- Email: [email protected]
A Holistic Methodological Approach in the Urban Context Towards Characterizing the Environmental Performance of Buildings and Promoting Strategic Governance and Sustainability
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
International Conference on Sustainable Synergies from Buildings to the Urban Scale, SBE16
A Holistic Methodological Approach in the Urban Context Towards Characterizing the Environmental Performance of Buildings and Promoting Strategic Governance and Sustainability Ch. Vlachokostasa,* , A.V. Michailidoua, E. Felekia, Ch. Achillasb, N. Moussiopoulosa and O. Trasanidisa a
Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Laboratory of Heat Transfer and Environmental Engineering, Thessaloniki,54124,Greece International Hellenic University, School of Economics, Business Administration and Legal Studies, Thermi, 57001, Greece
b
Abstract Nowadays, over half of the world's population is living in urban areas. Urbanization has not led only to economic and social transformation, but also to high resource consumption and considerable environmental damage. This study aims to promote a holistic methodological approach in the urban context in order to foster policy modeling, efficient governance and sustainability. The paper has a twofold purpose: (i) to provide an approach for tractably characterizing the environmental performance of the building sector, and (ii) to promote sustainable practices towards greener buildings in urban areas. Towards this aim a composite indicator is analytically defined. The index combines the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to the building sector and is mathematically formulated to be finally implemented generically. Apart from energy, water consumption and waste generation, the presented scheme establishes links with LCA in order to include estimations of carbon footprint (CO 2-eq). The formulated index is combined with the structure dialogue approach that has been developed within Urban Empathy, a MED Programme funded capitalization project focused on the efficiency of sustainable urban policies in the Mediterranean Basin. The structured dialogue process identifies key barriers to the implementation of the selected available practices into sustainable urban policies for the building sector. The paper highlights insights for common priorities, real pilot project results and their relation to implemented policies in order to foster strategic governance and policy modeling for specific areas under consideration. ©2017 2017Published The Authors. Published by Elsevier © by Elsevier B.V. This is an openB.V. access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SBE16. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SBE16. Keywords: building sector; sustainability; index, structured dialogue approach; decision-making.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +30-2310-994181; fax: +30-2310-996012. E-mail address: [email protected]
1878-0296 © 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SBE16. doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2017.03.130
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Ch. Vlachokostas et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
1. Introduction Environmental quality contributes significantly to social welfare, public health and sustainability (e.g. Mozer, 2009; Pugh, 1996). Considering that over half of the world's population is living in urban built-up areas, the anthropogenic pressures on the environment have reached nowadays critical levels in numerous conurbations and urban areas worldwide, resulting in the continued deterioration of local environments (e.g., Atash, 2007; Moussiopoulos et al., 2010). The problems are more intense for conurbations, which are crucial engines of local socio-economic development and, where human activities are inevitably concentrated in relatively small areas (Vlachokostas et al., 2009). In this light, urban areas concentrate environmental decay, and air, waste and noise pollution, congestion, fresh water shortages and energy demands seriously threaten social welfare and development (Van Dijk & Mingshun, 2005). Urbanization, which is a continuous process, has led not only to economic and social transformation but also to high resource consumption and considerable environmental damage that can be attributed to many economic sectors; among others the building sector. On this basis, the efficient use of resources is regarded as a key challenge for the building sector and decision-makers in the continuous effort to encounter environmental deterioration, face climate change risks and eventually promote sustainability. Towards this aim, the material to follow promotes a holistic methodological approach in the urban context in order to foster policy modeling, efficient governance and sustainability. The paper has a twofold purpose: (i) to provide an approach for tractably characterizing the environmental performance of buildings, (ii) to promote sustainable practices towards greener buildings in urban areas. In order to characterize the environmental performance of buildings a composite index is analytically defined which combines the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to the building sector. Apart from energy, water consumption and waste generation, the presented scheme establishes links with LCA in order to include estimations of carbon footprint (CO 2-eq). The approach is similar to the one followed by the Michailidou and colleagues approach (Michailidou et al, 2015). The formulated index is combined with the Urban Empathy structure dialogue approach, which is adopted in order to put forward sustainable building practices. Urban Empathy is a capitalization project funded by MED Programme focused on the efficiency of sustainable urban policies in the Mediterranean Basin. The structured dialogue process identifies key barriers to the implementation of the selected available practices into sustainable urban policies for the building sector. The paper highlights insights for common priorities, real pilot project results and their relation to implemented policies in order to foster strategic governance and policy modeling for the area under consideration. 2. Materials and Methods The main methodological element of the presented approach is the combination of the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to the building sector realized for an Urban Building Complex (UBC). The strategic aim is to provide a characterization for environmental sustainability based on the definition and implementation of the Building Complex Index for assessing environmental performance (BCIenv). BCIenv is developed by the authors to provide a comparative analysis for typical all-sized building categories in terms of their combined environmental pressure. Establishing links with carbon footprint is also crucial. Towards this aim, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) gives the ability to indicate processes and/or flows that have the highest resource consumption and the highest carbon footprint in an effort to highlight interrelations with climate change and provide relevant normalized subindices for the developed index. LCA is crucial amongst other environmental performance tools for the building sector since it evaluates environmental impacts from different perspectives and assumptions.
