Physical principles and simulations on the structural evolution of eco-industrial systems

Eco-industrial system is a typical complex adaptive system that generates intricate patterns with given constraints. In this paper, a universal variational principle on eco-industrial system is highlighted as: an eco-industrial system always tries to find an optimal process to obtain maximized flux under given constraints. Basing on this principle, the dynamic mechanisms on the formation and evolution of eco-industrial structure are then revealed. The fractal growth of eco-industrial pattern is discovered. By mapping theoretical model to artificial neural network of Self-Organization Feature Map (SOM), some eco-industrial patterns are then simulated and studied as typical examples basing on historical data of past years. The simulation results are in good agreement with the theoretical analyses. Here we not only make a renewed effort to deepen the theoretical understanding of the evolution of eco-industrial pattern, but also try to provide new implications on design, improvement and prediction of the structural evolution of the eco-industrial parks.