Publication year: 2012
Source: Ecological Indicators, Volume 18, July 2012, Pages 353-364

H. Wallbaum, Y. Ostermeyer, C. Salzer, E. Zea Escamilla

With the growing worldwide demand for affordable housing and the importance of supporting and stimulating sustainable development, the need for sustainable solutions in the affordable housing sector is at a peak. The present paper screened about 75 construction technologies and assessed 46 of them. The present paper presents the first results of a step wise approach to identify, assess and recommend most promising technologies for affordable housing projects. A database was developed to store detailed technical information about each of the technologies. A grading and ranking scheme was developed to identify the most promising construction technologies from a sustainability perspective. The main challenges for affordable housing production and most relevant assessment indicators were identified from the literature, interviews and meetings with experts. An indicator based assessment system was developed by cross-referencing the identified eight challenges with ten selected indicators. The final ranking demonstrated that a wide variety of technologies perform strongly overall, and these range from bio-based materials, such as bamboo and timber, to industrialized technologies, such as concrete. Moreover, the possibilities for improvement are vast, and the option of combining different technologies seems to be the most promising approach.

Highlights

â–º The most promising technologies are closely connected to local production. â–º The best performing technologies are associated with bio-based or industrialized products. â–º A combination of technologies can provide an optimal solution to the affordable housing problem. â–º Traditional technologies need to be developed to achieve standardized solutions. â–º The environmental and socio-economic performance of the more industrial solutions needs to be improved while maintaining their competitive presence in the market.

Publication year: 2012
Source: Ecological Indicators, Volume 18, July 2012, Pages 379-386

Maria Frangou, Theocharis Tsoutsos, Nikos Sakellariou

The objective of this work was the sustainability assessment of a 50 MW solar thermal power plant in Crete, an isolated Mediterranean system. The selected scenarios were examined on their technical, economical and environmental sustainability. Key results were the estimation of energy efficiency parameters, energy flows during all the months of the year, economic indicators, as well as potential environmental impacts. The main conclusion is that a solar thermal power plant can – under certain conditions – be sustainable in an isolated system. These conditions are appropriate siting and the introduction of environmental measures.

Publication year: 2012
Source: Ecological Indicators, Volume 18, July 2012, Pages 371-378

Brian G. Fitzgerald, Travis O’Doherty, Richard Moles, Bernadette O’Regan

There is a need to define sustainable development in terms which are more clearly policy-relevant, so as to facilitate the quantitative evaluation of sustainability policies. This paper presents a novel quantitative method to evaluate urban sustainability enhancing policies to further enable evidence based policy making. Quantitative data on more than 300 economic, social and environmental attributes of 79 small to medium sized urban Irish settlements were assembled into a database. This provided a baseline against which projected impacts of fresh policy implementation may be evaluated. Literature searches for assessments of the impacts of policy implementation provided quantitative data on the likely impacts of policies in transport, environment, socio-economics and quality of life. The method has been named Sustainability Evaluation Metric for Policy Recommendation (SEMPRe), and is designed to be user-friendly for decision makers. SEMPRe assigns each candidate policy a numeric value indicating its projected effectiveness in enhancing settlement sustainability as an aid to evidence based decision making. As further quantitative assessment of impacts of additional policies are published in future, the range of policies testable using SEMPRe will increase.

Highlights

â–º We present a method to evaluate likely effects of urban sustainability policies. â–º Quantification is enabled by an extensive database and growing technical literature. â–º Examples of results of urban sustainability policies quantified through the method are presented. â–º Cumulative impacts and possible rebound effects are discussed.

Publication year: 2012
Source: Ecological Indicators, Volume 18, July 2012, Pages 434-442

Emmanuelle Garrigues, Michael S. Corson, Denis A. Angers, Hayo M.G. van der Werf, Christian Walter

Soils are an essential resource in both managed and natural systems, and maintaining soil quality is critical to the development of sustainable development of human activities, in particular agriculture. The assessment of impacts of human activities on soil quality needs a universal practical approach that can be incorporated in global environmental assessments. But so far, no synthetic indicators have been proposed that would combine the main soil characteristics in a simple formula valid for all types of soils and climates. The existence of numerous interrelated soil characteristics and their complex interactions with agricultural practices has postponed development of a universal soil-quality impact indicator in environmental assessment, especially in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is an internationally normalized method widely used to evaluate potential impacts of products. The inability to represent impacts on soil quality remains one of the unresolved problems in LCA because of soil's spatial and temporal variability and the complex interactions between soil properties. It is crucial to consider soil quality in the environmental assessment of products, especially those with a majority of their life cycle in biological processes (such as agriculture and forestry). After presenting a general overview of the soil quality concept, we review the existing LCA approaches that consider soil quality in their inventory and impact-assessment phases, and outline the challenges to refining soil quality impacts in LCA. These challenges include estimation of complex soil quality impacts that depend on fluctuating soil characteristics, consideration of both on-site and off-site agricultural soils, and aggregation of impacts both spatially and temporally. The inventory items describing soil quality can be soil properties, functions or processes (e.g., erosion, compaction). Their quantification implies that they be (1) relevant for calculating impacts on soil quality, (2) related to one or more functional units, (3) as accurate as possible and (4) calculated with available data at a global scale. Inventory items based on processes fulfill these four needs and can be considered as midpoint indicators in LCA. Furthermore, indicators based on processes allow an incremental improvement of the method through the inclusion of new impacts. Efforts first must focus on developing robust impact indicators for individual soil processes before attempting to aggregate them into a single indicator. Nonetheless, several aggregation approaches are presented. The appropriate level of complexity and comprehensiveness for assessing impacts on soil quality should result from a compromise between oversimplified and overcomplicated descriptions of the multiple functions and properties of soils.