Whole System Design: An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Engineering

After is seminar on "Advances in Climate Change Mitigation", Michael Smith handed me a copy of his new book "Whole System Design: An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Engineering" (Earthscan, 2009) to review. This is intended as a textbook for a course on how engineers can approach creating more sustainable systems by taking a broader approach. There is accompanying online material. However, this broad approach has its problems when narrow specialities are involved. I only felt qualified to look at one chapter of the book on "Electronics and Computer Systems". This is a good worked example of how to optimise energy savings in a system. However, the rest of the book will not be of much interest to ICT people. Of more use to specialists than the book are the online versions of the material.

The book may be of value to those undertaking cross disciplinary studies, such as in Au course "Unravelling Complexity" UGRD3001.