Given the motivation to consider the environmental, health and safety, and cultural impacts of an alternative building design, system, or material, decision-makers need a clear transparent framework to guide the gathering and organization of information for deliberation. The framework discussed herein is based on multi-attribute assessment as presented by Nicholas Ashford and on the green-building attributes given by LEEDs. The methodology for using the framework consists of the following steps:
1. Choose a set of design or system alternatives to compare against one another. Complete an assessment of resource and material requirements for each alternative over the lifetime of the building to give technical grounding to the discussion.
2. Using the technical information on each alternative, list the foreseeable impacts that each of the alternatives will have on the developer, the workers involved in the production, destruction, and maintenance of the building, the occupants of the building, and society at large. Use LCA, literature research, and expert opinion to determine the impact each alternative has in each of the categories relative to the other alternatives. During this process, make sure any assumptions are clearly stated. Identify applicable LEEDs categories if desired. This information can be used to support LEEDs documentation.
3. Use the framework to facilitate discussion for decision-making. Identify areas in which the proposed actions make the greatest impact or that are the most significant to the actors involved. Gather more information as needed. Consider cost analyses of proposed alternatives as necessary.
The selection of impacts to evaluate is ideally tailored to each project individually. However, categories can be divided into several basic types based on who they impact and the nature of those impacts. Categories can be further organized within the types. The following category types are delineated in this paper.
- Environmental Impacts: Environmental impacts are those that change the physical environment in which we live. They involve any impact that affects natural systems on a local or global scale. Environmental impacts affect society at large as well as those directly involved in building construction and use. Examples include resource use, emissions during building operation or production of building materials, and stormwater management.
Health and Safety Impacts: Health and safety impacts are those that affect production, construction, and maintenance workers as well as the occupants of the building. Health and Safety Impacts, as defined here, include only those directly involved with the building in one way or another. Examples include use of toxins in building material production, building maintenance safety, indoor air quality, and indoor lighting quality.
Cultural Impacts: Cultural impacts are those that result from the context in which the building will be situated and/or social interactions between individuals or groups using the building. This is a broad category meant to include all socioeconomic effects for those who use the building, the community, and society as a whole. Examples of cultural impacts include changes to the architectural fabric of the neighborhood in which the building is built, effects on social institutions (related to the building), and learning, prestige, and leadership from successful implementation of unique and innovative architecture or engineering.
Examples of each impact category for the sustainability analysis framework are shown in Table 1, which lists the impacts evaluated in the case studies.
Once the impacts to be evaluated are defined, data must be collected to document the likely effects of set of design alternatives for a building and its systems. This is most effectively done by a professional or team of professionals trained in assessing this wide array of impacts. Once the data is collected and analyzed, it can be inserted into an “executive summary” table as illustrated in the case studies. Detailed discussion of the statements supplied in the table is to be provided in accompanying text. Note that financial cost is left out of the scope of this report, but such information could readily be inserted into the framework as an additional attribute or impact of each alternative (though timeline and other discrepancies between financial flows and elemental flows or other societal impacts will not be reconciled).
The advantages of this framework are threefold. First, it includes needed information that regular cost-benefit analysis does not provide for making rational sustainability based design decisions. This information is meant to complement other green building guidelines such as LEED when more specific information is needed for a particular project or when evaluating an innovative product that falls outside the purview of other assessment systems.
Second, it is transparent, allowing decision makers to peruse, understand, and weigh benefits in each category for alternative design or material proposals. In doing so, it engages the decision makers by providing a framework that facilitates discussion and identification of critical elements to design decisions, including points that may require more understanding and clarification. The tool also aids in documenting the information used to reach decisions if those decisions have to be defended against outside parties, thus increasing the transparency of the process.
Third, it can be generalized to as many or as few aspects of a design as desired. In considering proposed alternatives, data collection is minimized because all benefits are benefits reported not in absolute terms but relative to other evaluated alternatives. Finally, given these advantages, it must be noted that decision makers need to have willingness to weigh a slightly larger set of alternative consequences if this framework is to be useful.
The fundamental goal of this “Sustainability Analysis Framework” is to facilitate discussion for decision making by organizing information to help designers and project managers weigh different impacts against one another themselves, according to their own subjective values. The tool does not include a valuation system for consolidating disparate sustainability impacts into a single measure, and thus does not result in a number that can be compared to another number as in cost-benefit analysis. Rather, this tool instead gives decision-makers a method for gathering the information necessary to arrive at solutions that are optimized to the values and concerns relevant to the building occupants, facility managers, designers, and construction workers and to the larger social and environmental systems affected by the project.
References
Ashford NA. 2000. An Innovation-Based Strategy for a Sustainable Environment. In J. Hemmelskamp, K. Rennings, and F. Leone (eds.) Innovation-Oriented Environmental Regulation. New York: Physica-Verlag. pp. 67-107.
Ashford NA. 2002. Incorporating Science, Technology, Fairness, and Accountability in Environmental, Health, and Safety Decisions. Available From Author.
LEED Rating System Version 2.1. United States Green Building Council. Available at www.usgbc.org.
Norris, G. A. 2001. Integrating Life Cycle Cost Analysis into LCA. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. Volume 6, Issue 2, pp. 118-121.
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