2.1. Selection of the UBC An area with considerable building density needs to be characterized not only by its local environmental quality, but also regarding the environmental pressures that can be attributed to the corresponding activity of the units of buildings in the area. The embedded complexity of this activity, pressures and impacts, both of short - to long-term nature, constitutes a great environmental challenge for the scientific community, e.g. space heating includes
Ch. Vlachokostas et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
573
emissions from fuel combustion at commercial and residential buildings that can deteriorate air quality with considerable impacts to public health. In any case, it should be emphasized that – among others- the environmental status should be taken into account as a selection criterion for a potential study site, which in our case is a UBC, within a wider region of consideration. It goes without saying that the main criterion for selection is the density of buildings in an UBC.
2.2. Special characteristics In real life cases, it is practically difficult to continuously monitor all environmental pressures in an UBC. Although it would be beneficial to include as many types of pressures as possible (and relevant impacts and stressors in a more general analysis), this is not easy to accomplish in most cases. In any case, buildings are agents of “static” environmental burden especially in terms of energy, water and resources consumption, and waste generation. Levels of these pressures attributed to buildings are highly diversified and depend on a variety of parameters such as the size and category of the building, the year and type of construction, its location and climatic zone, technology of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), the lighting systems etc. In addition, the values of the consumption indicators vary greatly not only between regions, but also within a region. Normalization in terms of key indicators that are usually used in a building’s assessment (i.e. pressure per square meter) can be crucial to present a homogenized comparative analysis of different buildings.
2.3. Life Cycle Assessment and carbon footprint LCA principles can be most helpful for a reliable assessment of -among others- the carbon footprint of buildings. Despite the inherent uncertainties, LCA is crucial in order to estimate the environmental burden from an activity, and thus provide normalized key performance sub-indices necessary for the characterization of environmental sustainability in UBC via the BCIenv. Buildings are followed by significant environmental load that is associated to energy consumption (heating, cooling, lighting, cooking), water consumption (water, hot water for use, swimming pools, irrigation purposes), waste generation (organic waste, plastic, glass) and CO2-eq emissions. Input data related to energy and water consumption and waste generation are post-processed to provide normalized key performance indicators e.g. kWh per square meter, m3 of water consumed per apartment etc. In order to calculate the carbon footprint attributed to UBCs, operational phase LCA is adopted. LCA leads to a reliable assessment of CO 2-eq that can be attributed to UBCs residents’ accommodation in order to provide normalized sub-indices for the BCIenv. LCA implementation can be tractably facilitated using relevant software and its corresponding assessment methods. The LCA functional unit, boundary selection and limitations need to be precisely defined relative to the BCIenv activities. 2.4 Composite Indicator Characterization of the environmental sustainability should be realized in a holistic and tractable manner for a UBC. It is of crucial importance for a decision-maker to take into consideration the different dimensions of environmental pressures in a combined manner. Rather than viewing specific pressures of building activity separately for planning and environmental sustainability considerations, the possibility of a combined assessment approach is being considered in the definition of the proposed concept. Four main categories can be defined for the tractability of the developed composite indicator: i) Energy-oriented environmental pressures, ii) Water-oriented environmental pressures, iii) Waste-oriented environmental pressures and iv) Carbon footprint-oriented environmental pressures. The Building Complex Index for assessing environmental performance (BCIenv) can be generally represented mathematically with Eq. (1):
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Ch. Vlachokostas et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
BCI env ( p)
EN
Las (en) Lta (en)
en 1
Lta (en)
¦ (wen
WS
Las ( ws ) Lta ( ws )
ws 1
Lta ( ws )
¦ (wws
WT
Las ( wt ) Lta ( wt )
wt 1
Lta ( wt )
) ¦ ( wwt
CF
Las (cf ) Lta (cf )
cf 1
Lta (cf )
) ¦ ( wcfh
) (1)
)
where:
BCI env ( p) : Building Complex Index of environmental performance for a time period p, 1 d BCI env ( p) d f . The time period p equals to the duration of the buildings’ activity in UBC a. EN: Number of key performance normalized sub-indices that characterize the energy-oriented environmental pressures (en) that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 1 d en d EN . wen: Weighting factors of the normalized indices that characterize energy-oriented pressures that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 0 d wen d 1 . Las (en) : Reference value that can be a characteristic or limit or target value, for a normalized environmental pressure en, for period p and area a. Lta (en) : Average level of a normalized pressure en, for period p and UBC a. WT: Number of key performance normalized sub-indices that characterize the water-oriented environmental pressures (wt) that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 1 d wt d WT . wwt: Weighting factors of the normalized indices that characterize water-oriented pressures that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 0 d wwt d 1 . Las ( wt ) : Reference value that can be a characteristic or limit or target value, for a normalized environmental pressure wt, for period p and area a. Lta ( wt ) : Average level of a normalized pressure