Model-based Elaboration of a Requirements and Design Pattern Catalogue for Sustainable Systems

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of designing sustainable systems by balancing environmental, social, and economic considerations. It proposes a model-based approach that extends a reference sustainability meta-model with a fragment-based pattern catalogue and a structured template for reusable patterns. Two case studies, fairness and circularity, validate the method by deriving dedicated pattern catalogues and demonstrating pattern reuse. The work discusses integration with existing frameworks and outlines future directions toward larger, multi-aspect catalogues and tool-supported MBSE.

Abstract

Designing sustainable systems involves complex interactions between environmental resources, social impact/adoption, and financial costs/benefits. In a constrained world, achieving a balanced design across those dimensions has become challenging. However a number of strategies have emerged to tackle specific aspects such as preserving resources, improving the circularity in product lifecycles and ensuring global fairness. This paper explores how to capture constitutive elements of those strategies using a modelling approach based on a reference sustainability meta-model and pattern template. After proposing an extension to the meta-modelling to enable the structuring of a pattern catalogue, we highlight how it can be populated on two case studies respectively covering fairness and circularity.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: COVID supporting case study
• Figure 2: Extended meta-model (extension are identified in dark grey)
• Figure 3: Graphical representations for the extended meta-model (note dark grey is used to tag the information system)
• Figure 4: Violation anticipation pattern
• Figure 5: Structure of the fairness catalogue