Indicators Framework for Sustainable Urban Design

A Methodical Framework for Sustainable Architectural Design: Housing Practice in the Middle East

In developing countries where sustainable housing design receives insufficient theoretical and practical efforts, decisions about appropriate sustainable design strategies are often made in ignorance of situational and contextual issues and isolation from local practices. The study attempts to provide a design framework that comprises various design models for sustainable housing, enabling architects worldwide to broaden their sustainability practices in the architectural field. The study employs the grounded theory method to transform theory into viable housing design models for architects in various regions, particularly the Middle East, who will be able to trace the regional models and select design approaches and strategies in response to local situations. The research is divided into three stages. Guy and Farmer’s six logics are linked with methodical sustainable design approaches through comparative analysis to develop design models that will be chased in sustainable housing practices. The models are introduced in the next phase within a design framework and, finally, verified through Middle Eastern practices. The framework, which has been verified by tracking sustainable housing models in the design practices of Middle Eastern countries, can be used by applying the design models individually or by combining more than one model to create more responsive sustainable design practices in the housing field. The novelty of the study is that the developed framework transforms theoretical models into viable options for designers and scholars around the world, as well as enabling architects and developers in Middle Eastern cities to easily and practically trace regional design models and to select appropriate design approaches and strategies in an integrative manner.

Assessing Resource Efficiency of City Neighbourhoods: A Methodological Framework for Structuring and Practical Application of Indicators in Urban Planning

Today, changing framework conditions of living and working in cities drive urban planning processes for refurbishment, notably at the level of neighbourhoods, and provide a window of opportunity to enhance resource efficiency and sustainable urban development. Indicators, as part of sustainability assessment methods, may support the identification of the most beneficial planning alternatives or the selection of measures. However, the fact that a multitude of indicators are proposed in the literature discourages their actual use and hampers a sound application for decision support. To tackle these challenges, a manual has been developed proposing a framework for the use of indicators in urban planning. In this contribution, the theoretical foundations of the proposed framework are analysed. A conceptual outline of the framework is presented, which as its core has a typology of indicators, and its embedding in urban planning processes is discussed. The framework combines a theoretically concise unifying structure with a flexible practical approach for application in diverse areas of resource efficiency. Thus, it shall enhance transparency as well as comparability in the use of indicators, foster communication between stakeholders and in the long run support the application of indicators and use of sustainability assessment methods as regular parts of urban planning.

Environmental Sustainability Assessment of the European Union's Capital Cities

The growing flow of people into cities causes several challenges for their functioning. This brings the need to ensure, for example, efficient transport, sustainable waste, and appropriate energy policy. Particularly capital cities are exposed to the above-mentioned risks, due to their large numbers and densities of inhabitants. Therefore, the state of the environment in cities should be monitored systematically. The research aim of this article is to evaluate the level of environmental sustainability in capitals of European Union countries. A synthetic indicator was made up of diagnostic variables, using quantitative and qualitative indicators relating to the quality of the environment. Based on the ranking, results reveal that Europe is spatially divided according to the level of environmental quality. The best results were achieved by capital cities of the northern European countries. The analysis presented here has some application potential. It can serve to identify challenges to improving the quality of the environment, and to raise public awareness of the importance of changing individual behaviour (e.g., use of public transport).

Assessing the Contribution of Innovative Technologies to Sustainable Development for Planning and Decision-Making Processes: A Set of Indicators to Describe the Performance of Sustainable Urban Infrastructures (ISI)

The sustainable development of our cities and regions has become an integral part of the current debate. To achieve the sustainability goals, however, the development of sustainable technologies and infrastructures as well as decisive municipal action at the local level are essential. The research project VertiKKA (“Vertical Air Conditioning and Wastewater Treatment System”), sponsored by the German Ministry of Education and Research, addresses both technology development and the integration of innovative technologies and infrastructures into urban planning and decision-making processes. As a result, a set of indicators was developed that allows the assessment of urban infrastructures and technologies and their contribution to sustainable development. This article presents the “set of indicators for sustainable urban infrastructures” (ISI). ISI is based on the results of literature and policy review but was further developed and tailored to urban infrastructures and technologies. ISI considers the ecological, economic, and social dimension of sustainability to be of equal importance; in addition, ISI places particular emphasis on looking at the technology development process and on the creation of supportive governance structures for implementation. In order to create a link between research and practice, the applicability of ISI to the VertiKKA technology is critically reflected.

