We’re happy to share that 3 BiSSL papers, written by 4 BiSSL researcher students, have been accepted for publication and presentation in Boston, MA in August at IDETC-CIE 2023.

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BiSSL alum Samuel Blair, in collaboration with our Georgia Tech partners Dr. Julie Linsey and Claire Crose, has a paper accepted to the Design Theory and Methodology division titled “Measuring the Health of Makerspaces During Large Disruptions Such as the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

As the popularity of makerspaces and maker culture has skyrocketed over the past two decades, numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the benefits of makerspaces for university students and how to best establish an inclusive, welcoming environment in these spaces on college campuses. However, unprecedented disruptions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have the potential to greatly affect the way that students interact with makerspaces and the benefits that result. In this study, a survey asking about prior makerspace involvement, tool usage, and student demographics was administered to students who use academic makerspaces at two large public universities. Survey data was collected for three semesters (Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and Spring 2022) and spanned both during and after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. To quantify the differences between the semesters, nestedness and connectance metrics inspired by ecological plant-pollinator networks were utilized. These ecological metrics allow for the structure of the interactions of a network to be measured, with nestedness highlighting how students interact with tools and connectance with the quantity of student-to-tool interaction. The network analysis was used to better gauge the health of the makerspace and the type and frequency of interactions between tools. The raw survey data combined with the ecological metrics provided unique insight into the struggles the makerspaces encountered throughout the pandemic. It was found that nestedness, a measure of system stability, decreases with a decrease in tool usage. Additionally, the higher the connectance the more students interacted with the space. Utilizing metrics such as these and better understanding student tool interactions can aid makerspaces in monitoring their success and maintaining a healthy and welcoming space, as well as tracking the current health of the space. In combination with the survey results, a deep understanding of what challenges the space is facing can be captured.

Crose, C., S. Blair, A. Layton, and J. Linsey. (2023) “Measuring the Health of Makerspaces During Large Disruptions such as the COVID-19 Pandemic.” ASME 2023 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC-CIE). Boston, MA, USA.

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BiSSL Ph.D. students Hadear Hassan and Emily Payne collaborated on the paper titled “Quantifying the Sustainability and Robustness of Manufacturing Systems Using Energy and Ecological Network Analyses,” to be presented by Hadear in August in the Design For Manufacturing and Life Cycle division (DFMLC).

Global issues, such as supply chain disruptions, have increased awareness of the importance of manufacturing systems being able to quickly bounce back from disturbances. This necessary response is in addition to the importance of mitigating climate change, maintaining market competitiveness, and eliminating unnecessary waste. Two analysis types are compared here: 1) a thermodynamic exergy analysis to quantify a manufacturing system’s energy and material efficiency and 2) an ecological network analysis as a quantitative representation of the system’s sustainability and robustness. Several manufacturing structures, including different processes ranging from the traditional to advanced, like injection molding and binder jetting, are examined in terms of the system response to changes. The findings indicate that the thermodynamic approach efficiently evaluates the efficacy of energy and resource conversion to create a final product. The ecological network approach was also found to provide useful insights on both the environmental efficiency of the systems as well as the resilience. These results are useful when combined for suggesting system layouts and operations that holistically improve a manufacturing system’s design. The findings indicate that existing manufacturing infrastructure needs to be redesigned to better withstand and recover from unforeseen disruptions. Introducing features such as recyclability and combining multiple types of manufacturing processes can enhance the overall resilience of the system. The work suggests that the bio-inspired systems analysis approach when coupled with connectivity and energy-related factors can lead to enhanced manufacturing system designs.

Hassan, H., E. Payne, and A. Layton. (2023) “Quantifying the Sustainability and Robustness of Manufacturing Systems Using Energy and Ecological Network Analyses.” ASME 2023 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC-CIE). Boston, MA, USA.

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BiSSL Ph.D. student Emily Payne and undergraduate alum Hannah Wagner collaborated on the paper titled “Resilience and Sustainability in Certified Green Buildings: Applying Ecosystem Concepts to Aid in More Dynamic Green Communities,” to be presented by Emily in August in the Design For Manufacturing and Life Cycle division (DFMLC).

