Natural Systems

This paper exposes the search for a tool and method, which from a systems approach, adopts the rules and logic that govern our physical context (biosphere) in order to provide guidelines that the car industry could use to achieve an ideal state for ecological, economical and social sustainability.

The “living quality” provided by well-made things seems to combine the experience of fully satisfying services for both users and providers, and the way they spread delight and a feeling of wholeness in the world around them.  The “simplifying ideals” of their design patterns can be described as “unifying responses”  to the “forces” found in their recurring situations, defining the essentials of organizational solutions having “emergent properties” not achievable other ways.  The interface between such designs and the worlds of their users and providers needs to be created and made whole with each application.  It’s enhancing the living quality of those connections that is the focus here, considering designs as bridges exchanging services between the worlds of served and providing communities. Methods are offered for finding guiding examples of the elegant ways natural designs make their connections whole, exposing how they contribute living quality and fitness for their worlds, and may suggest ways to improve direct performance too.  A formal design pattern is discussed: “Mining Connections for Living Quality”, using pattern papers from last year’s PLoP meetings for examples to illustrate.  That is followed by sections on general theory, methodology and the large repositories of natural patterns available to learn from.  The paper follows one for PURPLSOC 2015 (Henshaw 2015) that introduced the study of guiding patterns of naturally occurring design for improving our ability to recognize and work with the design patterns of nature in general.

Pattern language can be used to describe transformative ways of resolving disparate forces in complex contexts, making explicit the ancient practices of holistic architectural design, creating new forms with living quality.  Discussed here are ways to use pattern language for learning from recurrent design patterns of nature.  Common patterns of naturally occurring organization and transformation are used to search in great repositories of natural design patterns, and find diverse living 


examples to learn from. For example, the familiar way designers work from early concepts to finished products is can be described as a recurrence of the natural process of complex designs developing from small beginnings to emerge in new forms. The technique of “pattern search” uses a “dual paradigm view” to separate the subjects of conceptual models and of observed natural forms, allowing attention to turn back and forth from one to the other as one studies their connections.

Doğal sistemleri anlama biçimimiz, özellikle son yüzyılda gerçekleşen bilimsel gelişmeler ile birlikte  oldukça gelişmiştir. Farklı bilim disiplinlerinin arasındaki muğlak sınırlar etrafında, doğadaki davranışların, son derece kompleks; fakat birbirleri içinde farklı ölçeklerde harmoni içinde büyüyen sistemler bütünü olduğu görülmüştür. Beliren davranış, morfogenetik süreçler gibi kendiliğinden örgütlü sistem tasarımları, sistem teorisi etrafında kurallı tasarım organizasyonları üretmenin önemini ortaya koyar. Doğal sistemleri tam olarak çözümlemek ve bunu birebir tasarım bilgisine dahil etmek, iki durumun süreçlerinin farklı işlemesinin de sebebiyle neredeyse imkansızdır. Doğayı tam olarak çözümlemektense, onu bir yeniden yapım sürecine sokarak kendi içinde sentetik ve doğalın bir arada olduğu yeni bir organizasyon üretmek mümkün olabilir. Bu bahsedilen organizasyon, bir mimari tasarım seminer dersi boyunca katılımcılar ile birlikte denenmiştir. Ders boyunca fiziksel materyal etkileşim deneyleri yapılmış ve bu deneylerin getirdiği sonuçlar ile bazı sayısal tasarım teknikleri tasarlanarak uygulanmıştır. Elde edilen yeni teknik ile, belirlenen bir mimari programda, tasarım bilgisi, mimariyi üretmek üzerine kullanılmıştır.