wt, for period p and UBC a. WS: Number of key performance normalized sub-indices that characterize the waste-oriented environmental pressures (ws) that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 1 d ws d WS . wws: Weighting factors of normalized indices that characterize waste-oriented pressures that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 0 d wws d 1 . Las ( ws ) : Reference value that can be a characteristic or limit or target value, for a normalized environmental pressure ws, for period p and area a. Lta ( ws ) : Average level of a normalized pressure of ws, for period p and UBC a. CF: Number of key performance normalized sub-indices that characterize the carbon footprint-oriented environmental pressures (cf) that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 1 d cf d CF . wcf: Weighting factors of normalized indices that characterize carbon footprint-oriented pressures that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 0 d wcf d 1 . Las (cf ) : Reference value that can be a characteristic or limit or target value, for a normalized environmental pressure ch, for period p and area a. Lta (cf ) : Average level of a normalized pressure cf, for period p and UBC a. On the basis of Eq. (1) BCI env ( p) is a weighted average of sub-indices attempting to capture the relative weight of the levels of different environmental pressure status expressions to characterize building activity in UBC. Thus, Figure 1 indicates the relative scale of BCI env ( p) and provides a complete picture of how this concept relates to environmental sustainability characterization and what values correspond to negligibly low, moderate or high environmental sustainability of a complex of buildings. This scale assists the decision-maker to consider environmental sustainability in a combined manner and the relevant assessment could be realized in an easy-to-comprehend and communicate manner. Considering the fact that Figure 1 depicts the relative scale for a holistic characterization representation in a multi-pressures framework, the decision-maker should be aware of situations in which there is a single very bad “component” of the aggregated representation, possibly hided in the total sum. In order to “dig out” such cases the characteristics of the area under consideration and the status of the environmental pressures compared to corresponding target values should be
Ch. Vlachokostas et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
meticulously studied. Towards this aim, LCA analysis enables the decision-maker to identify which are the individual factors that cause a bad level of environmental performance for each UBC. Based on the characterization of environmental sustainability that is depicted in Figure 1, approximate zero values characterize barely acceptable cumulative environmental sustainability ( BCI env ( p) =0 stands for combined environmental pressure that approximates target values as a weighted average). Negative values characterize a problematic situation (the higher the combined environmental pressure, the closer to -1 the BCI env ( p) approaches). BCI env ( p) =-1 expresses the worst case scenario and the value which corresponds to very bad environmental sustainability. We consider BCI env ( p) >0.3 as a good level for combined environmental performance (25% below the target values as a weighted average).
Fig. 1. BCI env ( p) relative scale.
It should be emphasized that in many real life cases, when considering the special characteristics of an area under study, it can be decided that one environmental pressure mechanism is more important than another (e.g. waste production vs water consumption). The weighting factor option, included in equation (1), reflects the relative significance considering observed levels of resource consumption compared to environmental standards or any other parameter tailored to the special characteristics of the case under consideration. The scheme is similar to the one put forward by Michailidou et al. (2015). It should be stressed out that this fact necessitates the assembly of a group of experts in the framework of the structured dialogue approach (see section 3). The group of experts to be involved in the decision-making process should combine scientists, stakeholders and planners and representatives of local authorities while keeping its synthesis representative and flexible. Participation of different actors familiarized with the strengths and weaknesses of the area from academia, research, NGOs, chambers and local/regional/governmental authorities, is of crucial importance in order to achieve optimal exchange of knowledge and representativeness. 3. The Structured Dialogue Approach The implementation of the BCIenv is combined with a well-designed methodology to record the decision-makers’ needs and priorities regarding the building sector. This is crucial in order to connect pressures-status and feedback and put forward policies/measures/alternatives/options for improving the environmental performance of the building sector. This takes place in the form of a “Structured Dialogue Approach – (SDA)” i.e. a process implemented with decision-makers to identify strategic problems and key barriers they encounter to implement sustainable policies in the building sector for promoting strategic governance and sustainability. The SDA aims to identify what decisionmakers really envisage, their needs and the key barriers to the implementation of sustainable urban policies relating to the building sector. The SDA is mainly realized through a panel of discussion and specific personal interviews that are established with key decision-makers at all government levels. Decision-makers of the SDA must be very carefully selected. Decision-makers are critical to be politicians (elected representatives, who can draft policies) or high-level public administrators (change agents – in charge of urban projects, like new areas and developments – people who can put the policies into implementation). Both politicians and high-level administrators are important to be selected from the pool of available decision-makers. All levels (national, regional, local) need to be represented.
