Encyclopedia of Sustainable Technologies: Including Nature in Engineering Decisions for Sustainability

This article describes methods and concepts for emulating and including nature’s role in engineering activities, with the expectation that they will contribute to sustainable engineering. Existing nature-inspired methods function at different levels ranging from individual products to large integrated networks. These include methods such as biomimicry and industrial symbiosis that mimic some characteristic property of a natural system but depend on technological improvements for sustainability; ecological engineering and green infrastructure that depend on nature-based solutions as means for sustainability and techno-ecological synergy that integrates technological and ecological systems by adopting a holistic perspective of design.