Sustainable and resilient buildings ensure safety and lifespan while also benefiting the environment. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is one respectable certification that many buildings can receive to ensure that they are meeting future climate and energy goals. However, LEED buildings have credits that do not necessarily agree with creating a sustainable environment. When comparing the orientation of LEED points and their relationship to the building and community to ecological structures, we found that a rearrangement of categories can provide visualization for organized recycling and higher cyclicity through ecological network applications. This relationship was applied to a new scorecard which has results indicating that if designers choose to meet criteria where one credit in each grouping is implemented in construction, then a sustainable building can still be efficient as well as recognized as a green building.  

Payne, E., H. Wagner and A. Layton. (2023) “Resilience and Sustainability in Certified Green Buildings: Applying Ecosystem Concepts to Aid in More Dynamic Green Communities.” ASME 2023 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC-CIE). Boston, MA, USA.

Abheek Chatterjee and Luis Rodriguez are presenting their first-authored papers at the annual CSER conference hosted by Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. The conference is centered around “Systems Engineering Toward a Smart and Sustainable World.”

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Urban water distribution networks have provided potable water to communities and households worldwide over the last century. Within the last two decades, there has been a rise in complications with water distribution systems meeting demands. Urban water distributions fail to meet demands due to increases in natural and man-made disturbances, population growth, and aging water distribution network structures. These issues have caused urban water distribution system designers and decision-makers to shift their interests from focusing solely on efficiency to designs capable of meeting customer potable water demands under normal operations and during disturbances. Ecology, specifically biological ecosystems, provides system resilience inspiration, taken from their structure and functioning that has survived disturbances over millions of years. The work here investigates mimicking the decentralization of food webs to improve network resilience by incorporating decentralized water storage tanks, using the established Two Loop Network (TLN) as a case study. TLN is an introductory water network provided by the University of Exeter for system engineers and designers to test optimization and exploratory techniques. The case study was selected due to its simplistic design which allowed the authors to understand the effects of decentralizing the network toward improving its ability to handle disruptions. The findings suggest decentralization can improve the water network resilience a minimum of three times as much as the original network’s design. Furthermore, introducing decentralization was also found to increase the system’s ability to meet the demand for all nodes during disruptions, something the original case was unable to accomplish while simultaneously reducing the amount of freshwater consumed during disruptions.

(2023) Rodriguez, L.; A. Chatterjee; A. Layton. “Ecological Decentralization for Improving the Resilient Design of Urban Water Distribution Networks.” 21st Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER). Hoboken, New Jersey, USA.

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A microgrid is a localized energy grid that can disengage from the traditional grid and operate independently. Microgrids can be conceptualized as System of Systems: networked integration of constituent systems that together achieve novel capabilities. Improving resilience (the ability to survive and recover from disruptions) and reducing the cost of energy are critical considerations in microgrid design. However, microgrid resilience evaluation techniques require explicit disruption models – information that is not readily available in the early design stages. Therefore, these models cannot inform early-stage design decisions when changes can be made affordably. Recent research has indicated that Ecological Network Analysis is a promising tool for the design of resilient and affordable System of Systems. However, this approach has not yet been tested as a tool for microgrid design. This work provides an adapted Ecological Network Analysis framework that accounts for two unique architectural features of microgrids: (a) energy storage, and (b) integration of different types of energy generation technology. The Ecological Network Analysis based assessment of microgrid architectures is compared against their resilience and cost of energy evaluations using a state-of-the-art tool. The results of the comparison provide support for the use of Ecological Network Analysis as a reliable early-stage decision-support tool for resilient microgrid design.

(2023) Chatterjee, A.; A. Bushagour; A. Layton. “Resilient Microgrid Design Using Ecological Network Analysis.” 21st Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER). Hoboken, New Jersey, USA.

Ph.D. candidate Abheek Chatterjee presented two student-led papers at this year’s IDETC-CIE conference. BiSSL MS student alum Tyler and Abheek collaborated on the paper “Exploring the Effects of Partnership and Inventory for Supply Chain Resilience Using an Ecological Network Analysis,” presented to Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle (DFMLC). Abheek also collaborated with undergraduate alum Cade Helbig and Dr. Rich Malak on the paper “A Survey of Graph-Theoretic Approaches for Resilient System of Systems Design,” presented to System Engineering and Information Knowledge Management (SEIKM).

