Bioefficeology

Bioefficeology is simply the study of life efficiency. This is new area of study stemming from the study of environmental design at Michigan State University. Bioefficeology is similar in nature to sustainable and green design and is expected to replace these terms in the next five years.

The term was coined during an environmental design class taught by Dr. Robert Schutzki in the fall of 2010, during a discussion about the future outlook of the environmental design field. Dr. Schutzki is renowned for his work and research in landscape horticulture on the characterization of adaptive traits of plants to investigate their physiological responses to cultural and environmental manipulation.
Bioefficeology studies the built environment in which humans create and live in to achieve maximum productivity with minimum wasted energy or expense. It focuses not just on construction and use of facilities but also their life-time costs. Bioefficeology has a similar mentality to the triple bottom line businesses approach, in which it studies how the built environment can be constructed more efficiently to better manage affects on humans, ecosystems, and economies.
Bioefficeology looks closely at uses of natural processes in combination with biotechnology as well technologies inspired by biomimicry.
Bioefficeology measures the effectiveness of designs based on the efficiency of cyclical construction patterns created. If the design creates cyclical systems that positively affects humans, ecosystems, and economies similar to natural cycles like the hydrological cycle, the better it represents bioefficeology. Positive affects can be defined as anything that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”1
This definition of positive affects comes from "Our Common Future", the 1987 report prepared by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, then-Prime Minister of Norway. The report is often referred to as the Brundtland Report.

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