Developing a sustainability assessment framework for buildings in Uganda

Recognizing the urgent need for sustainability, we argue that to move beyond the rhetoric and to actually realize sustainable development, it must be considered as a decision-making strategy. We demonstrate that sustainability assessment and sustainability indicators can be powerful decision-supporting tools that foster sustainable development by addressing three sustainability decision-making challenges: interpretation, information-structuring, and influence. Particularly, since the 1990s many substantial and often promising sustainability assessment and sustainability indicators efforts are made. However, better practices and a broader shared understanding are still required. We aim to contribute to that objective by adopting a theoretical perspective that frames SA and SI in the context of sustainable development as a decision-making strategy and that introduces both fields along several essential aspects in a structured and comparable manner.

The construction industry is one of the primary sources of carbon emissions. In the context of the global response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of climate change,China implements the Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutralisation policy. The policy vigorously promotes energy conservation and emission reduction in the construction industry, particularly housing. Due to the large stock of existing old multi-storey residential buildings in China, most of which are not energy-saving, and the lack of a sustainable assessment framework to retrofit such buildings, it is deemed essential to analyse the shortcomings of the current assessment standards and frameworks and formulate a better alternative. Therefore, this paper aims to provide the rationale for proposing a sustainability assessment framework for retrofitting old multi-storey residential buildings in China. It first explains the concepts of sustainable development and housing, then combs the current Chinese government’s commitments to sustainable housing agenda. The unsustainable state of this housing type is then reviewed, followed by the issues and gaps in the existing sustainable building assessment standards in China and overseas to justify the necessity of developing a sustainability assessment framework for retrofitting multistorey residential buildings in China. This framework would assist the retrofit of old multistorey residential buildings in reducing energy consumption, improving efficiency and achieving sustainable development. It also contributes to the body of knowledge in sustainable building assessments and helps in the planning and design processes within the public and private sectors related to the construction industry.

Testing the integrated risk and sustainability assessment (RSA) framework for ‘water scarcity – water reuse’ situations: The case of Cerrillos de Tamaya, Chile

A framework for dynamic life cycle sustainability assessment and policy analysis of built environment through a system dynamics approach

Construction is one of the fastest-growing sectors across the world. Meanwhile, the environmental degradation caused by construction activities has become a concern. Hence, the construction industry requires modern methods and methodologies to fully implement sustainable practices and contribute to achieving sustainable development goals. However, it has faced many obstacles. This study investigates the likely impact of barriers to the integration of BIM technologies into the sustainability assessment of buildings. This study developed a hybrid Delphi-analytic hierarchy process approach to assess the relative importance of barriers to the integration of BIM technologies in building sustainability assessments. A two-round Delphi survey formed the basis for reaching consensus among the expert panel based on a set of 20 essential barriers faced by both the users' group and the stakeholders' group, which were derived via content analysis of previous studies. Results of the Delphi survey are used to compute the relative importance of barriers using the analytic hierarchy process. The finding indicates that the users' group faced three key obstacles: "Shortage of BIM and sustainability experts", "High staff training costs" and "Resistance to change traditional methods". The stakeholder' group encountered three significant challenges: "lack of government policies". "Lack of a legal framework" and "Lack of BIM and sustainability investments". This study contributes to understanding the obstacles that the construction industry faces when trying to use BIM technologies in the assessment of building sustainability, and it considers the key solutions to overcome these barriers to achieve full integration.

