keeps water cool, unless it close to geothermal active area.

source: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/4/044001/fulltext

In the above graph we see how as we get to a depth of 6 meters underground, temperatures have a tendency towards about 9 degrees C. The largest change happens between 0 and 3 metres depth which is where it is most practical and cost effective to install underground tanks. This is will also important from a physical aspect that I will explain in more detail in the section I explain about capillarity.

From a chemical point of view the importance of temperature is relevant as the cooler the water, the higher the Dissolved Oxygen (DO) capacity that it has.

source: http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/waterq3/WQassess3f.html

The oxygen content is important because, the lower the DO, the higher the probability that anaerobic activity should occur, though paradoxically one could say that this an inevitable consequence anaerobic activity or digestion occurs once the dissolved oxygen has been consumed, which is a consequence of aerobic activity rather than anaerobic, however it can also be observed that aerobic digestion also reduces Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD),  which is something positive.

Aerobic digestion, is often associated to composting, which is a process that creates practically immediately usable by product without any undesirable by products, which is not the same situation with anaerobic digestion which creates sludge and methane. Recent and more modern process have made plants that use this process more efficiently, the methane, which is a green house gas, can be used for heating either to dry sludge or for power generation or even both, but the burning of the methane, produces carbon dioxide too. The management of sludge is also quite a complex process and there is an entire industry dedicated to it, in best cases when process it can be used as fertilizer, or worst case burned, creating a lot of pollution or buried and lost. Aerobic digestion in water treatment also serves to reduce BOD as well as pathogens and other desirable outcomes.

Why is all of this relevant to underground tanks? Very simply because all of these process can occur in underground tanks.

The very temperature also has an effect from a biological perspective on what types living matter can exist in water, in addition to this, the cooler the water the longer that water can remain in better conditions as biological metabolisms are directly affected by temperature, as such the colder the temperature the slower the reproductive cycle.

Effects: Keeps water dark
The effect of keeping water dark is very important, apart from the presence of light being associated with heat, in this case the darkness is important to protect the water from plants that perform photosynthesis. Though photosynthesis can normally considered something positive as it is an oxygen producing process, however this also implies that the plant metabolic process that also requires some measure of oxygen as the plant apart from to photosynthesising also performs cellular respiration, which consumes oxygen, instead of producing it. Aside from this a very common form of algae that may become present in water exposed to light is what is generally named Blue Green Algae or Cyanobacteria, this type of algae poses two main situations that are of interest, one is that it produces toxins which are know as Cyantoxins, which undoubtedly poison water. The other interesting aspects within their robustness is that they are also able to exist not only in aerobic conditions, but also anaerobic conditions, which then presents the problems we had mentioned in the previous point.

source: aims.gov.au

Source: gallery.usgs.gov

 The best thing then is to avoid light.

Provide high surface area to volume ratio
Providing a high surface area to volume ratio does mainly two interesting things.
Effects: More surface area for beneficial biomass
The more surface area one provides the more ability there is to form biofilm. Biofilm is a form of biomass. Biofilm necessarily exists attaching it self to surfaces, hence the more surface area we provide in a determined volume the better it is. If we have the presence of "good" biofilm.

Above is a photo of excavated modular tanks, that where taken out of the ground after 6 years. The tanks were excavated because within the scheme of the Australian Economic Stimulus Plan for schools, this school received funding to construct an additional building and as such relocated the position of the tanks. The case study for the original installation that was done in 2004 can be seen here. What is impressive about these tanks is that having been removed from the ground that they are in impeccable conditions.

What is important then is to explain why the presence of biofilm is good and beneficial for an underground tank system.
 
I have listed below 2 interesting and relevant points from the wikipedia article on biofilm:

• Biofilms can also be harnessed for constructive purposes. For example, many sewage treatment plants include a treatment stage in which waste water passes over biofilms grown on filters, which extract and digest organic compounds. In such biofilms, bacteria are mainly responsible for removal of organic matter (BOD), while protozoa and rotifers are mainly responsible for removal of suspended solids (SS), including pathogens and other microorganisms. Slow sand filters rely on biofilm development in the same way to filter surface water from lake, spring or river sources for drinking purposes. What we regard as clean water is a waste material to these microcellular organisms since they are unable to extract any further nutrition from the purified water.

• Biofilms can help eliminate petroleum oil from contaminated oceans or marine systems. The oil is eliminated by the hydrocarbon-degrading activities of microbial communities, in particular by a remarkable recently-discovered group of specialists, the so-called hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria (HCB).