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The use of a SDA questionnaire could be more than necessary in order to effectively implement the approach. This may contain both close and open ended questions. The main fields of the SDA questionnaires deal with the following issues: (i) Policies for the sustainability of building sector, i.e., the most important urban problems in the political or technical agenda will be discussed; (ii) Application of EU legislation, i.e. problems that hinder the implementation of EU legislation affecting urban sustainability aspects will be discussed; (iii) Barriers i.e., internal barriers of the administration such as technical/lack of competence, financial barriers, regulatory and legislative barriers, lack of governance tools, lack of partnership and organisational instruments to support the involvement of different social actors, wrong policies with respect to urban problems; political barriers, such as opposition of some actors and lack of political support, change of political agenda, conflicts between priorities, between different decision-makers; external barriers, such as acceptability by citizens (societal consensus) and by the beneficiaries of the actions and different priorities for people involved, economic crisis that can drive to other problems, people’s expectations, weak instruments and methods to involve citizens. (iv) Needs and expectations about policies for green buildings and urban sustainability in general, i.e. issues that decision-makers wish to improve or better focus, in order to enhance the policies they are working on, are proposed to be discussed. Also, the needs of decision-makers in order to develop urban sustainability policies, e.g. in selecting different typologies of instruments, such as incentives, direct actions, taxes, rules, voluntary instruments, personnel, competences, innovative instruments, funds, etc. are discussed. Additionally, availability of financing sources or tools with long-term effects or to resolve immediate urban problems and/or emergencies will be exposed. Existing EU activities and initiatives addressing the constraints and needs previously expressed will be discussed as well as suggestions for the next programming period to support some priorities and policies for 2014-2020. The structured definition of the needs and priorities of decision-makers is the first step towards the effective implementation especially of EU policies in the urban sector with emphasis on buildings. It serves as a mechanism in order to support the transferability-capitalization of former EU projects results to the decision-makers with the use of the SDA approach. The capitalization process is conceptualized as the process of making them operational, interconnected and transferable. This is achieved through the active involvement of decision-makers in the discussions of results, their practical implications and use in the building sector. 4. Managerial Insights and Future Challenges In order to define a set of typical building cases in a UBC, the consumption of energy and water and other important operational characteristics should be investigated through tractable questionnaires during personal interviews with the building managers, owners and personal (bills) or national records. As a first step for the preparation of a questionnaire, a pre-test procedure should be conducted to assess the comprehensibility of the composed “draft” questionnaire and the probable effectiveness of the extracting data from building managers and owners. Essential introductory information should be synoptically provided. Emphasis to simplicity and comprehensibility of the questionnaire should be given. These should be considered as top priorities in the proposed methodological scheme, since an easy-to-comprehend but also adequate questionnaire would significantly increase the possibility of reliable responses and thus reliable information as input to the BCIenv approach. After making the appropriate modifications and improvements, the final questionnaire could be used as a tool to extract relevant input data. A typical descriptive statistical analysis is also required in order to organize the data mined, present coherently the corresponding data of the sample and highlight representativeness. Calculation of frequencies and percentages are more useful in terms of describing categorical data types for the buildings’ sample in an UBC. Post-processing of the available information leads to the calculation of specific sub-indices for the BCIenv and the sustainability characterization. 5. Conclusions The importance of assessing the combined environmental pressure is highlighted with the definition of the BCIenv and the corresponding normalized performance indicators. Furthermore, different normalized indicators may
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provide a different status for environmental performance characterization due to the fact that buildings are a nonhomogenized sample with numerous different parameters. BCI env provides a comparative analysis via different types of normalized sub-indices for different buildings categories in terms of their combined environmental pressure. BCIenv takes into account both resources consumption and carbon footprint. Thus, it gives a more accurate picture regarding the combined overall environmental pressure. Last but not least, it should be noted that it is not the authors’ intention to provide an approach, which includes synergistic impacts and non-additive unknown pathways of damages to resources, ecosystems and human health. There is still much to learn about synergistic links of impacts and stressors and undoubtedly, the current state of knowledge has still gaps and numerous uncertainties. In any case, this paper analytically points out the necessity of considering environmental performance in areas of concentrated buildings in a more holistic way. As a future work, the holistic methodological framework herein presented is among the authors’ strong intentions to demonstrate for the case of Thessaloniki, Greece.
