Research Projects

Developing a holistic approach to assessing the sustainability of urban developments:

How do we:

• encourage more sustainable construction
• compare alternative strategies taking account of economic, environmental and social factors through the whole life of a project or urban development
• provide tools which allow trade-offs between economic, environmental and social issues, preferably in a common currency, for decision-makers at every stage of the development process?

An EPSRC-funded scoping study, "Metrics, Models and Toolkits for Sustainable Urban Developments" will identify the extent to which answers to these and other questions are already available, and develop a major research programme to plug the gaps. People with expertise or an interest in this area are invited to register with the consortium by logging on to the project web-site:

Sustainability means thinking in terms of whole systems, with all their interconnections, consequences and feedback loops. In seeking optimum solutions to the complex infrastructure problems of today, it is necessary to consider environmental, technical, social, political and economic issues, the inevitable trade-offs and potential synergies between them. An integrating model and a comprehensive set of tools are required by all who have to make decisions relating to changes in the built environment. The models and tools must help decision makers to understand the complexity of the problems and to find whole life solutions which take account of the effects of change on social structures, values, and the environment, and which ensure that scarce, irreplaceable resources are not frittered away, either deliberately or through ignorance. They must:

• encourage more sustainable construction;
• compare alternative strategies and predict outcomes;
• provide a vehicle for debate;
• aid decision-making and justify decisions made;
• inform government and policy makers;
• audit where we are now;
• establish standards and benchmarks;
• set targets for the future; and
• measure the effects of interventions and progress towards targets.

The problems are multi-dimensional. At their heart lies the difficulty of assessing costs and value when comparing apples and pears. How do we compare the aesthetic damage caused by poor architecture or insensitive transport routes with the lower costs that are often associated with them? How do we compare the social benefits of a more expensive housing scheme that provides an environment which leads to increased employment opportunities with a cheaper one that does not? How can we make best use of the synergies?

A consortium of three Universities, Dundee, Glasgow Caledonian and Loughborough, supported by the BRE, CIRIA and WS Atkins has been funded by the EPSRC under its Sustainable Urban Environment programme to scope a major grant application to address these questions. The long-term aim of the main programme is to promote sustainable development by providing models and toolkits for all decision-makers associated with the construction industry and its clients which will:

• be inclusive, holistic and multi-dimensional, capable of addressing social, technical, environmental, economic and political issues simultaneously;
• be flexible, satisfying the needs of different stakeholders in different contexts at different stages in an urban development or project;
• be internally compatible and capable of aggregation and disaggregation;
• be responsive to the decision-making process;
• track both resources consumed and the outputs of their products;
• take account of complex interfaces between different stakeholders, members of the supply chain, rural and urban contexts, local and global issues.

Potential deliverables include:

• methods of measuring social, political, environmental and economic impacts of projects in a common currency;
• integrated models relating the whole life performance of an asset to the values of the client and society at large;
• improved, holistic understanding of the environmental and social impact of construction projects and urban developments throughout the whole of their life cycle and throughout the supply chain;
• guidelines for minimising waste of labour, materials, energy and other resources throughout a project's lifecycle;
• guidelines on incentives for promoting the adoption of sustainable whole-life solutions;
• decision tools for comparing the whole-life, multi-dimensional impact of alternative design solutions;
• tools for auditing the total avoidable cost to the environment of the urban development programme of the nation;
• a framework for the development of a bank of consistent, relevant data; and
• a pool of world-leading expertise.

The purpose of the scoping study is to ensure that the full bid is of the highest quality, that it addresses the right issues, that it uses the best expertise, and that it does not duplicate work already completed. It will:

• identify the key dimensions of the problem;
• draw together and evaluate existing tools;
• identify existing expertise;
• establish gaps in current knowledge;
• assess the reliability of existing data;
• define in detail the themes and early work packages for the main programme; and
• develop the contextual framework for the main programme.

The twelve-month scoping study started in August 2003. Readers who would like to be kept informed, or who potentially have expertise to offer should register by logging on to the project web-site: www.sue-mot.org.uk or contact Dr. Jonathan Walton

Last Updated: 17th October 2006
Edited by: the Web Team, Glasgow Caledonian University