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Description
In the burgeoning field of sustainability, there is a pressing need for healthcare to understand the increased environmental and economic impact of healthcare products and services. The overall aim of this dissertation is to assess the sustainability of commonly used medical products, devices, and services as well as to identify strategies for making easy, low cost changes that result in environmental and economic savings for healthcare systems. Life cycle environmental assessments (LCAs) and life cycle costing assessments (LCCAs) will be used to quantitatively evaluate life-cycle scenarios for commonly utilized products, devices, and services. This dissertation will focus on several strategic and high impact areas that have potential for significant life-cycle environmental and economic improvements: 1) increased deployment of reprocessed medical devices in favor of disposable medical devices, 2) innovations to expand the use of biopolymers in healthcare materials and devices, and 3) assess the environmental and economic impacts of various medical devices and services in order to give healthcare administrators and employees the ability to make more informed decisions about the sustainability of their utilized materials, devices, and services.
ContributorsUnger, Scott (Author) / Landis, Amy E. (Thesis advisor) / Bilec, Melissa (Committee member) / Parrish, Kristen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation advances the capability of water infrastructure utilities to anticipate and adapt to vulnerabilities in their systems from temperature increase and interdependencies with other infrastructure systems. Impact assessment models of increased heat and interdependencies were developed which incorporate probability, spatial, temporal, and operational information. Key findings from the models are that with increased heat the increased likelihood of water quality non-compliances is particularly concerning, the anticipated increases in different hardware components generate different levels of concern starting with iron pipes, then pumps, and then PVC pipes, the effects of temperature increase on hardware components and on service losses are non-linear due to spatial criticality of components, and that modeling spatial and operational complexity helps to identify potential pathways of failure propagation between infrastructure systems. Exploring different parameters of the models allowed for comparison of institutional strategies. Key findings are that either preventative maintenance or repair strategies can completely offset additional outages from increased temperatures though-- improved repair times reduce overall duration of outages more than preventative maintenance, and that coordinated strategies across utilities could be effective for mitigating vulnerability.
ContributorsBondank, Emily (Author) / Chester, Mikhail V (Thesis advisor) / Ruddell, Benjamin L (Committee member) / Johnson, Nathan G (Committee member) / Seager, Thomas P (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019