A Constraint-based Approach to Sustainable Design and Development

Integration of sustainable design solutions is a current issue at the forefront of any business that claims to have corporate and social responsibility. Sustainable design and development stems from the idea of sustainability which is an increasingly well known ideal but with an application and resulting definition that can differ across the many different industrial disciplines. Sustainability and indeed sustainable design becomes a complex problem due to the many interlinking factors that evolve around three key principles of people, planet and prosperity. This paper reports a research programme that aims to establish a generic interpretation of sustainability and how the complex problem of sustainable design can be effectively and efficiently tackled using a constraint-based approach. The paper discusses how different aspects of sustainability and sustainable design affect design process thinking and examines their effect on project management including a discussion of current tools such as life cycle assessment, information modelling and integrated resource management that are widely used. There is also an introduction into a newly formed concept which involves the application of a function specific constraint modeller in order to manage sustainable design and development.