Challenges ahead: addressing the complex issues of building performance, public safety, climate change and socio-ecological value

Several systemic failures have occurred across multiple aspects of the built environment in many parts of the world. Brian Meacham (Crux Consulting) explores what can be done to improve this situation. A need to reframe buildings and the built environment as a socio-ecological-technical system means applying systemic thinking and integration across disciplinary boundaries in research, design, construction and regulation.

Buildings and the built environment are complex systems

Most buildings today are complex – even what we might consider simple buildings. Traditional materials and methods of construction have been overtaken by highly engineered products and systems, which often focus on only a single specific performance requirement, such as thermal efficiency, to the detriment of other important performance requirements, such as fire safety. Skilled designers, engineers and craftspeople, who used to understand the holistic performance of buildings and how to achieve multiple performance requirements simultaneously, have largely been replaced by experts with knowledge of their specific area, but not of how buildings function as a system. Building regulatory systems have not kept pace with material and technology changes, meaning building performance and public safety are not being appropriately validated and accountability is harder to enforce. Much of this is driven by well-meaning policy directives, e.g. energy sustainability, housing affordability, and facilitation of trade, but more consideration of the potential for unintended consequences is needed.

The net result has been the introduction of new technologies, systems and approaches, often without understanding the holistic performance of buildings as systems, or what failure might mean for society, both at a building level and more broadly at a community or societal level.  Inevitably, problems have manifest, for example the ‘leaky building’ situation in New Zealand, which cost the country billions of NZ dollars (PWC 2009); the Grenfell Tower fire, which resulted in numerous deaths and has had a significant impact on the UK society and construction sector (Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry 2017-2024); and arguably, the numerous communities around the world which have suffered greatly due to climate change induced hazards, from flooding to wildfire, which has cost USD100s of billions annually (e.g. Newman & Noy 2023).  Impacts are most felt by vulnerable populations who typically possess neither the resources to mitigate risks nor the political voice to make themselves heard.

A major part of the problem is that the built environment is a complex sociotechnical system (STS), or perhaps more aptly, a socio-ecological-technical system (SETS) (e.g. Moffatt & Kohler 2008). However, our current approach to regulatory structures, to the development and introduction of technology, to education and training of actors in the system, to the research that underpins it all, largely ignores the STS/SETS nature of the problem. Instead of taking a holistic systems approach, the current way of doing things reflects the generation of knowledge through a collection of unconnected, individual disciplinary silos, which focus on diverse and specific parts of the problem. It is expected that someone else will have the responsibility to make sure everything works together as a system when implemented, or else it is not considered at all. Governments and markets follow the same, siloed approach, meaning where the building regulatory system works, this is more by chance than by implementation of appropriately research-supported systems approaches.  

To improve the situation, first, we need to accept that buildings are complex STS, and urban spaces are complex SETS, meaning the built environment more broadly is a complex system of systems.  STS theory and concepts emerged from studies of organizations and the roles of social and technological components, and the realization that they are integrally linked (Emery 1959; Trist & Murray 1993). STS theory points to the need to consider the interactions of organizations, institutions, actors, and technology in the proper functioning of organizations and systems. Buildings as STS is not a new concept (du Plessis & Cole 2011), with research in this area including energy performance in buildings (e.g. Lachhab et al. 2017; Lowe et al. 2017), fire performance of buildings (e.g. Meacham 2022), and building regulatory systems (e.g. Meacham & van Straalen 2017).  

SES theory and concepts emerged from the observation that humans are part of the ecological system, and that the delineation between social systems and natural systems is arbitrary and artificial (Berkes & Folke, 1998). As with STS, this is not a new concept, and there are many definitions of SETS (e.g. Ahlborg et al. 2019; McPhearson et al. 2023; Chester et al. 2023) and the literature is extensive. In particular, the SETS framework described by McPhearson et al. (2023) explicitly acknowledges the interactions and interdependencies among social-cultural-economic-governance systems (social), climate-biophysical-ecological systems (ecological), and technological-engineered-infrastructural systems (i.e. the built or technological environment).