Sustainable city development concerns various dimensions such as citizen well-being, urban infrastructure, environmental friendliness, accessible transportation, and solid economics. Effective utilization of resources and energy is inevitable if a city wishes to transit towards sustainability. A sustainable city assessment framework is a useful tool in measuring and evaluating the management of the city resources without negative impact on the environment, facilitating the city to grant the well-being of the citizen in terms of safety, happiness, and convenience. The management can make use of the framework in planning and executing various policies for robust economic growth. Moving towards a status of a sustainable city is of great interest to an emerging city like Chiang Mai in Thailand. As a case study, Chiang Mai is unique in terms of its medium size, with the potential to be the regional hub. Chiang Mai is the 2nd largest city in Thailand, located in a strategic location and surrounded by diverse and nice natural environments, and is the center of medical and education excellence in northern Thailand. In this works, an overview of sustainable city indicators employed for several cities was conducted. The suitability of key indices was evaluated and discussed against the context of Chiang Mai. The Thai government's bio-circular-green (BCG) economy concept was also considered for economic and social development along with environmental protection to properly realize the potential of the city. From the preliminary findings, potential indicators of the sustainable city assessment may be grouped into three main components: economic, social, and environmental. Useful plans and guidelines from the sustainable city assessment framework were also proposed for the future development and expansion of Chiang Mai.

Groundwater sustainability assessment framework: A demonstration of environmental sustainability index for Hanoi, Vietnam

To avert runaway climate change the agreed international aim is to keep greenhouse gas emissions to a maximum of 450ppm of CO2-e (carbon dioxide equivalents) in the atmosphere. Those countries that have ratified the Kyoto protocol have agreed on specific targets in terms of percentages, generally but not always, against a baseline, of CO2-e levels produced in 1990. Having agreed in principal to specific individual figures for each country, and a consensus on which processes and activities should be included in the accounting, then it is simply a case of doing the arithmetic and in 2012, when the reporting period ends, it will be clear where the successes and failures lie. 2010 was the year when the majority of the planet's population moved to cities, a trend that is likely to continue, and with cities being responsible for possibly as much as 70% of the world's emissions, it is clear that the built environment needs some close scrutiny now and in the future. Buildings are, and have been for the last two decades, the focus of assessment programs and there is a vast array of tools that have been developed in the form of checklists or rating measures, but those that provide clearly defined metrics are not common. In an atmosphere where there is, arguably, an understanding of the importance of energy use and how it relates to greenhouse gas emissions (at a commercial level if not domestic) there is an increasing interest in how our buildings perform in this regard. This is acknowledged by policies like the mandatory disclosure of building performance, now being rolled out across Australia. There also seems to be an understanding that considering precincts or neighbourhoods is as important, if not more important than individual buildings, because it integrates how people move between and around the city. This is extremely important considering the impact of various modes of transport on the production of greenhouse gasses. Recently, the availability of assessment tools for sustainable development such as BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) Communities and the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Neighbourhood Development tool, seem to have grown exponentially. These tools take on a range of forms from simple checklists to detailed rating tools, but few focus on actual metrics, without which it is difficult to understand the true impact of what is being assessed. Climate change as an environmental issue is proving to be extremely difficult to address, particularly in Australia where, should we choose to believe the media, the science is still being questioned. However if we consider that what the science is telling us is true, we are faced with a challenge of numbers. Decarbonising Cities and Regions (DCR) is an Australian Research Council linkage project that proposes to examine the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) of four land redevelopment case studies. The proposal includes a framework that outlines the sources of GHGe that will be examined for all of the case studies. The framework proposed covers: raw materials and building assemblies, construction emissions, operational emissions, private transport, the full water cycle and emissions from municipal waste. This framework is featured in a study of carbon assessment tools which identified the C CAP Precinct tool as the most comprehensive for urban development and redevelopment in accordance with the DCR framework C CAP Precinct has been developed to provide a number of sustainability metrics for developments at all scales, the focus of this paper will be the GHGe that a development proposal is responsible for from operational energy consumption, GHGe associated with water (pumping) and direct emissions from transport options available. The tool also calculates affordability based on annual operating costs and capital costs for technology options applied to a development to reduce GHGe. This paper contains a detailed review of the

The construction industry, contributing to about 9% of the European Union’s GDP, has played a significant influential role in the development...

