• Soft Skills

Sustainable development (SD) is one of the central challenges of our times. Climate change, related global warming, and the unsustainable use of natural resources require attention and a change of paragdim, including in scientific and engineering communities. In this framework, UN launched a collection of 17 global goals, namely the Sustainable Development Goals, to set the path for a new development.

Within the framework of “Didattica Innovativa”, this course aims at introducing the students to the concept of sustainable development, helping them to understand and evaluate the related global challenges, and deploy both theoretical and modelling skills to tackle them both at the firm- and the country-level.

The course will rely on POK (Polimi Open Knowledge), providing part of the lessons through MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses).

Lectures will allow students to:

·         Understand and learn the history of sustainable development and the paradigms adopted from the 50s;

·         Analyze and understand the SDGs goals, especially the 6^th, the 7^th, the 11^th, the 12^th, and the 13^th, their specific targets and indicators;

·         Understand the concept of Community Integration for setting sustainable strategies at firm level;

·         Identify and learn the modelling approaches suitable to analyse and tackle the main challenges of SD.

The open discussions will allow the students to:

·         Argue the personal judgments about the topics covered in class;

·         Deal with other colleagues’ opinion and arguments.

The project work will allow students to:

·         Approach to long-term simulation-based tools;

·         Apply modelling tools for the sustainable planning of resources at country level;

·         Understand and model the complexities and interrelations between the different SDGs;

·         Make autonomous choices for identifying and selecting the appropriate planning strategy for solving the same problem;

·         Prepare an action plan outlining the synergetic strategies to achieve country-specific development scenarios;

·         Present and communicate their work given a certain amount of time and audience.

Topic 1. Paradigms and history of Sustainable Development (SD): Introduction to Sustainable Development; Pathways to Agenda 2020 (1 MOOC); Paradigms: from 50s to Amartya Sen’s The Capability Approach.

Topic 2. The Sustainable Development Goals: Introduction to SDGs 6,7,11,12,13 (1 MOOC). Indicators, interconnections and potential conflicts. SDG 6: Description and Energy modelling. SDG 7: Description and Energy modelling. SDG 11: Description and Energy modelling. SDG 12: Description and Energy modelling. SDG 13: Description and Energy modelling.

Topic 3. Strategies to SD at firm level: Sustainability of firm strategies in the renewable energy framework (1 MOOC). Analysis of the context (1/2 MOOCs). The Community Integration concept and model (8/9 MOOCs). The Falck Renewables S.p.A case (1/2 MOOCs).

Topic 4. Modelling and planning SD: Introduction to system-dynamics. Comprehensive simulation-based approaches. Sustainable resources planning. The Threshold21 and iSDG model. Presentation of a case study.

A project work is integral part of the course. The objective of the project work is to help students get familiar with the comprehensive and integrated modelling of the SDGs, and test the implication of selected synergetic strategies to the country development. The project laboratory will include class discussions supervised by the course instructor and by some tutors.

Students are required to know the principles and methods of data analysing, and basic programming with MATLAB or Python.

The exam will be at the end of the course, and it will consist in (1) a written text and (2) the evaluation of the project work.

The written exam at the end of the course will assess individually the following learning outcomes:

·         an improved knowledge about the theoretical aspects of the course concerning the history of SD, their goals, and the existing modelling approaches through open questions;

·         the ability to calculate the indicators of the SDGs through exercises;

·         their ability to apply their understanding of the concept of Community Integration through a discussion of an ad-hoc case study.

Part of the course is devoted to a mandatory project work about: integrated long-term development planning. It will be carried out in team and it will specifically aim at designing SD-strategies for a developing country. The evaluation of the project will be based on the quality of the produced artefacts (final report), their originality, the ability to apply the modelling tools, the robustness, the feasibility, and the comprehensiveness of their results, their ability to summarize their findings, and their ability to communicate them in a presentation to the class.