Exploring approaches and dimensions of human transformity through an educational case

Abstract

Human contribution regardless of its form (manual, skilled or intellectual work) is always present in productive systems in the role of adding value to lower transformity materials and energy. Calculation of human transformity within emergy accounting methodology deserves more discussion due to the complexity and variety of aspects that human activities reflect. Two approaches identified in the literature for human transformity evaluation were adopted as the background to develop the line of thinking and organize discussion. The discussion is developed through the study of an English language school located in Brazil where two models were applied to determine the transformity of the entering students and teachers. The first model to calculate transformity is based on the educational attainment, in an analogous way to Odum’s approach based on energy hierarchy. For the second, a cyclic model to calculate teachers’ transformity, it was assumed that they acquired the English knowledge in the same school where they are currently teaching. It was recognized that human contribution manifests different dimensions, the activity, the temporal and the spatial dimensions. The dimension considered strongly influences the way human flows captures the inputs and how transformity is calculated. It is expected that the recognition and discussion of the influence of the dimension considered to calculate human transformity values, will contribute to further methodological development. Values of transfomity that emerged from the cyclic model better capture the dynamic of the converging resources and can feed the transformity database for future emergy calculations.