The State University of Campinas (Unicamp)
School of Food Engineering (FEA)
Campinas, Sâo Paulo, February 1st, 2000.
Announcement:
The Laboratory of Ecological Engineering and Applied Computing (LEIA) of FEA-Unicamp is, since 1990, carrying out activities in teaching, research and extension in the area of Agriculture and Agro-industrial Systems Planning, using Emergy Analysis.
In this effort we have counted with the precious help of Dr. Mark T. Brown (University of Florida), specialist in Ecological Engineering; Dr. Paul Safonov (Russia -RAS and Belgium-UL), specialist in Ecological Economics; and Dra. Tonya Howington, specialist in Emergy and GIS Combined Analysis. All of these have offered short courses at FEA acting as visiting professors.
Several times, we visited the Center of Wetlands of the University of Florida (UF) in order to receive direct assistance from Dr. H. T. Odum, Dr. M. T Brown and Dr.Sergio Ulgiati (UF guest researcher); as well as from, at that time, advanced PhD students (Brandt-Williams,Tilley, Doherty). All of them made valuable contributions to our better understanding of ecosystems analysis.
To inform the academic community and society about our efforts and show some results, as well as to divulge the methodology we use, we decided to edit a textbook:
"Ecological Engineering and Regional Planning".
In the text we include collaborations from researchers (from Brazil, Italy, Greece, Russia and Venezuela) who lead Systems Analysis all over the world. We also invited several colleagues from Brazilian Universities (Unicamp, Unesp, USP) and from the National Agricultural Research System (Embrapa), involved with Sustainable Development, to carry out this educational effort with us.
Ortega, Safonov and Comar acted as organizers besides contributions as authors.
The idea of the book is to show how to use emergy methodology, step by step, with case studies and materials considered valuable for researchers and students devoted to Ecological Planning. A handbook that could be used as a textbook in undergraduate and post-graduate courses and extension courses with a duration of 30-60 hours, including, as test, the elaboration of an emergy balance of an agro-industrial system.
It could be used for courses in Agricultural and Agro-Industrial Projects Appraisal, with examples of calculations described carefully (case studies in Brazil). Besides Emergy Methodology, we talk about GIS and Participative Planning, two other important tools for sustainable development planning .
We would have greater sucess if this book could be considered as a companion book to that
which we had as our main reference:
Environmental Accounting: Emergy and environmental decision making
by Howard T. Odum
Hardcover, 370 pages, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, USA, 1996
We are submiting the English version to Elsevier, a very well known international publishing house. We are glad to say that they accepted the enterprise. We are now establishing contact with them to finalize the procedures for publication.
For the portuguese version we are under finalizing an agreement with Annablume Editors (Sao Paulo, Brazil). This national edition will be co-edited by the Sao Paulo Research Agency (Fapesp).
The content of the two volumes of the books will be:
|
Introduçăo Enrique Ortega, Vito comar & Paul Safonov (05 páginas).
Paulo Antonio Almeida Sinisgalli (12 páginas). |
|
Timetable:
Translation to English: March-May 2000.
Translation to Portuguese: March-May 2000.
Revision and edition of all chapters: March -May (in parallel).
Publication (first draft version): June - August 2000.
(This time table can suffer some changes! )
Norms adopted for publication of chapters:
Enrique Ortega
Laboratorio de Engenharia Ecológica e Informática Aplicada
FEA - Unicamp, Caixa Postal 6121
13083-970 Campinas - SP - Brasil
Telefone: +55 (19) 788 40 58 Fax: +55 (19) 289 15 13
E-mail: ortega@fea.unicamp.br
Internet: http://www.unicamp.br/fea/ortega/homepage.htm