Estimating Environmental Carrying Capacity of Seoul Metropolitan Area Using System Dynamics and Box Model

The purpose of this paper is estimating environmental carving capacity of Seoul Metropolitan Area for a sustainable city management using system dynamics model. A sustainable development requires a society to define sustainability constraints or environmental limits, environmental carving capacity. Environmental carving capacity can be defined as the level of human activity which a region can sustain at an acceptable quality of life level. This concept of environmental carving capacity has several important application to sustainable city planning and management. If the limitation of a human activity can be supported by a scientific data on carving capacity, the resulting decision and actions could more easily win public support for a sustainable development. However, one of the key issues is how to operationalize the carving capacity. In this paper, the environmental carving capacity was operationalized as a maximum number of industry structure, population, and housing that can sustain certain level of environmental quality of Seoul Metropolitan Area. The model developed in this paper consisted off sectors: population, housing, industry, land, and environmental sector. The model limits its main focus on the NO$_2$level of ambient air of Seoul. Carving capacity Seoul Metropolitan Area was estimated by figuring out the maximum number of population, industry structure, housing at an equilibrium point that sustain a desirable NO$_2$level. Based on the model estimation, several policy implications for a sustainable city management was discussed.