PRESENTATION: Index of Sustainable Functionality

Students from the Centre for Water Research, UWA, have already generated a lot of international interest in their final year project. With presentations at conferences in Greece and Finland, the new Index of Sustainable Functionality is generating increasing interest around the world. The final year Environmental Engineering students (supervised by Professor Jorg Imberger) will be presenting the Index to the people of Western Australia in an official launch to be held at the Octagon Theatre.

The Index strongly questions the premise that current economic measures of progress accurately reflect our quality of life. As Western Australia’s economy continues to soar, is Western Australia’s future sustainable? Trends shown by the ISF reveal we are cycling increasing amounts of money with very little or no additional benefit to society. The ISF indicates that our current consumerist lifestyle is unsustainable, coming at huge costs to the natural environment.

With sustainability and sustainable development continuing to be topics of great interest across the global community, the ISF leads the way in the development for measures of sustainability. With funding from BP Kwinana, BHP Billiton Iron Ore and Woodside, the student project provides an innovative and impressive benchmark against which past, present and future changes in sustainability can be assessed.