BiSSL MS student Tyler Wilson and Ph.D. student Abheek Chatterjee have had two papers accepted to ASME’s 2022 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE2022). The papers will be presented in St. Louis, Missouri in August.

Tyler and Abheek collaborated on the paper “Exploring the Effects of Partnership and Inventory for Supply Chain Resilience Using an Ecological Network Analysis,” submitted to Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle (DFMLC).

Abheek collaborated with undergraduate Cade Helbig and Dr. Rich Malak on the paper “A Survey of Graph-Theoretic Approaches for Resilient System of Systems Design,” submitted to System Engineering and Information Knowledge Management (SEIKM).

A collaborative paper with Dr. Julie Linsey at Georgia Institute of Technology, led by BiSSL Ph.D. student Samuel Blair and co-written with MS student Garrett Hairston, has been accepted to the 2022 ASEE Conference & Exposition. The paper, titled “Modularity Analysis of Makerspaces to Determine Potential Hubs and Critical Tools in the Makerspace,” was accepted to the Design in Engineering Education Division. The conference will be held in Minneapolis, MN at the end of June.

Abstract: Globally, universities have heavily invested in makerspaces. Purposeful investment however requires an understanding of how students use tools and how tools aid in engineering education. This paper utilizes a modularity analysis in combination with student surveys to analyze and understand the space as a network of student-tool interactions. The results show that a modularity analysis is able to identify the roles of different tool groupings in the space by measuring how well tool groups are connected within their own “module” and their connection to tools outside of their module. A highly connected tool in both categories is considered a hub that is critical to the network. Poorly connected tools indicate insignificance or under utilization. Makerspaces at two universities were investigated: School A with a full-time staff running the makerspace and School B run by student-volunteers. The results show that 3D printers and metal tools are hubs at School A and 3D printers, metal tools, and laser cutters are hubs at School B. School B was also found to have a higher overall interaction with all the tools in the space. The modularity analysis results are validated using two-semesters worth of student self-reported survey data. The results support the use of a modularity analysis as a way to analyze and visualize the complex network interactions occurring within a makerspace, which can support the improvement of current makerspaces and development of future makerspaces.

Blair, Samuel, Henry Banks, Garrett Hairston, Julie Linsey, and Astrid Layton. 2022. “Modularity Analysis of Makerspaces to Determine Potential Hubs and Critical Tools in the Makerspace.” ASEE 2022 Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.

Three BiSSL students had conference papers presented at the 2021 International Design Engineering Technical Conference!

Ph.D. candidate Abheek Chatterjee and MS student Tyler Wilson presented their paper on modifying bio-inspired system design methodologies for supply chains, enabling the impact of storage to be considered when applying resilience characteristics from nature. Their paper was presented on Tuesday, August 17 in the Design Theory and Methodology session DTM-04 Design Research: Empirical and Experimental Studies.

MS student Garrett Hairston presented his paper, which focuses on using a system perspective to develop net zero design guidelines for multi-use (industrial, residential, commercial) communities from biological food webs, on Thursday, August 19 in the Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle session DFMLC-08-01/DAC-20-01: Modeling and Optimization for Sustainable Design and Manufacturing.

Three BiSSL students have had conference papers accepted to the 2021 International Design Engineering Technical Conference! Ph.D. candidate Abheek Chatterjee and MS student Tyler Wilson have co-authored a paper on modifying bio-inspired system design methodologies for supply chains, enabling the impact of storage to be considered when applying resilience characteristics from nature. MS student Garrett Hairston has had his first, first-authored paper accepted that focuses on using a system perspective to develop net-zero design guidelines for multi-use (industrial, residential, commercial) communities from biological food webs.

