Use of education as social indicator in the assessment of sustainability throughout the life cycle of a building

The authors seek to establish the need for better education to develop procedures useful to evaluate the sustainability of a building. The analysis emphasises the need for education in the social dimension of sustainability assessment in the context of the life cycle of a building and how such education of building agents could increase sustainability. Their approach includes a definition of sustainable education and describes both useful indicator and a descriptive-analytic method. Next, strategies and technologies required to implement and measure education are presented. From a holistic viewpoint, 'sustainable social building' factors must be evaluated, in part, using an educational indicator, to cover all aspects of sustainable building. It is contended that those responsible for building (local authorities, constructors and users) must be informed of and trained in sustainable issues. The proposed educational indicator could complement other commercially available methods (e.g. LEED) and incidentally improve the sustainability of other building parameters (e.g. energy).

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