Biological insight into design against crime

Abstract

Over the last decade, designers have been seeking to improve the environmental performance of their products or systems as a result of rapidly increasing market pressures. Additionally, there is a growing concern on integrating crime issues into the design process. Significant progress has been achieved with the development and use of tools and methods of sustainable design. Also, biomimetics has been researched and used as an approach to sustainable design. From the perspective of engineering design, design against crime may benefit through the use of biological design principles in order to address crime issues. Thus, in dealing with crime issues, how would these principles assist designers to approach crime when designing and developing new products? This paper recounts an ongoing research project that has identified some biological design properties or principles of living systems that can be extrapolated, synthesised and integrated into new products or systems. It seems that these properties have enabled biological organisms to survive in rough environments and evolve through time. It is hoped that designers, when approaching crime in the design process of new products or systems, can use these principles.