Effect: Increased capillary action
Capillary action is present for several reasons in correctly designed underground tanks, because of several components that contribute to it.
Sand: Sand has capillary action that occurs because of the granularity of sand. A tank that is correctly designed should be surrounded by an "envelope" of sand. The sand in this case also provides a situation that has a filtration effect that is not only mechanical and physical, but also biochemical as stated from the effect the biofilm has on the sand.
Geotextile: Geotextile as a fabric has capillary action. Below is a photo that shows this effect. A geotextile is a fabric that is made of plastic polymers, that for practical effects, does not biodegrade with time, especially if it is being kept underground. Geotextile should cover the modular tanks so that the sand surrounding the tanks does not enter the tank. In this case it not only serves as the purpose to provide capillary action but also as a separation and filter media.

source: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/PlantBio_p033.shtml

Tank components: Some modular tanks, have flat sides, these flat sides when placed together also creates capillary action. The closer the plates are together, the more pronounced this effect is.

source: http://webapps.lsa.umich.edu/physics/demolab/controls/imagedemobg.aspx?picid=1102

Capillary action has several effects the main one is that it moves water. As capillary action moves the water upwards, against the force of gravity, it eventually reaches a stage where it can not go up any more, at the same time it has more water molecules below it that are pushing up, as they are subject to the same forces of capillarity, however the difference with the situation of the tubes shown in the above photo, is that water in the sand, in the geotextile or between the modules, can "fall off" the tube, or be subject to a situation where as the cooler water from the bottom of the tank which is more dense, enters an area where the water is warmer and hence less dense, this cooler denser water will naturally descend again, until it gets to it's level of homeostasis, and again be subject to the effect of capillary action. This constant movement of water, by definition eliminates the possibility of the water stagnating. In association with this, as water would reach the water surface, it will also be subject to air and as such become aerated, once more increasing the Dissolved Oxygen level.

Comparisons with different types of underground tanks

Having said the above we can say we have found a situation where were create practically ideal conditions for the conservation or storing of water. So one could say that as long as one puts water underground then it should be acceptable. Not so much so, traditionally one of the most common types of underground water storage tanks have been cisterns made of concrete, these can be strong, but have the observation that the have an extremely low surface area to volume ratio, as such, unless external power consuming agitation, aeration devices or chemicals are used the water will go stagnant. The same is true of similar plastic or fibreglass cisterns. Recently there have also been a number systems that use "half pipes" providing void volumes, these have a larger footprint as they cannot be stacked, and are infilled between the half pipe rows with crushed rock or similar, this we could say is better that a traditional concrete cistern, as they are comparatively providing a slightly higher surface area to volume ratio.

As such having made the above analysis, we can see that to have indigenous biomass that is aerobic and beneficial for the water quality we also have to provide a good environment for it to exist. If this is done it can even be said that the quality of water while it remains in such a type of environment will improve with time.

Negentropy from an ESD perspective and its imperative

This topic is a bit extensive to put and completely justify in a blog post, what I would like to do however is to make an introduction into this as I believe that this aspect a critical, fundamental and core to what is both a central to the source and effect of Environmentally Sustainable Design.


Of the literature that currently exists on this topic, most of it revolves around the periphery of how to achieve Sustainable Design, mainly basing it on concepts of renewable resources, both of material and energy, as well as delving into the aspects related to the environmental impact, it should not have.

From a historical perspective there has been some amount written on this topic, a search on Google for "entropy sustainability" return several papers written on the topic, however what is interesting to note is that most of these make reference to the Bruntland Report published in 1987 and make a start from there, some assuming the definitions of sustainability therein described, which was commissioned by the UN. After some papers that appear at the beginning of the 1990s, the topic largely disappears, except for some sporadic papers and constant contributions of Prof. Timothy Gutowski of MIT (Publications).


What I have found though, except those that directly address the topic, is that most of them miss the central base point of how sustainability is achieved. Those that directly address the topic, normally go as far as establishing the nexus between the aspect of Thermodynamics or Entropy and Sustainability, though they do not really elaborate on how to go about designing sustainably with this in mind.

As this is not an academic paper, and my idea is to provide practical and viable contributions to society, not that academic papers do not also do that, but they have another focus I will and give a more practical focus to what is being presented. Another observation is that for everyday purposes, I believe that concepts have to be synthesised so that they are easier understood, as such I prefer to use the word "Negentropy" meaning the inverse or in opposition to what is entropy.

So to summarise, in my view, this is achieved be designing systems that are, or tend towards, establishing Negentropy, from the acception of ESD.

To be able to elaborate on this it is necessary to trace back one's steps though and start with explaining what is Entropy, which is associated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a corollary.

To explain entropy succinctly is not simple, this is my attempt to do so in lay man's terms and how I connect it to ESD: Entropy is manifested when heat flows from hot to cold regions, this heat is molecular agitation and in the measure that we have more agitation there is more disorder in our systems and as such degradation.  