Nature-based tourism in protected areas, which is growing worldwide, offers much potential to enhance biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation, and ultimately sustainable development. Understanding the evolution of protected areas as tourism destinations and the causes and consequences of changing supply and demand elements is an essential step toward sustainably managing tourism in these critical ecosystems. This research applied the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to illustrate and analyze the 30-year evolution of tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve. Being inscribed in UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage programmes, Wolong is a flagship protected area in China. We showed that the Reserve experienced exploration, involvement, and development stages of the TALC before tourism growth was completely halted by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008. We systematically investigated the changes related to the evolution of tourism and identified various internal and external driving forces. We examined the dynamics of politics, economy, and tourism growth that might propel the Reserve through the life cycle and identified significant tourism governance structural changes through the stages. The results have implications for sustainable tourism development in China’s protected areas and also contribute to a broader and general understanding of the complex relationships between protected areas, sustainable tourism, and community development.

The resilience, ecological function and quality of both agricultural and natural systems were evaluated in the mountainous region of the Atlantic Rain Forest of Rio de Janeiro through Rapid Assessment Methods. For this goal new indicators were proposed, such as eco-volume, eco-height, bio-volume, volume efficiency, and resilience index. The following agricultural and natural systems have been compared according: (i) vegetables (leaf, fruit and mixed); (ii) citrus; (iii) ecological system; (iv) cattle, (v) silvo-pastoral system, (vi) forest fragment and (vii) forest in regeneration stage (1, 2 and 3 years old). An alternative measure (index) of resilience was proposed by considering the actual bio-volume as a function of the potential eco-volume. The objectives and hypotheses were fulfilled; it is shown that there does exist a high positive correlation between resilience index, biomass, energy efficiency and biodiversity. Cattle and vegetable systems have lowest resilience, whilst ecological and silvo-pastoral systems have greatest resilience. This new approach offers a rapid, though valuable assessment tool for ecological studies, agricultural development and landscape planning, particularly in tropical countries. 82 (4) WEST GB, BROWN JH AND ENQUIST BJ. 1999. A general model for the structure, function, and allometry of plant vascular systems. Nature 400: 664-667. An Acad Bras Cienc (2010) 82

The discharge of untreated domestic wastewater in the receiving waters creates a negative and environmental impact, inversely proportional to its autodepuration ability. Conventional wastewater treatment plants involve large capital investments and operating costs, and could be economically unsustainable for small-medium communities. So, constructed wetlands as natural low-cost systems can be an appropriate alternative, because they require low maintenance, give rise to good performances and provide a natural appearance. This work presents a synthesis of data obtained through an extensive survey performed in twenty Portuguese constructed wetlands utilities. Based on this information, some sustainable indicators and removal pollutant efficiencies were calculated. Besides identifying the main operational problems observed, it was also possible to detect inadequate monitoring procedures, aiming, with some proposed corrections, to improve the performance of these low-cost wastewater treatment utilities. The results obtained in this work encourage the development of future studies to increase the performance of these wastewater systems based on a better knowledge of the influence of hydraulic parameters, like flow, retention time and hydraulic application rate, in the pollutants removal efficiencies.

A combined constructed wetland formed by a facultative pond (FP), a surface flow wetland (SF) and a subsurface flow wetland (SSF) was studied from December 2004 until September 2005 in north-western Spain in order to evaluate their efficiency in the removal of pathogenic and indicator microorganisms and to determine their relationships. Microbial removal ranged from 78% for coliphages to over 99% for helminth eggs, depending on the treatment system. The highest removal of indicator bacteria (total coliforms, E. coli, faecal streptococci and Clostridium perfringens) occurred in the stabilization pond, reaching 84%, 96%, 89% and 78%, respectively. However, the greatest removal of protozoan pathogens (Cryptosporidium and Giardia) and coliphages was found in the SSF wetland, 98%, 97% and 94%, respectively. In contrast, the SF wetland was most efficient in the removal of pathogenic parasites when considering superficial removal rates. Seasonal differences in organism removal were not statistically significant during the study period. First-order removal rate constants ranged from 0.0027 to 0.71 m/d depending on the microorganism and type of wetland. Significant correlations were found between pathogenic parasites and faecal indicators in the influent of the treatment system but not in the other sampling points suggesting that such relations varied along the system due to the different survival rates of the microorganisms. ava i l a b l e a t w w w. s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / s c i t o t e n v