THE environmental challenges we face every day are fundamentally failures of design: They represent unintended consequences of design decisions made with the best intentions. Climate change, resource depletion, water scarcity and other global environmental challenges all need to be addressed through breakthrough technologies and new business models.
Take clean tech for example, it helps accelerate innovation and address some of the world's most pressing environmental challenges. Clean tech companies sell technology products and services that solve environmental problems, ranging from traffic monitoring solutions to bioplastics made from sewage sludge to new solar cell technology.
These innovations offer the promise of creating a more sustainable world while transforming our economy. Pushing out clean tech efforts in the region is Singapore. Following a February 2011 launch in Japan since the programme's introduction in July 2009, Singapore is the second country in the Asia Pacific region to be offered Autodesk's Clean Tech Partner Programme.
The programme brings advanced design technology to help clean tech entrepreneurs and pioneers bring their ideas to market faster and more cost-effectively. Autodesk hopes that more countries in the region will follow suit driving the growth and development of the clean tech industry.
In Malaysia, as we are still very much dependent on resources such as oil and gas, if renewable energy sources are not developed and diversified, it is expected that our natural resources will be depleted in the decades to come. The clean tech industry in Malaysia is an emerging sector and there is an opportunity for it to grow with the potential to become a dynamic force in our economy and to accelerate Malaysia to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly country.
In May last year, the Malaysian Prime Minister announced the Government's plan for a "green economy." This initiative is focused on green technology, environmentally sustaining projects, and smart cities and villages that offer widespread access to clean, efficient services. "Green economy" is set to coincide with Malaysia's Economic Transformation Programme that aims to make Malaysia a green, developed economy by 2020. Malaysia is expecting RM70bil in revenue and the creation of 52,000 jobs for the economy from this industry by that year.
It's up to us
Current advances in 3D design technology point to a future - one in which design teams can more easily and accurately understand the full environmental implications of what they are designing, so they can optimise their design to reduce its impacts.
Eighty per cent of a product's environmental impact is fixed in the design phase. As a result, small improvements early in the design process can have a big impact on the planet. We now have tools at our fingertips that integrate ecological impact into the design process. The computer can now help us optimise across different parameters that we choose.
As design decisions are made, harmful materials are flagged, alternatives proposed, and the relative environmental impact of each decision shows up on a dashboard - designers can focus on what they do best, without needing to develop specific expertise in eco-materials choices.
These same techniques are useful for improving existing buildings. Today, there are 200 million buildings globally that are leaking energy. People with little or no design background, such as a facility manager managing the carbon footprint of a portfolio of buildings, can model existing buildings and understand where the greatest renovation and retrofit opportunities lie.
Conducting an energy analysis connected to weather data, the facility manager can prioritise projects with the greatest efficiency opportunities, carbon gains or renewable potential.
Design is about improving the systems all around us - from products to buildings, and even whole cities. With sophisticated analysis and data integrated into 3D modelling software, environmental data is becoming widely accessible, so it can be used to make more informed design decisions. Now, designers can quickly understand and quantify the upstream and downstream environmental impacts of their decision and start to rethink their designs to make better, more sustainable choices.
The technology is here; it is up to us to redesign our future.
(Tan Choon Sang is country manager of Autodesk Malaysia. He has more than 20 years experience in the IT industry.)