Pearce, A R (1999) Sustainability and the built environment: A metric and process for prioritizing improvement opportunities. PhD thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Abstract
A quantitative model of built facility sustainability was proposed as a solution to the problem of prioritizing improvement options for increasing the sustainability of built facilities. Stakeholder Satisfaction, Resource Base Impacts, and Ecosystem Impacts were identified as a set of parameters to define the sustainability of systems on a technological scale. These parameters were corroborated via a content analysis of 83 definitions from the sustainability literature. The parameters were incorporated into a construct of system sustainability represented as a three-dimensional decision space. The three parameters of sustainability were operationalized in terms of built facility systems, resulting in a set of variables meaningful to facility decision makers that could be measured directly or estimated using available data. Logical relationships were specified among the variables to create a quantitative model with behavior matching constraints and objectives from the literature. A process for applying the model to prioritize facility improvement options was derived from classical decision theory, resulting in a vector-based representation for comparing options in terms of their improvement to the sustainability of a facility. A case study was used to demonstrate the model, and subsequent performance analysis of the model's behavior included comparison of expected results with model outputs, sensitivity analysis, and analysis of the mathematical properties of the vector representation. Findings from these analyses suggest that the model provides the capacity to discriminate among improvement options in terms of their relative sustainability. Implications for model refinement are discussed as areas for future research.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Vanegas, J A and Gregory, R A |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | sustainability; decision theory; content analysis; case study |
| Index terms: | performance analysis, built environment, stakeholder satisfaction, option, case study, prioritizing, decision theory, sensitivity analysis, content analysis |
| Subjects: | decision analysis, environmental hazards, infrastructure and transport systems, participation process, data analysis and analytics, data collection methods |
| Topics: | Urban Studies, Sustainability, Risk Management, Stakeholder Management, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here