Quantitative Industrial Ecology & Ecological Economics

Abstract

SummaryThis article presents a theoretical foundation for integrating three otherwise disparate areas of human thought and understanding: technology, ecology, and economics. The article presents the mathematical foundations for quantifying the biophysical (mass, energy, and informational) aspects of economic production systems and their interaction with natural systems. These mathematical relationships are required for the on‐going ecological and economic design of technological production networks by enterprise management, thereby extending the scope and scale of quantitative engineering design from the domain of individual technologies to networks of technologies at enterprise, corporate, and industrial levels of technological organization.The analytical framework extends the practical utility of ecology, as an applied natural science, from passive environmental monitoring and prediction to active institutional participation in an informational feedback control strategy pursuant to economically abating the ecological risks of industrial growth, development, and modernization at local, regional, and global levels of ecological organization. And it provides the applied natural‐science underpinnings and the informational feedback control institutions required to support economics as an applied social science. In this context ecological risk‐control pricing is presented as a supplement to conventional economic policies at local, regional, and national levels of economic organization.