References 1. Mozer G. Quality of life and sustainability: Toward person-environment congruity. Journal of Environmental Psychology 2009; 29(3):351357. 2. Pugh C. Sustainability the Environment and Urbanization. London: Earthscan Pubications Limited; 1996. 3. Atash, F. The deterioration of urban environments in developing countries: Mitigating the air pollution crisis in Tehran, Iran. Cities 2007; 24(6):399-409. 4. Moussiopoulos N, Achillas Ch, Vlachokostas Ch, Spyridi D, Nikolaou K. Environmental, social and economic information management for the evaluation of sustainability in urban areas: A system of indicators for Thessaloniki, Greece. Cities 2010; 27(5):377-384. 5. Vlachokostas Ch, Achillas Ch, Moussiopoulos N, Hourdakis E, Tsilingiridis G. Ntziachristos L, Sidiropoulos C. Decision support system for the evaluation of urban air pollution control options: Application for particulate pollution in Thessaloniki Greece. Science of the Total Environment 2009; 407:5937-5938. 6. Van Dijk M, Mingshun Z. Sustainability indices as a tool for urban managers, evidence from four medium-sized Chinese cities. Environmental Impact Assessment Review 2005; 25(6):667-688. 7. Michailidou AV, Vlachokostas C, Moussiopoulos N. A methodology to assess the overall environmental pressure attributed to tourism areas: A combined approach for typical all-sized hotels in Chalkidiki, Greece. Ecological Indicators 2015; 50: 108-119. 8. Reed M, Graves A, Dandy N, Posthumus H, Hubacek K, Morris J, Prell C, Quinn C, Stringer L. Who’s in and why? A typology of stakeholder analysis methods for natural resource management. Journal of Environmental Management 2009; 90:1933-1949.
ScienceDirect Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
International Conference on Sustainable Synergies from Buildings to the Urban Scale, SBE16
A Holistic Methodological Approach in the Urban Context Towards Characterizing the Environmental Performance of Buildings and Promoting Strategic Governance and Sustainability Ch. Vlachokostasa,* , A.V. Michailidoua, E. Felekia, Ch. Achillasb, N. Moussiopoulosa and O. Trasanidisa a
Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Laboratory of Heat Transfer and Environmental Engineering, Thessaloniki,54124,Greece International Hellenic University, School of Economics, Business Administration and Legal Studies, Thermi, 57001, Greece
b
Abstract Nowadays, over half of the world's population is living in urban areas. Urbanization has not led only to economic and social transformation, but also to high resource consumption and considerable environmental damage. This study aims to promote a holistic methodological approach in the urban context in order to foster policy modeling, efficient governance and sustainability. The paper has a twofold purpose: (i) to provide an approach for tractably characterizing the environmental performance of the building sector, and (ii) to promote sustainable practices towards greener buildings in urban areas. Towards this aim a composite indicator is analytically defined. The index combines the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to the building sector and is mathematically formulated to be finally implemented generically. Apart from energy, water consumption and waste generation, the presented scheme establishes links with LCA in order to include estimations of carbon footprint (CO 2-eq). The formulated index is combined with the structure dialogue approach that has been developed within Urban Empathy, a MED Programme funded capitalization project focused on the efficiency of sustainable urban policies in the Mediterranean Basin. The structured dialogue process identifies key barriers to the implementation of the selected available practices into sustainable urban policies for the building sector. The paper highlights insights for common priorities, real pilot project results and their relation to implemented policies in order to foster strategic governance and policy modeling for specific areas under consideration. ©2017 2017Published The Authors. Published by Elsevier © by Elsevier B.V. This is an openB.V. access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SBE16. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SBE16. Keywords: building sector; sustainability; index, structured dialogue approach; decision-making.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +30-2310-994181; fax: +30-2310-996012. E-mail address: [email protected]
1878-0296 © 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SBE16. doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2017.03.130
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Ch. Vlachokostas et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
1. Introduction Environmental quality contributes significantly to social welfare, public health and sustainability (e.g. Mozer, 2009; Pugh, 1996). Considering that over half of the world's population is living in urban built-up areas, the anthropogenic pressures on the environment have reached nowadays critical levels in numerous conurbations and urban areas worldwide, resulting in the continued deterioration of local environments (e.g., Atash, 2007; Moussiopoulos et al., 2010). The problems are more intense for conurbations, which are crucial engines of local socio-economic development and, where human activities are inevitably concentrated in relatively small areas (Vlachokostas et al., 2009). In this light, urban areas concentrate environmental decay, and air, waste and noise pollution, congestion, fresh water shortages and energy demands seriously threaten social welfare and development (Van Dijk & Mingshun, 2005). Urbanization, which is a continuous process, has led not only to economic and social transformation but also to high resource consumption and considerable environmental damage that can be attributed to many economic sectors; among others the building sector. On this basis, the efficient use of resources is regarded as a key challenge for the building sector and decision-makers in the continuous effort to encounter environmental deterioration, face climate change risks and eventually promote sustainability. Towards this aim, the material to follow promotes a holistic methodological approach in the urban context in order to foster policy modeling, efficient governance and sustainability. The paper has a twofold purpose: (i) to provide an approach for tractably characterizing the environmental performance of buildings, (ii) to promote sustainable practices towards greener buildings in urban areas. In order to characterize the environmental performance of buildings a composite index is analytically defined which combines the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to the building sector. Apart from energy, water consumption and waste generation, the presented scheme establishes links with LCA in order to include estimations of carbon footprint (CO 2-eq). The approach is similar to the one followed by the Michailidou and colleagues approach (Michailidou et al, 2015). The formulated index is combined with the Urban Empathy structure dialogue approach, which is adopted in order to put forward sustainable building practices. Urban Empathy is a capitalization project funded by MED Programme focused on the efficiency of sustainable urban policies in the Mediterranean Basin. The structured dialogue process identifies key barriers to the implementation of the selected available practices into sustainable urban policies for the building sector. The paper highlights insights for common priorities, real pilot project results and their relation to implemented policies in order to foster strategic governance and policy modeling for the area under consideration. 2. Materials and Methods The main methodological element of the presented approach is the combination of the main environmental pressures that can be attributed to the building sector realized for an Urban Building Complex (UBC). The strategic aim is to provide a characterization for environmental sustainability based on the definition and implementation of the Building Complex Index for assessing environmental performance (BCIenv). BCIenv is developed by the authors to provide a comparative analysis for typical all-sized building categories in terms of their combined environmental pressure. Establishing links with carbon footprint is also crucial. Towards this aim, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) gives the ability to indicate processes and/or flows that have the highest resource consumption and the highest carbon footprint in an effort to highlight interrelations with climate change and provide relevant normalized subindices for the developed index. LCA is crucial amongst other environmental performance tools for the building sector since it evaluates environmental impacts from different perspectives and assumptions.
