Models for sustainability

Various disciplines use models for different purposes. While engineering models, including software engineering models, are often developed to guide the construction of a nonexistent system, scientific models, in contrast, are created to better understand a natural phenomenon (i.e., an already existing system). An engineering model may incorporate scientific models to build a system. Both engineering and scientific models have been used to support sustainability, but largely in a loosely-coupled fashion, independently developed and maintained from each other. Due to the inherent complex nature of sustainability that must balance trade-offs between social, environmental, and economic concerns, modeling challenges abound for both the scientific and engineering disciplines. This paper offers a vision that synergistically combines engineering and scientific models to enable broader engagement of society for addressing sustainability concerns, informed decision-making based on more-accessible scientific models and data, and automated feedback to the engineering models to support dynamic adaptation of sustainability systems. To support this vision, we identify a number of research challenges to be addressed with particular emphasis on the socio-technical benefits of modeling.