Chapter 9: Rich Analytical Environments for Sustainable Building-Scale Ecosystems

Sustainable design at any scale or scope requires a balance of economic, environmental, and social factors. The design of sustainable building-scale ecosystems is not exempt from this requirement. Building-scale ecosystems are complex collections of people, process, policy, technology, structure, material, and information. Each dimension of a buildingscale ecosystem can possess complex, dynamic structure, i.e., structure composed of many interrelated parts where both the parts and their interrelationships can change over time. In addition, each dimension can exhibit emergent, evolving, self-organizing behavior, i.e., behavior that is nonlinear, adaptive, and the product of decentralized coordination. Furthermore, these dimensions are highly interdependent where changes to or actions within one dimension can produce effects in other dimensions.