Assessing and Measuring Environmental Impact and Sustainability

Chapter 15

Sustainability assessments of buildings, communities, and cities

Umberto Berardi,    Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

This chapter focuses on sustainability assessments in the built environment through multicriterion rating systems. Recent interpretations of the concepts of sustainability, assessment, and sustainability assessment in the built environment are discussed before reviewing existing assessment systems. In particular, this chapter focuses on sustainability assessments of buildings, communities, and cities. A comparison between assessment systems at these different scales of the built environment is performed before focusing on the need of cross-scale evaluations. In ...