SEAD Courses

Sustainability in Eng & Design: Critical analysis of the importance of energy to society, the unsustainability of the current energy system, and potential options for a sustainable energy system. Topics include: peak oil and climate change, fundamental energy metrics, traditional and alternative primary and secondary power systems, and energy storage technologies. Quantitative energy analysis is applied to a set of case studies investigating energy use, energy generation, and energy storage and transport.

Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design

• (3-0-9)
• Prerequisite: Permission of instructor.
• Restrictions: Restricted to students registered in the Faculty of Engineering (including the School of Architecture and the School of Urban Planning).
• Not open to undergraduate students in Chemical Engineering.

• Terms
  • Fall 2023
• Instructors
  • Jeffrey M Bergthorson

Sustainability in Eng & Design: Climate resilience and sustainability of engineering systems such as the built environment and engineering infrastructure in the context of a changing climate, possible mitigation and adaptation strategies and associated challenges and opportunities. Review of the basic principles that underpin the science of climate change; the role of global and regional climate models in predicting the behaviour of the climate system in response to different forcing scenarios, and the use of climate model outputs in support of across scale climate-resilience of various engineering systems including infrastructure systems.

Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design

• (3-0-6)
• Restrictions: Restricted to students registered in the Faculty of Engineering (including the School of Architecture and the School of Urban Planning).

• Terms
  • Fall 2023
• Instructors
  • Laxmi Sushama

Sustainability in Eng & Design: Introduction to Life Cycle-Based Environmental Footprinting and the application of basic methods for life-cycle environmental inventory and impacts modeling. LCA theory and quantitative analysis, approaches for assessing and reducing the environmental impacts of product, process, and technology systems. System boundary and functional unit design approaches, process-based and input-output-based methods for modeling mass and energy flows in life-cycle systems. How LCA can facilitate sustainable technology innovation and deployment, behavioural and societal changes, and policies, standards and regulations.

Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design

• (3-0-6)
• Restrictions: Restricted to students registered in the Faculty of Engineering (including the School of Architecture and the School of Urban Planning).

• Terms
  • Fall 2023
• Instructors
  • Sarah Jordaan

Sustainability in Eng & Design: Micro and macroeconomics of sustainability, market structures, principles of substitution, market failures and externalities, monetization and pricing of externalities. Policy instruments, permits and licenses, mandates, incentives, penalties, taxation and eco-social principles, mechanism design, the principles of life cycle analyses and the circular economy. Impact of engineering on ecological and economic sustainability.

Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design

• (3-0-6)
• Restriction: Only open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register with permission of the instructor.

• Terms
  • Winter 2024
• Instructors
  • Gary Ng

Sustainability in Eng & Design: Industrial ecology theory, concepts, normative goals and analytical methods. Material and energy flows, environmental impacts of industrial activities, systems thinking, transitioning from linear to closed loop systems, recent contributions to sustainable product systems, urban metabolism, optimized materials or energy management, development of a circular economy, new environmental policies and business models based on product or material lifecycle information. Consumer and organizational behaviour in transitioning to sustainable industrial systems.

Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design

• (3-0-6)
• Restriction: Only open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register with permission of the instructor.

• Terms
  • Winter 2024
• Instructors
  • Sarah Jordaan

Sustainability in Eng & Design: Role and importance of engineering decisions of environmental, social, and economic problems and the application of decision-making approaches and tools to engineering sustainability. Multi-criteria decision-making, uncertainty analysis, game theory, sustainability metrics, life cycle analysis evaluation and impact assessment methodologies, design problem formulation, stage-dependent strategies, case studies.

Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design

• (3-0-6)
• Restriction: Only open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register with permission of the instructor.

• Terms
  • Winter 2024
• Instructors
  • Laxmi Sushama