2.1. Selection of the UBC An area with considerable building density needs to be characterized not only by its local environmental quality, but also regarding the environmental pressures that can be attributed to the corresponding activity of the units of buildings in the area. The embedded complexity of this activity, pressures and impacts, both of short - to long-term nature, constitutes a great environmental challenge for the scientific community, e.g. space heating includes
Ch. Vlachokostas et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
573
emissions from fuel combustion at commercial and residential buildings that can deteriorate air quality with considerable impacts to public health. In any case, it should be emphasized that – among others- the environmental status should be taken into account as a selection criterion for a potential study site, which in our case is a UBC, within a wider region of consideration. It goes without saying that the main criterion for selection is the density of buildings in an UBC.
2.2. Special characteristics In real life cases, it is practically difficult to continuously monitor all environmental pressures in an UBC. Although it would be beneficial to include as many types of pressures as possible (and relevant impacts and stressors in a more general analysis), this is not easy to accomplish in most cases. In any case, buildings are agents of “static” environmental burden especially in terms of energy, water and resources consumption, and waste generation. Levels of these pressures attributed to buildings are highly diversified and depend on a variety of parameters such as the size and category of the building, the year and type of construction, its location and climatic zone, technology of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), the lighting systems etc. In addition, the values of the consumption indicators vary greatly not only between regions, but also within a region. Normalization in terms of key indicators that are usually used in a building’s assessment (i.e. pressure per square meter) can be crucial to present a homogenized comparative analysis of different buildings.
2.3. Life Cycle Assessment and carbon footprint LCA principles can be most helpful for a reliable assessment of -among others- the carbon footprint of buildings. Despite the inherent uncertainties, LCA is crucial in order to estimate the environmental burden from an activity, and thus provide normalized key performance sub-indices necessary for the characterization of environmental sustainability in UBC via the BCIenv. Buildings are followed by significant environmental load that is associated to energy consumption (heating, cooling, lighting, cooking), water consumption (water, hot water for use, swimming pools, irrigation purposes), waste generation (organic waste, plastic, glass) and CO2-eq emissions. Input data related to energy and water consumption and waste generation are post-processed to provide normalized key performance indicators e.g. kWh per square meter, m3 of water consumed per apartment etc. In order to calculate the carbon footprint attributed to UBCs, operational phase LCA is adopted. LCA leads to a reliable assessment of CO 2-eq that can be attributed to UBCs residents’ accommodation in order to provide normalized sub-indices for the BCIenv. LCA implementation can be tractably facilitated using relevant software and its corresponding assessment methods. The LCA functional unit, boundary selection and limitations need to be precisely defined relative to the BCIenv activities. 2.4 Composite Indicator Characterization of the environmental sustainability should be realized in a holistic and tractable manner for a UBC. It is of crucial importance for a decision-maker to take into consideration the different dimensions of environmental pressures in a combined manner. Rather than viewing specific pressures of building activity separately for planning and environmental sustainability considerations, the possibility of a combined assessment approach is being considered in the definition of the proposed concept. Four main categories can be defined for the tractability of the developed composite indicator: i) Energy-oriented environmental pressures, ii) Water-oriented environmental pressures, iii) Waste-oriented environmental pressures and iv) Carbon footprint-oriented environmental pressures. The Building Complex Index for assessing environmental performance (BCIenv) can be generally represented mathematically with Eq. (1):
574
Ch. Vlachokostas et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 38 (2017) 571 – 577
BCI env ( p)
EN
Las (en) Lta (en)
en 1
Lta (en)
¦ (wen
WS
Las ( ws ) Lta ( ws )
ws 1
Lta ( ws )
¦ (wws
WT
Las ( wt ) Lta ( wt )
wt 1
Lta ( wt )
) ¦ ( wwt
CF
Las (cf ) Lta (cf )
cf 1
Lta (cf )
) ¦ ( wcfh
) (1)
)
where:
BCI env ( p) : Building Complex Index of environmental performance for a time period p, 1 d BCI env ( p) d f . The time period p equals to the duration of the buildings’ activity in UBC a. EN: Number of key performance normalized sub-indices that characterize the energy-oriented environmental pressures (en) that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 1 d en d EN . wen: Weighting factors of the normalized indices that characterize energy-oriented pressures that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 0 d wen d 1 . Las (en) : Reference value that can be a characteristic or limit or target value, for a normalized environmental pressure en, for period p and area a. Lta (en) : Average level of a normalized pressure en, for period p and UBC a. WT: Number of key performance normalized sub-indices that characterize the water-oriented environmental pressures (wt) that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 1 d wt d WT . wwt: Weighting factors of the normalized indices that characterize water-oriented pressures that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 0 d wwt d 1 . Las ( wt ) : Reference value that can be a characteristic or limit or target value, for a normalized environmental pressure wt, for period p and area a. Lta ( wt ) : Average level of a normalized pressure wt, for