Sustainability indicators for the built environment - the challenges ahead

Paper in proceeding, 2008

Methods and tools including sustainable development indicators (SDIs) are important aids to the implementation of sustainable development in the construction industry. Through a qualitative analysis, a variety of methods which are widely used internationally can be assessed to establish their compliance with the general requirements of sustainable development. This paper looks at five fundamental criteria: holism, lifecycle assessment, directional certainty, traceability/transparency and local suitability. Most methods more or less meet these requirements, in which users play a central role in compliance. This paper identifies a number of remaining knowledge deficits: the recording and analysis of sociocultural indicators, additional environmental indicators such as land use, resource intensity, interior quality and usability, and a more detailed understanding of building usage and decommissioning costs. In addition to these knowledge deficits, and for a variety of reasons, there is also an implementation deficit: the practice of sustainable construction is lagging far behind the theory.