Smart Urban Mobility System Evaluation Model Adaptation to Vilnius, Montreal and Weimar Cities

To date, there is no developed and validated way to assess urban smartness. When evaluating smart city mobility systems, different authors distinguish different indicators. After analysing the evaluation indicators of the transport system presented in the scientific articles, the most relevant and influential indicators were selected. This article develops a hierarchical evaluation model for evaluating a smart city transportation system. The indicators are divided into five groups called “factors”. Several indicators are assigned to each of the listed groups. A hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method was used to calculate the significance of the selected indicators and to compare urban mobility systems. The applied multi-criteria evaluation methods were simple additive weighting (SAW), complex proportional assessment (COPRAS), and technique for order preference by similiarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The significance of factors and indicators was determined by expert evaluation methods: the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), direct, when experts evaluate the criteria as a percentage (sum of evaluations of all criteria 100%) and ranking (prioritisation). The evaluation and comparison of mobility systems were performed in two stages: when the multi-criteria evaluation is performed according to the indicators of each factor separately and when performing a comprehensive assessment of the smart mobility system according to the integrated significance of the indicators. A leading city is identified and ranked according to the smartness level. The aim of this article is to create a hierarchical evaluation model of the smart mobility systems, to compare the smartness level of Vilnius, Montreal, and Weimar mobility systems, and to create a ranking.

Developing Evaluation Framework for Intelligent Transport System on Public Transportation in Bangkok Metropolitan Regions Using Fuzzy AHP

Public transportation has been encouraged as a significant solution to overcome traffic congestion. An advanced technology, known as advanced public transport system (APTS), was introduced to enhance the effectiveness of public transportation. To support appropriate decisions on selecting application development, significant indicators representing the impacts of the proposed projects are highlighted. This study aims to determine the desirable indicators of developing APTS to achieve smart mobility using the fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (fuzzy AHP) method and allocating weights to each indicator. The perception of a group of intelligent transport system (ITS) experts from three sectors in the Bangkok Metropolitan Regions (BMR) was examined to conduct a fuzzy AHP pairwise comparison. The ranking of 21 indicators categorized within six dimensions in accordance with the specific ITS master plan relating to APTS development is presented. The result presented that the safety dimension obtained the highest rank, and the three most important weight indicators are traffic accident reduction relating to public transportation, smart public transport network density and waiting time for public transportation. In addition, the perspectives towards APTS development and assessment framework development in BMR is highlighted to revise impediment of regulation and encourage integration among stakeholders. Then, the approaches of the APTS evaluation framework in BMR are proposed.

Assessing Impact, Performance and Sustainability Potential of Smart City Projects: Towards a Case Agnostic Evaluation Framework

We report on a novel evaluation framework to globally assess the footprint of smart cities and communities (SCC) projects, being also expandable to the case of smart grid related projects. The uniform smart city evaluation (USE) framework is constructed upon three complementary evaluation axes: the first one aims to weigh up the success of a SCC project based on performance metrics against pre-defined project-specific target values. The second axis focuses on the project’s impact towards the sustainability of a city and it is bench-marked against national and international key objectives arising from strategic plans. This bench-marking feeds the third axis which provides a more inclusive evaluation against four pre-defined and widely acclaimed sectors of interest. The steps to be followed for the uniform evaluation of each axis and corresponding index are presented in detail, including necessary key performance indicator (KPI) normalization, weighting, and aggregation methods. The resulting indices’ scores for each axis (namely project performance index, sustainability impact index, and sustainability performance index) can be post-processed with adequate data processing and visualization tools to extract important information on the extent to which the range of success of a SCC project contributes to the city sustainability progress. Illustrative examples from an on-going SCC project are provided to highlight the strengths of the approach. The proposed framework can be used to compare multiple projects within a city and sustainability and project performance in different cities, evaluate the interventions chosen per project against city needs, benchmark and design future projects (with, e.g., reverse engineering, projections), as well as evaluate various spatial and temporal scales.

Development of an Automatic Low-Cost Air Quality Control System: A Radon Application

Air pollution is the fourth-largest overall risk factor for human health worldwide. Ambient air pollution (outdoors) and household air pollution (indoors) cause about 6.5 million premature deaths. The World Health Organization has established that between 3% and 14% of lung cancer cases are due to radon gas, making it the most important cause of lung cancer after smoking. This work presents a fully automated, low-cost indoor air quality control system that can monitor temperature, pressure, humidity, total volatile organic compounds (TOVC), and radon concentration. Using the radon concentration as an air quality measure, we created a prediction algorithm. The system uses those predictions to control a ventilation system automatically. We tested the algorithm for different prediction windows and compared the results with those without the ventilation system in a radon research room. In this room, the radon concentration is high 100% of the time, reaching a level eleven times higher than the recommended limit. The results show that the system can achieve an 86% reduction of the radon concentration, maintaining it low 90% of the time while having the ventilation system on during only 34% of the time. This work demonstrates that we can control air quality using low-cost resources, keeping a household or workplace safe but comfortable.