One of the most common examples of entropy is ice melting in a warm room.

source: wikipedia

How do we apply this concept them to ESD? Well, an easy way to do this is in the concept of an urban environment, in a building that uses air conditioning. It is very good as it shows how entropy can be accelerated and what is the alternative as a solution invoking sound ESD principles.

A definition of air conditioning that can be used is: is the removal of heat from indoor air for thermal comfort. Now comes an interesting question where does this heat that was removed go to? Well outside obviously, this hot air, summed to other aspects such as the albedo of reflecting surfaces in urban landscapes, provide a feedback loop that has the effect increasing the temperature difference, making it ever hotter outside due to the increased demand on the air conditioning system to remove "heat from indoor", as the environment indoor is necessarily affected by the outside temperature. This effect is called the Urban Heat Island.

source:wikipedia

So what can be done about this? How can we introduce the concept of Negentropy to create a sustainable design in this environment which can be said is a very typical one where there is human population.

Plants or Flora as Negentropic elements
(please not that the intent of this is to be as illustrative as possible, to go into to details such as excepting archaea, or using terms like autotrophs and heterotrophs extensively, might defeat the purpose of reaching a wider audience.)
Vegetation can be considered as negentropic for several reasons. From the basis of the description of entropy, plants we could say have an effect that is "opposite" of entropy. Among the reasons plants grow we can find, for our purposes, two main ones which would be photosynthesis and the requirement of "heat". When referring to heat we mainly want to imply 2 or 3 conditions. Heat refers to a manifestation of molecular movement, hence one could theoretically say that anything over 0 degrees Kelvin, would be "heat", this is any the formal definition from a physics or chemical perspective. In colloquial terms though heat is a relative term, heat or something being hot could be considered above what has been defined as thermal comfort which is 21 deg C or 70 deg F, and then again it could be whatever anyone wants to define it.

Autotrophs, life forms that "create their own food", need heat to metabolise, this heat is transformed into organic compounds, what today has fashionably been called "carbon sunk" if you wish. This means that in a closed system heat is for practical effects being "absorbed" in an endothermic reaction. This constitutes, we could say and negentropic situation.  

In the case of photosythesis, implying phototrophs, light and in this case we would mean sunlight, we also have a situation where light energy is being transformed again organic compounds. The presence of light is for our purposes associated with the presence of heat, in the measure that heat can be absorbed, photosynthesised, metabolised, is once more for practical effects a negentropic situation.

So as we have elaborated a bit on this basically what are we aiming for here? We have identified 2 aspects that we can work with, heat and light, both of these are forms of energy or E.

Albert Einstein put very well and succinctly quite a few years ago in his formula E=mc². When I was at high school and even later, when I was study to get my degree in engineering, it was a concept a bit difficult to grasp saying that if I have, matter (m) and make it travel at the speed of light (c) squared, then I end up with energy (E). What if we look at it another way, energy can become matter, which is what happens, for our simple purposes, in negentropy. The energy that is heat, is "sunk" in to the carbon structures that these autotrophs metabolize.  

Going back to our air conditioning example, if we were to have plants surrounding the building, on the sides and on top as well as inside, we could do substantially to reduce then the entropy as the plants will be having several effects to break the feedback loop of ever heating the environment.


Water quality
This is another one of the cases that I find interesting. Water is tremendously complex, interestingly enough temperature is not given enough importance as characteristic of water quality, some people do however. The presence of dissolved oxygen (DO) is obviously a critical aspect of water quality, this goes down in the measure that we have more BOD or COD, but also temperature, we could mention some other aspects, but that would possibly be too much detail for the purpose of illustrating a point. "Coincidentally" all of these points are interdependent and related. However the point here is that in the measure that water enters an entropic cycle, where it is heated, it is degraded, remember heat is associated with molecular disorder, it also becomes a more suitable environment for anaerobic lifeforms, which can only further degrade the quality of water, further increasing the BOD and reducing the DO.

What is to be done then? Well water has to be given conditions where it can exist in a negentropic situation. How is that done? Well that is another point that depends on every situation in a different manner.

There are many more aspects that could be discussed that would have relation to how negentropy can positively affect ESD. I look forward to receiving any observations, corrections or questions on this topic.

More reading and references:
Preliminary Thoughts on the Application of Thermodynamics to the Development of Sustainability 
Criteria Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability
Economics,  entropy  and  sustainability
Entropy and Energy: Toward a Definition of Physical Sustainability
 

Some philosophy and culture behind ESD

When I first began working in this industry, what I most did was learning. Everything I did was new, my background was not of one related to the environment, and though I knew quite a bit of related to water management, mainly because on a ship you often find yourself with water rationing and restrictions and the main source of water being desalination, this was definitely not the sort of water management I was used to.

