For more than 99.9 percent of the 500,000 years of modern human evolution, the decisions that we have made as individuals and within communities were informed by the direct and intimate feedback we received from the natural world around us. Our success in securing food, fuel, fiber, and shelter to support our families and to […]
Author Archives: John E. Petersen
John Petersen is Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology and chair of Oberlin College’s Environmental Studies Program. A systems ecologist by training, Dr Petersen's research focuses on understanding flows of energy, cycles of material and feedback control mechanisms operating in environmental and social systems. With support from the U.S. and Ohio EPA, the Great Lakes Protection Fund and others he and his colleagues are developing the “Environmental Dashboard” as a technology and approach for developing real-time feedback display technologies for cities, organizations and individual buildings. The “Building Dashboard” technology he and his students developed in the mid—1990s is now installed in thousands of buildings across the U.S. and Canada.