Value models for engineering of complex sustainable systems

Abstract

Sustainable Systems are typically complex systems-of-systems spanning across several technical domains and organizations. They could include different kinds of sub-systems such as energy systems, information technology systems, transportation systems, buildings, etc. The organizations (e.g., companies and infrastructure providers) are involved in complex exchanges of goods, services and value. To make such systems sustainable but also economically feasible, it is important to analyze and understand these exchanges. We propose to integrate Value Network Models (VNMs) into analysis and design of complex sustainable systems. VNMs include, e.g., actors (typically organizations but also customers), value objects (goods, services, money), activities that generate value, and their dependencies. They should also include the information about the environmental impact and could be used in the context requirements engineering and high-level systems architecting. In addition, we propose to make VNMs available not only for design but also during system's operations using information and communication technology systems. Thus, exchange of value represented within VNMs could be monitored and evaluated during runtime. We show our approach on the example of Masdar City, a project of a planned city designed to be a sustainable, minimal emissions, and minimal waste urban environment.