Using systems thinking to learn to deliver sustainable built environments

Sustainability of the built environment may be seen as an emergent property of the complex systems involved. It is the interaction of the components that determines the outcome. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Since human behaviour dominates performance, we need a wide collaboration of disciplines and research methods to address this holistically. Fortunately, systems thinking is an approach that is shared by many researchers and practitioners, across a great diversity of disciplines including biological, social and physical sciences, and engineering. This paper provides a brief introduction to systems thinking and reflects on its use as a means of integrating processes through the use of systems modelling, frameworks and measurement systems.