Abstract for: Collaborative Mapping for Sustainability: Using Group Model Building to Identify Sustainability Factors in Early-Stage Technology Development

Our study explores the use of GMB as a method to introduce more holistic discussions of sustainability in technology development through stakeholder consultation. Group Model Building (GMB) has been used to support sustainability evaluations for existing systems and technologies and more recently has been applied to identify and prioritize sustainability in product design; this study applies GMB earlier in the technology development process. We describe the design and execution of a GMB workshop for a university research lab developing a new process for the upcycling of municipal organic wastes. The workshop involved faculty and students as well as municipal and industrial stakeholders and focussed on identifying sustainability factors in commercialization of the technology. Pre- and post-survey instruments and the generated diagrams were used to evaluate the impact on participants’ understanding of sustainability. There were 27 participants in the workshop. Participants reported an increase in their understanding of sustainability and described a broadening in their understanding of sustainability beyond the mitigation of environmental harms. Social and economic factors were identified and incorporated into connection circle diagrams. However, the workshop did not allow enough time to get to iterate causal connections, which limited the ability to integrate the identified factors into the process design. GMB shows promise as both a sustainability education vehicle and an enabler of academic-industrial stakeholder consultations in technology development. Further work is planned to continue the GMB process with the current lab as a longitudinal study to evaluate if and how sustainability factors impact research design. Lessons learned from this study will be incorporated in the design of future GMB exercises with other research labs to further evaluate the approach.