Global warming and the depletion of natural resources are areas of great concern in the 21st century. It is incumbent on us to balance the measures needed to abate global warming and to conserve energy and natural resources with economic growth. Therefore, greater efforts should be made to establish environmentally sound material cycles. Through increased incorporation of eco-design and information technology, the efficiency of manufacturing, as well as services and processes, should be increased.
Our goal is to contribute to building a sustainable society through the dynamic modeling of human activities and system analyses. Borrowing from the fields of materials science and engineering, we can achieve our goals by using applicable techniques such as the following: life cycle assessment (LCA), material flow analysis (MFA), system dynamics, decision-making techniques (e.g., optimization method), remote sensing, image processing, questionnaire survey, and field survey.