Overcoming the silo'd approach

While pockets of research on buildings as STS exist, and SETS recognizes the role of buildings and regulations within the system, arguably much of the research conducted on the built environment remains siloed, often lacking the STS/SETS perspective. This can be seen in funding opportunities, such as from the UK Research and Innovation, built environment area, in which all funding opportunities are in discrete areas, with seemingly no opportunity for consideration of buildings / built environment as STS/SETS (UKRI 2024). Such discipline-focused silos, coupled with university operational constraints built around such funding schemes (Cole 2024), can disincentivize researchers from taking steps to explore problems more holistically.  To achieve greater penetration and impact, all research for the built environment needs to shift more significantly to STS/SETS frameworks. Fundamental to facilitating this is a focus on Convergence Research.

Convergence Research (CR) is also not a new concept. Over the past decade, it has increasingly gained prominence as a research, development, and innovation strategy to address grand societal challenges (Sundstrum et al. 2023; Gajary et al. 2024). A significant aim of CR is to emphasize the integration of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, transcending multidisciplinary collaboration to obtain greater benefits from intellectual cross-pollination. As such, CR is itself a systems approach. 

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) refers to CR as a means for solving vexing research problems, in particular, complex problems focusing on societal needs or deep scientific challenges, noting that it entails integrating knowledge, methods, and expertise from different disciplines and developing novel paradigms that catalyze scientific discovery and innovation (NSF 2024). The NSF notes that:

'a distinct characteristic of convergence research, in contrast to other forms of multidisciplinary research, is that from the inception, the convergence paradigm intentionally brings together intellectually diverse researchers and stakeholders to frame the research questions, adopt common frameworks for addressing them, and create and implement innovative scientific approaches for their solution.'

Implementing convergence research and thinking

The CR approach is actively promoted by the NSF, which has a dedicated funding area for supporting CR efforts (NSF 2024). CR has been undertaken in response to several types of complex problems, from brain science (Petersen et al. 2021) to graduate education for sustainable urban systems science (Lobo et al. 2021).  As Sundstrom et al. (2023b) note, 'problems that require a convergence approach are those that involve nonlinearity, unpredictability, and irreducible uncertainty in system behavior and dynamics, all of which are heightened when there is tight coupling between multiple complex systems' which includes 'systems where social, ecological, and economic elements are strongly interconnected and codependent'. Buildings as STS and the built environment as SETS sit clearly within this realm.

While CR has been noted as being important within Europe (Science Europe 2014), it does not seem to have been widely adopted to date. The European Commission seems to be more focused on expanding international collaboration than on facilitating CR (EU Parliament Briefing 2023). This creates challenges for research teams looking to engage in CR, as funders may not understand the benefits and be hesitant to take the risk. Trying to organize convergence research around a specific and predefined problem becomes uncertain simply by bringing multiple disciplines into one room, for example, since the definition of the problem itself will inevitably change due to the broadening of perspectives that occurs as a result of collectively working on a shared problem (Sundstrom et al. 2023). This uncertainty in being able to well-define a problem and expected outcomes could potentially make funders wary of investing in CR approaches.

However, in order to adequately frame and understand the complex systems-of-systems that is the built environment, research needs to have intellectual and stakeholder diversity that defines CR, and the ability for new theories and approaches to emerge. This means more than just responding to research funding opportunities with multidisciplinary teams, from multiple institutions, to tick boxes on an application. It means identifying and engaging with researchers who are willing to step out of their disciplinary box, listen to and learn from others with different expertise, worldviews, and theoretical bases, and listen to, learn from, and work with the diversity of users of the built environment, who are ultimately the user of the research outcomes. It means doing this from the start – at the formulation of the research problem statement, before disciplinary biases become entrenched – working together to create a common vocabulary and agreed theoretical bases from the divergent approaches – to establish the foundation for moving forward in a convergent manner.  

This will not be easy.  Existing funding mechanisms, discipline-specific research approaches, and operational constraints may be difficult to overcome, especially in the beginning.  However, the current approach is arguably failing to deliver holistic, well-performing solutions for the built environment that are adequately considering unintended consequences.  If STS/SETS approaches, and systems thinking more broadly are not applied to research, design and construction of the built environment, we will miss many opportunities, and continue to see losses that we could otherwise have considered and presumably addressed along the way.

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