ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a first step towards such a system. It establishes a further refinement of the definition of sustainability as a reduction in offload and also presents a first attempt at a questionnaire on social sustainability. The chapter argues that sustainability specifically concerns artificial or human-made systems. These systems are generally described in terms of function, objective and adaptation, and are able to imitate natural systems without being natural themselves. Simon defined an artefact as the boundary between an internal and external environment. The notion of sustainability is important for artificial systems because the cycle that is part of an artificial system is often left out of consideration. The neglect of aspects of sustainability especially concerns complex artificial or social systems, largely because these systems cannot easily be designed. Social systems often autonomously develop in a direction that is mostly unknown beforehand.
