253:. Transition Engineering recognizes that the analytical methods of strategic analysis over a life-cycle time-frame are at odds with most economic analyses that discount values with time. The strategic analysis carried out by Transition Engineers seeks to avoid stranded investment by recognizing resource risks. A classic example of stranded investments is the North Atlantic Cod Fishery – where the largest number of bottom trawling ships (e.g. those ships responsible for destroying the Cod spawning beds) were manufactured in the year that the fish stocks collapsed. The Global Association for Transition Engineering is registered charity number 1166048, registered with the UK Charity Commission on 14 March 2016. It is a "Charitable Incorporated Organisation" or CIO.
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to adapt to reducing fossil fuel and other unsustainable resources. Transition
Engineering is a change management discipline. Like Safety Engineering, Transition Engineering uses and audit and stock-take of current system design and operation to quantify the risks to essential activities and resources over a time-frame of study. The time-frame of study should be commensurate with the lifetime of the assets involved in the activity. An activity is anything that the engineered system supports, for example manufacturing, sewage treatment, mobility, or
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conditions have changed sufficiently from the conditions of the past. For example, the projection of future oil supply in 2050 from data prior to 2005 would give an expectation of a 50% increase in demand over that time-frame. However, the actual production rate of conventional oil has not increased since 2005 and is projected to decline by more than 50% by 2050.
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staff. They can also be engineered change projects. The trigger event for safety engineering was the “Triangle shirtwaist factory fire.” (reference) The challenge is to communicate the advantages and benefits of adaptive change, and to initiate a disruptive event that enables an organization to get out of the rut. See
102:. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ran past the "climate safe" 350 ppm range in the 1990s, and has now exceeded 420ppm, a level that Earth has not known for 800,000 years. Transition engineering aims to take advantage of the current access to the remaining lower cost and higher
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that is the purpose of safety engineering. We do not necessarily know what a perfectly safe system looks like, but we do know what unsafe systems look like and how to improve them; the same applies to unsustainability of systems. By reducing unsustainability issues we take steps in the right direction
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GATE opened the first group in the UK in Feb 2014. GATE is a
Professional Engineering Institution; a membership association and learned society, and comprises an emerging network of engineers and non-engineers that share the idea that engineers are responsible for changing engineered systems in order
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History: First, historical data are gathered and historical trends understood in cultural and political contexts. All historical aspects of the system are considered. Transition
Engineering investigates the effects that technology and social developments have on energy and resource demand. How did we
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As safety engineering manages the risks of unsafe conditions, transition engineering manages the risks of unsustainable conditions. To give engineers a better grasp of sustainability, transition engineering defines the problem as UN-sustainability. This is similar to the problem of un-safe conditions
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Since 2015, Transition
Engineering has been taught at the university level in a range of full courses, workshops, guest lectures and seminars. Courses have been held in Grenoble INP, France; Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany; University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany; Bristol University, UK;
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The
Transition Engineering method involves seven steps to help engineers develop projects to deal with changing unsustainable activities. As a discipline, Transition Engineering recognizes that "Business as Usual" projections of future scenarios from past trends are not valid because the underlying
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Published in Nov 2019 by CRC Press, Taylor & Francis The textbook sets out the premise, processes, methods and tools of
Transition Engineering. The book includes the perspective stories that Professor Susan Krumdieck has used for sensemaking around wicked problems of change to downshift fossil
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and resource scarcity. Transition
Engineers apply the science of climate change, petroleum geology, ecology, hydrology etc. to describe the "forward operating environment". Determining the probability of each future outcome creates a future operating environment envelope. This gives engineers and
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Trigger Events: Although existing systems carry a large amount of inertia, if the right trigger is applied at the right time, a great amount of change is possible. Triggers can be either disastrous events such as economic collapse, or external changes such as a corporate merger, new law, or new
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Path Break
Concepts: Innovation takes place in this step when current assumptions about behavior and economics are set aside in favor of consideration of the forward operating environment at the end-point of the time-frame of study. The TE innovator places him/herself in the future and uses the
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techniques during WWII and the need to confirm the quality of the products. When engineered systems must change, either due to failure risks, obsolescence or modernisation, change management is a well-known process. Transition
Engineering is focused on identifying the unsustainable aspects of
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In 2014 the engineering text book, "Principles of
Sustainable Energy Systems" by Professor Frank Kreith, featured Chapter 13 on Transition Engineering. In 2017, Transition Engineering was invited for Chapter 32 the book "Energy Solutions to Combat Global Warming". In 2019, a full text on the
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Shift Projects: Finally, by planning for future supply and demand, change projects are realized to make best use of the current available resources. Through these projects, society will be more resilient to peak oil and climate change
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Recognition of the field of Transition Engineering and Energy Transition Engineering started in 2010 when the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Prestige Lecture in NZ was given by Associate Professor
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currently operational engineered systems, innovating the projects that down-shift the unsustainable energy, material, environmental and social aspects, and then carrying out an inclusive change management process.