Abstract: “Supply chain policies and design efforts are traditionally focused on efficiency objectives such as reducing operational costs. With the occurrence of the most devastating pandemic in decades and the continually increasing prevalence of natural disasters, this focus has been challenged, and the need to focus on supply chain resilience has become apparent. Achieving long-lasting sustainable development in supply chains requires a balance of efficiency-focused measures that enhance economic and environmental sustainability and resiliency measures. Ecological Network Analysis has revealed a unique balance between pathway efficiency and redundancy in ecosystems’ network architecture. This enables both efficient operations under normal circumstances and resilience to perturbations. This same analysis can be used to evaluate the balance of sustainability and resilience in supply chain networks, providing insights into what kind of supply chain design and policy decisions lead to more ecosystem-like architectures. This study lays the groundwork for such efforts by studying four supply chain topologies (formed by prevalent supply chain strategies) using ENA. Inventory (storage) is not well understood in the typical flow analysis used in ENA but is an essential facet of supply chain design and must be included in a supply chain analysis. This study overcomes this limitation by proposing a method to include inventory in the ENA framework. The analysis conducted revealed two significant insights: (a) the agile supply chain strategy is the most ecologically similar and (b) it is possible that there are optimal inventory levels (given partnership strategies) to utilize bio-inspiration in supply chain design.”

Wilson, Tyler, Abheek Chatterjee, and Astrid Layton (2021) “Developing a Supply Chain Modeling Approach to Facilitate Ecology-Inspired Design for Sustainability and Resilience.” ASME 2021 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering Conference, virtual, August.

Abstract: “Much emphasis is placed on the role of Net Zero Communities (NZCs) in achieving a sustainable future. Systems research on the topic, including the application of bio-inspired techniques already used on other human networks, is currently hindered by the lack of case studies documenting the structure and quantity of energy, water, and waste flows within realistic NZCs. This work proposes and preliminarily tests a method of generating a database of hypothetical-realistic NZCs by expanding the system boundaries for well-documented Eco-industrial Park (EIP) networks. The expansion includes residential and commercial actors from the community surrounding the EIP. Past studies using Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) to improve the environmental and economic performance of these EIPs have resulted in a quantitative database of case studies. Combining these industrial hubs to nearby residential, commercial, agricultural, etc. actors can generate potential multi-use networks on which similar design work can be conducted. Three EIP to NZC cases are generated and analyzed focusing on their system structure. Cyclicity, an ENA metric used to quantify the presence and complexity of cyclic pathways in a network, has been shown to promote the efficient use of resources in both biological and human networks. Cyclicity values for the original EIP networks, the community additions, and the potential NZC case studies reveals that there are many meaningful interactions that occur between actors that are only visible once the system boundaries are expanded to the NZC level. This offers a glimpse into the potential benefits of approaching the NZ problem, and sustainable living more generally, on a system scale – an analysis that will be further enabled by the generation of an NZC database initiated by this work.”

Hairston, Garrett, and Astrid Layton (2021) “An Eco-Industrial Park-Based Method for Net Zero Community Creation.” ASME 2021 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering Conference, virtual, August.

BiSSL MS student Samuel Blair has had his first, first-authored conference paper accepted to the American Society of Engineering Education 2021 annual conference! The conference was to be held in Long Beach, CA but unfortunately has since shifted to an entirely virtual format. The paper is titled “Bipartite Network Analysis Utilizing Survey Data to Determine Student and Tool Interactions in a Makerspace” and is a collaborative work with our partners at Georgia Institute of Technology, Dr. Julie Linsey and her MS student Henry Banks. The conference will take place July 26-29, 2021.

Abstract: “Engineering makerspaces are a powerful new tool in the educators’ toolbox. A growing body of empirical data demonstrates their benefits to student learning, but more needs to be done to ensure they meet their full potential. Analyzing the design of these spaces to maximize student tool interactions and identify barriers to entry supports goals for these spaces to be inclusive environments were all students are comfortable. The representation of student interactions with tools in a graph form enables analysis on the tools by mapping combinations between tools and shared student. The bipartite model of the network allows for students to be the “actors” while the tools are the “events” that students interact with. Using the one way interaction allows for a matrix simplifying the complex interactions in the space. The matrix can then be manipulated to yield important information about makerspaces. The results of this ongoing research propose advice regarding what tools and tool types are the most accessible to students, primarily high interaction tools such as basic 3D printers and handheld tools. Utilizing the analysis can also reveal how tools depend on higher interaction tools such as the advanced forms of 3D printing, as well as what student groups have may need extra support or outreach to increase their inclusion.”

Blair, S., Banks, H., Linsey, J., & Layton, A. (2021). Ecosystem Modularity as a Guide for Makerspaces Evaluations. Paper presented at the ASEE 2021 Conference & Exposition, virtual.