Among the things that struck me was how this was in fact a very young field, from every aspect. Even in my blog header I put " ESD is a relatively new concept in the human conscience.", I wrote that when I first set up the blog and I was thinking to myself: "what do I put here??". I had since thought of changing that to: making a "new" concept in the "western" human conscience... this is possibly more accurate.

Western cultures were more centred on themselves rather than the environment, one talks of an anthropocentric world, true, however but this was supposed to have begun in the renaissance, what of the theocentric world? Well in my opinion, this was also a previous version of a anthropocentric view, where man again placed God at the centre of the universe, and remember that in the Christian tradition man was made in "our image (God's), in our likeness," and then goes on to say "so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Genesis 1:26-27) of God, thus again he puts himself in the centre of the world. Well what has religion and the bible got to do with ESD? Well at the same time, not much and quite a bit. I am not making a religious discussion of this, but rather a cultural one, and this is certainly relevant, because it is the culture that we live in, that is obviously affected and affects the environment.


Why did I suggest the "western" aspect, why because the bible is, we could say for present practical purposes a western document, though more eastern in its origin, and it was the judeo-christian tradition that affected the western culture and for the better part of several centuries, and was the culture that came to dominate the planet, in more ways than one. Now that is obviously changing.


What of other cultures, may be eastern ones, or southern ones, to give or maybe invent some names. I would say that in these cases we see a situation where maybe possibly that was a "better" cohabitation with the environment, however I would argue that this was not necessarily purposeful. One of the great myths that always frustrates me is that how "original inhabitants" where supposed to have lived in closer harmony with nature, however around the world there are innumerable cases of mass extinction once humans arrive, in New Zealand for example with large flightless birds and marsupials, with similar situations in Australia, in Easter Island or Rapa Nui with flora being wiped out, to name a few cases. I would say then, yes, it is something new in the human conscience. No one gets "off the hook", for every story of how "original inhabitants" took care of the land, we can name several of how they did not. The idea is not to point fingers though, we are all universally to blame.


I find, and cannot but think, that again through what we see today, is not really an expression of that we are in fact prioritizing the environment, for the sake of the environment, once again we are doing it for ourselves, for the self preservation of the human species.


Another thing that I invariably find wherever I travel around the world, no matter how fantastic the solutions I propose are for the environment, if they are not economically viable, then they are more than quickly discarded.


At the end of the day, and Environmentally Sustainable Design, still has to be more cost effective than a "traditional" one or it has no place the environment, only very few exceptions exist to this situation, for example tax or government incentives, and even then they are related to economics once again.

The Energy Cost of Gravity in Desalination

Another aspect that I find people tend to "forget" with costs of desalination related to power consumption, is the fact that this water has to be pumped up-hill. This is an unavoidable "cost", there is no way around this if you plan to use desalination, and desalination operation are almost invariable located at sea level. Forget about the immense amount of power required to generate the pressure to push the saline water through the membranes.

Let's take a look at the case of Los Angeles as a possible example. This is a very simple back of the envelope calculation considering that the whole of Los Angeles water supply would to be done through desalinated water, now I know that won't be the case, normally this additional sort of infrastructure is supplementary, remember this is to illustrate a point.

Using the data provided by Los Angeles Department of Power and Water (LADWP) it sold 193 billions of gallons of water to it's consumer in the 2009-2010 fiscal year. Taking the elevation of Los Angeles at 71 m (233 ft) location of the City Hall, as an approximate average for this calculation, calculating just the potential energy in joules required to simply elevate vertically this water, not considering any horizontal transportation or mechanical inefficiencies of pumps, etc... it requires 1.39 TJoules, this corresponds to 16.2 Mega Watts per day. Additionally this does not even consider providing any extra head or mains pressure...

Have in mind additionally that Los Angeles supplies itself with 70% non renewable power sources (http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp000509.jsp) which are only carbon emission producing.

Now this may seem a lot, or maybe not very much, if one considers the cost of which a KWatt/h is sold at. My idea is not evaluate if this is expensive or not, it is to illustrate that there is energy to be spent on something that can be avoided. As a percentage of the total power consumption of Los Angeles it might seem insignificant, however remember this is a pure mathematical physics model.

My simple calculations can be seen here: 
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArEwIvQBUPQzdHROOEcyRUh4cUtiOWNHeHR2Q1lqZFE&hl=en_GB&authkey=CMz5oJMP

No matter how energy efficient you become, there is no way to avoid the energy cost of simple gravity.