Multi‐Scale Computing for a Sustainable Built Environment

The need to promote sustainable human settlements and to mitigate the spatial, demographic, social, economic, and environmental impacts, determined by the rapid global urbanization trend, is creating a concentration of research and development efforts in the built environment area. Considering the urbanization trend at the global level, cities constitute a priority for research and development in sustainability transitions, which should necessarily face techno- and socio economic problems. Energy use and technology affect sustainability in its fundamental components, society, environment, and economy. This chapter introduces readers to the concept of multi-level perspective modeling in sustainability transitions planning. It describes the most relevant characteristics and attributes of modeling techniques and data schemes for built environment performance modeling. The chapter also describes ongoing research on multi-scale computing for the built environment. Finally, it discusses the essential features of methodological and computational tools for the built environment.