A framework for assessing sustainability of construction projects

Sustainable buildings can save 36% of total energy use, 65% of electricity consumption, 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, 30% of raw materials use, 30% of waste output, and 12% of potable water consumption. Several sustainable building assessment tools were used by both developed and developing countries. However, Ethiopia’s buildings were not critically assessed and evaluated from a sustainability point of view because there was no such type of study conducted so far. This paper aims to explore the most significant and widely used tools as well as the basis for other sustainable building assessment tools, such as Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Comprehensive Assessment System for Built Environment Efficiency (CASBEE), Sustainable Building Tool (SBTool), Comprehensive Environmental Performance Assessment Scheme (CEPAS), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen (DGNB), and Green Mark and Green Star. The methodology employed is the selection of the 10 most commonly and widely utilized sustainable building assessment tools (SBATs) from the 57 SBATs based on desk review and document analysis. The results of the study identified that all 10 SBATs have their own assessment categories and criteria based on many factors, such as climatic conditions and availability of resources, plus methods employing demographic dynamics and legal aspects of the sector for assessing the sustainable/green buildings. It distinguishes the most commonly and repeatedly used assessment categories and criteria and uses a consensus-based approach with experts in the building sectors, a four-quadrant model, and a circular and helical flow model, to develop a new sustainable building assessment tool suitable for Ethiopia.

Despite the growing awareness of complexity in sustainable development, the practical implementation of sustainability assessment through the use of sustainability indicators requires prioritizing the myriad indicators available. This study identifies the highest priority sustainability indicators for the New Zealand wine industry using materiality analysis. Thirteen information sources representative of different stakeholder perspectives considered to drive the need for sustainability assessment are analysed to provide a measure of sustainability issue salience and risk. Based on a meta‐analysis of relevant information, it is found that environmental issues make up the highest priority issues, followed by social issues relating primarily to worker wellbeing. Significantly, economic and governance issues were not found to be high priorities. These findings are discussed in the context of the common bias in agricultural sustainability assessment towards environmental issues, and the broader business implications for sustainability assessment, strategy and policy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

The perspective of strong/weak sustainability has a great impact on sustainability assessment. In this study, two most widely used indices, Ecological Footprint (EF) and Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) for strong and weak sustainability assessment, were employed to evaluate the sustainability of China’s ten megacities between 1978 and 2015. The results showed that the ecological footprint had been enlarged in the past twenty years; while the genuine economic welfare started to increase since 2005. The cities of Xi’an, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Shanghai met the threshold of below 2.5 global hectares for EF/capita, and over 3000 dollars/capita (in 2010 US$) for GPI/capita. By analyzing and comparing the characteristics, the processes and results, and the complementary features of evaluation methods of EF and GPI, the research suggested that: (1) Strong and weak sustainability indicators, with their own pros/cons in sustainability assessment, should be used carefully; (2) Weak sustainability indicators could be analyzed from the perspective of strong sustainability; (3) Strong sustainability indicators need to be developed urgently. The results in this study could guide the selection of sustainability indicators, and help interpret the results of sustainability assessment.

TIM: Assessing the sustainability of agricultural land management

The unplanned and rapid growth of urbanisation and energy demand leads to environmental degradation, social inequalities, and economic instability. These global problems have forced society to rethink infrastructure development to evolve the concept of sustainable development in the construction industry. Technological advances have always been the cornerstone in mitigating the unavoidable side effects of development. To rejuvenate ideas of Reuse, Recycle, Reduce, Renew, and Regenerate (5 R’s) into implementable solutions, the technological dimension is necessary to form a Quadruple Bottom line (QBL) approach i.e., Social, Environmental, Economic and Technological (SEET) for achieving sustainable construction. To tackle and monitor the enormous changes in urban transformation in developing countries, it is important to assess the sustainability of building performance. The objective of the study is to establish the interdependency between criteria and indicators for assessing building sustainability. The findings reveal that the criteria Materials & Waste Management (MW) and Energy Efficiency (EE) secured the highest weight among the eight criteria in the Technological aspect. The study facilitates to understand the interrelationship between the criteria and indicators and will be useful for the development of a new sustainable building assessment tool.