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fuels. Professor Krumdieck was awarded Queens New Years Honours in 2021 with New Zealand Order of Merit for her research, teaching and publication of the book. The book is also popular with non-technical readers.
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Present: This step assesses the current situation. All current capabilities, investments, assets and condition/age of the assets, and liabilities are considered. Energy use is audited and its end-use behavior is
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provided much of the inspiration for transition engineering. At the beginning of the 1900s, business owners viewed workplace safety as a wasted investment and politicians were slow to change. After the
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at University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and Heriot-Watt University, Scotland. In 2020 the first on-line courses were offered continuing professional development for engineers and other professionals.
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discipline that deals with the application of the principles of science to the design, innovation and adaptation of engineered systems that meet the needs of today without compromising the
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Backcasting: The path break concepts are analysed to see how they differ from the current situation. In this step, the barriers and strategies to change existing systems are also analysed
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Krumdieck, Susan; Page, S.; Dantas, A. (2010). "Urban form and long-term fuel supply decline: A method to investigate the peak oil risks to essential activities".
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killed 156 trapped workers, 62 engineers came together to investigate how to make the workplace a safer place to be. This eventually lead to the formation of the
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options. Engineers are ethically required to "hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public" and answer society's need for sustainable development
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Future: Scenarios from all areas of study are considered to get a consensus view of both inertial trajectories of current trends, and limitations of
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energy resources to re-develop all aspects of urban and industrial engineered systems to adapt as fossil fuel use is dramatically reduced.
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movement provided further inspiration as it showed that there were many groups of people around the world motivated to prepare for
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methodologies and principles of transition engineering was published, "Transition Engineering, Building a Sustainable Future".
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There are two serious problems driving the emergence of Transition Engineering; the exponential growth in the concentration of
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The idea behind transition engineering originated from many different roots, both technical and non-technical. The concept of
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is an expected consideration in design, operation and end use. Transition Engineering aims for a similar consideration of
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Engineering professions emerge when new technologies, new problems or new opportunities arise. This was the case when
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future design constraints to come up with realistic and workable concepts. The path-break concept is not futuring.
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demonstrate the need for engineers to build systems that manage un-sustainable risks and provide people with
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Krumdieck, Susan (2010). "The Survival Spectrum, the key to Transition Engineering of Complex Systems".
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and the lack of growth and imminent decline of conventional oil production sometimes characterised as
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grew in the early 1900s to combat the high workplace injury and fatality rates. In the 1960s,
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Transition Engineering of Urban Transportation for Resilience to Peak Oil Risks
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on which future generations will depend to meet their own needs. Today
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was a driving force in the development of transition engineering. The
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get to where we are now? Why are we here? What factors put us here?
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decision makers constraints with varying levels of risk.
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Transition Engineering: Building a Sustainable Future
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Transition Engineering, Building a Sustainable Future
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Global Association for Transition Engineering (GATE)
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Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
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