period p and UBC a. WS: Number of key performance normalized sub-indices that characterize the waste-oriented environmental pressures (ws) that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 1 d ws d WS . wws: Weighting factors of normalized indices that characterize waste-oriented pressures that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 0 d wws d 1 . Las ( ws ) : Reference value that can be a characteristic or limit or target value, for a normalized environmental pressure ws, for period p and area a. Lta ( ws ) : Average level of a normalized pressure of ws, for period p and UBC a. CF: Number of key performance normalized sub-indices that characterize the carbon footprint-oriented environmental pressures (cf) that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 1 d cf d CF . wcf: Weighting factors of normalized indices that characterize carbon footprint-oriented pressures that can be attributed to UBCs considered in the analysis, 0 d wcf d 1 . Las (cf ) : Reference value that can be a characteristic or limit or target value, for a normalized environmental pressure ch, for period p and area a. Lta (cf ) : Average level of a normalized pressure cf, for period p and UBC a. On the basis of Eq. (1) BCI env ( p) is a weighted average of sub-indices attempting to capture the relative weight of the levels of different environmental pressure status expressions to characterize building activity in UBC. Thus, Figure 1 indicates the relative scale of BCI env ( p) and provides a complete picture of how this concept relates to environmental sustainability characterization and what values correspond to negligibly low, moderate or high environmental sustainability of a complex of buildings. This scale assists the decision-maker to consider environmental sustainability in a combined manner and the relevant assessment could be realized in an easy-to-comprehend and communicate manner. Considering the fact that Figure 1 depicts the relative scale for a holistic characterization representation in a multi-pressures framework, the decision-maker should be aware of situations in which there is a single very bad “component” of the aggregated representation, possibly hided in the total sum. In order to “dig out” such cases the characteristics of the area under consideration and the status of the environmental pressures compared to corresponding target values should be
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meticulously studied. Towards this aim, LCA analysis enables the decision-maker to identify which are the individual factors that cause a bad level of environmental performance for each UBC. Based on the characterization of environmental sustainability that is depicted in Figure 1, approximate zero values characterize barely acceptable cumulative environmental sustainability ( BCI env ( p) =0 stands for combined environmental pressure that approximates target values as a weighted average). Negative values characterize a problematic situation (the higher the combined environmental pressure, the closer to -1 the BCI env ( p) approaches). BCI env ( p) =-1 expresses the worst case scenario and the value which corresponds to very bad environmental sustainability. We consider BCI env ( p) >0.3 as a good level for combined environmental performance (25% below the target values as a weighted average).
Fig. 1. BCI env ( p) relative scale.
It should be emphasized that in many real life cases, when considering the special characteristics of an area under study, it can be decided that one environmental pressure mechanism is more important than another (e.g. waste production vs water consumption). The weighting factor option, included in equation (1), reflects the relative significance considering observed levels of resource consumption compared to environmental standards or any other parameter tailored to the special characteristics of the case under consideration. The scheme is similar to the one put forward by Michailidou et al. (2015). It should be stressed out that this fact necessitates the assembly of a group of experts in the framework of the structured dialogue approach (see section 3). The group of experts to be involved in the decision-making process should combine scientists, stakeholders and planners and representatives of local authorities while keeping its synthesis representative and flexible. Participation of different actors familiarized with the strengths and weaknesses of the area from academia, research, NGOs, chambers and local/regional/governmental authorities, is of crucial importance in order to achieve optimal exchange of knowledge and representativeness. 3. The Structured Dialogue Approach The implementation of the BCIenv is combined with a well-designed methodology to record the decision-makers’ needs and priorities regarding the building sector. This is crucial in order to connect pressures-status and feedback and put forward policies/measures/alternatives/options for improving the environmental performance of the building sector. This takes place in the form of a “Structured Dialogue Approach – (SDA)” i.e. a process implemented with decision-makers to identify strategic problems and key barriers they encounter to implement sustainable policies in the building sector for promoting strategic governance and sustainability. The SDA aims to identify what decisionmakers really envisage, their needs and the key barriers to the implementation of sustainable urban policies relating to the building sector. The SDA is mainly realized through a panel of discussion and specific personal interviews that are established with key decision-makers at all government levels. Decision-makers of the SDA must be very carefully selected. Decision-makers are critical to be politicians (elected representatives, who can draft policies) or high-level public administrators (change agents – in charge of urban projects, like new areas and developments – people who can put the policies into implementation). Both politicians and high-level administrators are important to be selected from the pool of available decision-makers. All levels (national, regional, local) need to be represented.
