Clark’s Crow: A design plugin to support emergy analysis decision making towards sustainable urban ecologies

Abstract

Architects working with city planners and developers in the shaping of urban environments typically consider multiple factors in isolation, from urban design and socioeconomic relationships to data analyses. Analyses regarding urban life cycle scenarios are exemplar of this trend, with considerations made in isolation at the later stages of the designdevelopment process when the scope for decisions which could ultimately affect the sustainability of an urban environment is much more limited. This paper defines our effort to introduce a new tool, named "Clark's Crow", which aims to address this shortcoming by promoting awareness of the impact of different design options through a biophysically based ecological accounting method in the early stages of urban design-development. The tool is used within existing architectural design environments with an aim to offer a socio-ecological analysis during the design decision-making process. Clark's Crow is underpinned by the emergy analysis method, which aims to consider both the energy, material, and information flows of a system, such as an urban ecology, and to understand both the work of the techno-sphere in constructing our urban environments and that of the geo-biosphere in sustaining such development. Clark's Crow facilitates emergy analysis in the early stages of urban design, thereby allowing queries

Review of Emergy Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment: Coupling Development Perspective

“…After years of development, new emergy indicators have been continuously proposed to achieve assessments for different ecosystems, such as Renewable Percentage (%Re) [22], Energy Recovery Ratio (ERR) [23], Emergy Benefit after Exchange (EBE) [24], Net Profit (NP) [25], etc. As an effective tool for environmental management and policy planning [17], EMA has been widely used in a variety of macroscopic systems, such as agricultural systems [26][27][28][29], industrial systems [30][31][32], urban systems [33][34][35], etc. In addition, EMA is also widely used in the micro-system level, such as food production [36], energy supply [37,38], ecosystem services [39], waste disposal [40,41], and so on.…”

Spatial pattern analysis and identification type of open green space in Yogyakarta city

“…Regional development is an effort to maintain and improve people's welfare. Its principle is expected to take into account some vital elements such as ecology [1][2][3] culture [4,5] energy [6][7][8][9] natural resources [10] and community participation [11][12][13]. The integration of these elements creates sustainable regional development.…”