Operationalizing Sustainability

7Principles and Methods for the Design and Development of Sustainable Systems

“Whereas general interest matters, I value far more the diversity of opinions than their unity; and here lies even one of my firmest beliefs.”

“I own, at the highest level, this force – or this weakness – to not need others to share my thoughts; and, in terms of the general interest, I believe – and this is even there one of my firmest beliefs – that the plurality of opinions is by far preferable to their unity.”

Jean ROSTAND“Ce que je crois”, le credo d’un savant émerveillé par le vivant’,Grasset, 1967.

7.1. Introduction

Throughout this book, we have defined some methods, tricks and practices to manage and control the development of complex systems. The same approach has been adopted in the area of process or system survival (resilience) and sustainability.

In this chapter, we will not reconsider each of these abilities or recommendations and advice: we will just detail and explain some of them to get a global methodology required when we are interested in designing and developing systems meeting simultaneously the three following constraints: complexity, resilience and sustainability.

Through this analysis, we have highlighted some concerns and requirements about securing activities and deliveries of some long-term dynamic systems, always in terms of complexity, sustainability and resilience.

To summarize the situation, all the above systems are faced with and characterized by several concepts: ...