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The use of a SDA questionnaire could be more than necessary in order to effectively implement the approach. This may contain both close and open ended questions. The main fields of the SDA questionnaires deal with the following issues: (i) Policies for the sustainability of building sector, i.e., the most important urban problems in the political or technical agenda will be discussed; (ii) Application of EU legislation, i.e. problems that hinder the implementation of EU legislation affecting urban sustainability aspects will be discussed; (iii) Barriers i.e., internal barriers of the administration such as technical/lack of competence, financial barriers, regulatory and legislative barriers, lack of governance tools, lack of partnership and organisational instruments to support the involvement of different social actors, wrong policies with respect to urban problems; political barriers, such as opposition of some actors and lack of political support, change of political agenda, conflicts between priorities, between different decision-makers; external barriers, such as acceptability by citizens (societal consensus) and by the beneficiaries of the actions and different priorities for people involved, economic crisis that can drive to other problems, people’s expectations, weak instruments and methods to involve citizens. (iv) Needs and expectations about policies for green buildings and urban sustainability in general, i.e. issues that decision-makers wish to improve or better focus, in order to enhance the policies they are working on, are proposed to be discussed. Also, the needs of decision-makers in order to develop urban sustainability policies, e.g. in selecting different typologies of instruments, such as incentives, direct actions, taxes, rules, voluntary instruments, personnel, competences, innovative instruments, funds, etc. are discussed. Additionally, availability of financing sources or tools with long-term effects or to resolve immediate urban problems and/or emergencies will be exposed. Existing EU activities and initiatives addressing the constraints and needs previously expressed will be discussed as well as suggestions for the next programming period to support some priorities and policies for 2014-2020. The structured definition of the needs and priorities of decision-makers is the first step towards the effective implementation especially of EU policies in the urban sector with emphasis on buildings. It serves as a mechanism in order to support the transferability-capitalization of former EU projects results to the decision-makers with the use of the SDA approach. The capitalization process is conceptualized as the process of making them operational, interconnected and transferable. This is achieved through the active involvement of decision-makers in the discussions of results, their practical implications and use in the building sector. 4. Managerial Insights and Future Challenges In order to define a set of typical building cases in a UBC, the consumption of energy and water and other important operational characteristics should be investigated through tractable questionnaires during personal interviews with the building managers, owners and personal (bills) or national records. As a first step for the preparation of a questionnaire, a pre-test procedure should be conducted to assess the comprehensibility of the composed “draft” questionnaire and the probable effectiveness of the extracting data from building managers and owners. Essential introductory information should be synoptically provided. Emphasis to simplicity and comprehensibility of the questionnaire should be given. These should be considered as top priorities in the proposed methodological scheme, since an easy-to-comprehend but also adequate questionnaire would significantly increase the possibility of reliable responses and thus reliable information as input to the BCIenv approach. After making the appropriate modifications and improvements, the final questionnaire could be used as a tool to extract relevant input data. A typical descriptive statistical analysis is also required in order to organize the data mined, present coherently the corresponding data of the sample and highlight representativeness. Calculation of frequencies and percentages are more useful in terms of describing categorical data types for the buildings’ sample in an UBC. Post-processing of the available information leads to the calculation of specific sub-indices for the BCIenv and the sustainability characterization. 5. Conclusions The importance of assessing the combined environmental pressure is highlighted with the definition of the BCIenv and the corresponding normalized performance indicators. Furthermore, different normalized indicators may
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provide a different status for environmental performance characterization due to the fact that buildings are a nonhomogenized sample with numerous different parameters. BCI env provides a comparative analysis via different types of normalized sub-indices for different buildings categories in terms of their combined environmental pressure. BCIenv takes into account both resources consumption and carbon footprint. Thus, it gives a more accurate picture regarding the combined overall environmental pressure. Last but not least, it should be noted that it is not the authors’ intention to provide an approach, which includes synergistic impacts and non-additive unknown pathways of damages to resources, ecosystems and human health. There is still much to learn about synergistic links of impacts and stressors and undoubtedly, the current state of knowledge has still gaps and numerous uncertainties. In any case, this paper analytically points out the necessity of considering environmental performance in areas of concentrated buildings in a more holistic way. As a future work, the holistic methodological framework herein presented is among the authors’ strong intentions to demonstrate for the case of Thessaloniki, Greece.
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