Many people are convinced that Sustainable Development and Mathematics are completely unrelated. Sustainable Development, in its role of a value laden imperative for polluting and over-consuming societies, seems to be totally unconnected to mathematical reasoning and ignorant of the values behind its symbols. Still, they are not only connected: they need each other. Mathematics needs Sustainable Development. When science was gradually reinvented in European medieval societies, it was legitimised as contributing to the disclosure of God's divine creation. The conflicts that emerged became well known as a result of the clash between Galileo and the Church. Science found a new legitimacy through recognition that it was a powerful force against superstition. In the Enlightenment the argument was pushed forward by attributing Progress to the advancement of science: science could produce a better world by promoting rationality. In our modern society, science has become intimately linked to technology. Science for its own sake unfortunately rarely has positive outcomes in terms of research grant applications. Meanwhile, science and technology, and the progress they are supposed to produce, meet with wide scale scepticism. We all know of the current global problems: climate change, resource depletion, a thinning ozone layer, space debris, declining biodiversity, malnutrition, dying ecosystems, global inequity, and the risk of unprecedented nuclear wars. Science has to engage with these problems or lose its legitimacy.

The book is mathematically sound and it is written in a way that makes the material accessible for practical researchers without a very strong mathematical background

Autorentext

Dr Józef Bohdan Lewoc was one of the original Polish ICT pioneers and is familiar with many of the others, as colleagues, friends, students and teachers. He was the leading designer for several important projects on Polish computer systema and network applications, particularly in the power system. He has also carried out research on computers systems and networks, both those he developed and others, with a particular focus on performance evaluation and robustness. For the last twelve years Bohdan has been involved in investigation of ethical and human behaviour aspects of the information and communication technology and automation. He has a one-person research and translation firm BPBIT Leader LLC. He is a chartered electronic engineer and a chartered mathematician (with distinction). He has 280 publications. Previous books include a monograph in English and Polish on Performance Evaluation Problems for Actual Computer Networks and book chapters Engineering Ethics Problems in a Developing Country and Human Behaviour Case Studies for the ICT and Automation Industry in Poland. Dr Marion Hersh is a senior lecturer in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Glasgow. She is both a chartered engineer and a chartered mathematician with a first degree in mathematics and a PhD in control engineering. She currently carries out interdisplinary research in assistive technology, disability studies, engineering ethics and accessible and sustainable design. Her previous books include Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability, Mathematical Modelling for Sustainable Development and two books on Assistive Technology, for blind and deaf people respectively. She set up and convenes the Working Group on Ethics of the International Federation of Automatic Control and has published articles and has published journal articles on narrative ethics, stereotyping and ethics, whistleblowing and barriers to engineering ethics. She has organised several invited sessions on engineering, technology and ethics. She has organised and chaired a series of six international conferences on Assistive Technology for People with Hearing and Sight Impairments, an international conference on Using New Technologies for Inclusive Learning, and an international conference on Barriers and Enablers to Learning Maths, with another planned for 2017. She recently researched the travel experiences and need for new technologies of blind, visually impaired and deaf-blind people in 10 different countries on a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship and is currently researching the experiences of autistic women. Her assistive technology development projects include a communication glove for deaf-blindpeople, smart travel aids for blind people and devices to support leisure travel for blind people. She has developed a three-component model of the causes of conflict, a three-component model of the travel processes of blind people and a classication and evaluation framework for ICT-based learning technologies for disabled people and co-developed the Comprehensive Assistive Technology (CAT) model. Dr Hersh is a member of Scientists for Global Responsibility and vice-chair of the International Federation of Automatic Control Working Group Tecis 9.5. She speaks eight languages fluently and has basic to moderate knowledge of a number of others, including British Sign Language.

Inhalt
Sustainable Development: An Overview.- Holistic Approaches and Systems Methodologies.- to Systems Ideas.- Engineering Mathematics Representations.- State Space System Representations.- Mental Models, Sense Making and Risk.- Systems Methodologies.- Case Study: Reduction of Domestic Waste.- Decision Making and Multi-Criteria Optimisation.- Optimisation.- Mathematical Background to Decision Making.- Multi-Criteria Problems.- Multi-Criteria Decision Support Methods.- Case Study: Waste Management Options.- Fuzzy Systems.- to Fuzzy Sets.- Fuzzy Set Operations.- Augmented, Intuitionistic & Type 2 Fuzzy Sets.- Augmented Fuzzy Set Ordering Algorithm and Third Order Augmented Fuzzy Sets.- Case Study: Transport Decision Making.- Looking Back and Moving Forward.