The Hidden Risks of Urban Heat Islands

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The health impacts associated with increased temperatures from the urban heat islands and climate change are hard to detect. This is because hotter conditions worsen existing poor health related to conditions such as heart and lung diseases, diabetes and asthma. Ill health and deaths, therefore, are often not attributed to increased temperatures and the full effect of high temperatures may not have been fully measured.

Higher temperatures not only affect people with ill-health but also on poorer people who live in  buildings without insulation and mechanical cooling.  It also affects learners in poorly ventilated schools and patients in overcrowded hospitals.

New developments in cities must, therefore, reduce the heat island effect by incorporating lighter colours, more trees and vegetation and providing for breeze paths that enable winds to cool the city. Cities must also develop building upgrade programmes that ensure that roofs are lighter coloured and adequately insulated. In addition, to these infrastructure measures to reduce heat stress, city occupants should be encouraged to develop behaviours which reduce heat stress such as drinking water regularly and avoiding vigorous activities during the hottest parts of the day.

 

 

 

Rapid Building Performance Assessments

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  • Is your building performing well?
  • How does your building compare to local and international best practice?
  • Would you like your building to be more sustainable, efficient, inclusive and cost less to operate?

A rapid building performance assessment evaluates buildings against best practice standards in building technology, facilities management and operational performance in a range of performance areas such as energy, water, waste, indoor environmental quality and access for people with disabilities.

Assessment reports identify gaps in relation to standards and potential performance and provide guidance on interventions that can be used to achieve better buildings and performance.

Implementing recommendations from a rapid building performance assessment can lead to the following benefits:

  • Reduced operational costs
  • Improved compliance with legislation
  • Improved working environments
  • Increased productivity
  • Improved image 
  • increased building value
  • Reduced risk 

Gauge has carried out a wide range of building performance assessments including assessments of BP and Deutsche Bank offices in Johannesburg and the Muckleneuk campus of UNISA.  If you would like a quote on a rapid building performance assessment or would like additional information, please get in touch. 

Responsive Sustainability and Inclusion Training at TVET Colleges

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Many existing buildings perform badly in terms of energy, water, waste and access for people with disabilities. In most cases, this can be easily addressed through improved building management capacity and by undertaking simple building interventions. There many reasons to do this including:

  • Compliance with policy and legislation
  • Improved environmental performance
  • Reduced operational costs
  • Increased efficiencies and better return on investment
  • Reduced downtime
  • Improved morale

Poor building performance provides excellent opportunities for Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges who are well placed to address by through the development of responsive technical training.

So what is responsive technical training? Responsive technical training describes courses and training that are developed to rapidly and effectively address emerging societal, environmental and economic needs.

This can be illustrated through an example. When a city, such as Cape Town, is faced with the prospect of water shortages, local TVET colleges could develop courses on efficient water fitting upgrades, water audits, rainwater harvesting and greywater system installation. This training could ensure households rapidly reduced water consumption and would enable the development of entrepreneurs who could help rapidly improve the efficiency of outdated water systems.

This is one example of a range of courses that could be run by TVET colleges to improve building performance. Others could include:

  • Energy efficiency audits in buildings
  • Water efficiency audit in buildings
  • Waste audits in buildings
  • Disabled access auditing of buildings
  • Energy efficient technologies and management
  • Water efficient technologies and management
  • Recycling system design and management
  • Inclusive organisation design and management

Gauge has developed a range of tools, such as water and energy auditing and modelling tools, and methodologies, such as energy auditing and disabled access audit methodologies, as well as training programmes (Building Energy Audit Training, Sustainable Facilities Management, and Environmental Access training) to support these type of programmes. Please get in touch if you would like to partner with us on the development of these type of courses.

Disabled Access Audit Methodologies

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Gauge was appointed by the ILO to carry out disabled access audits of 12 TVET colleges in Zambia within very tight timeframes. To address this the audit methodology used by Gauge was refined to develop a highly efficient method and set of instruments. These enabled highly detailed audits of large TVET colleges to be undertaken rapidly. Audit reports included measurements, photographs, detailed recommendations and a prioritised action to plan to address infrastructure upgrades and were based on the following components:

  • Walkthrough audit
  • Site survey instrument with fields for required measurements
  • Photographs of prescribed areas and components
  • User and building manager interviews
  • Structured audit reports where measurements, photographs and interviews are collated and cross-referenced, summaries of findings, prioritised action plans for each building and campus as a whole. Action plans included both building upgrades and management interventions (which could be achieved at no cost)

Reports are being used by colleges and the ILO to ensure colleges become more inclusive. Training on the disabled access methodology and instruments are available and can be provided online.  More information is available here.

Building Sustainability and Benchmarking

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The Building Sustainability and Benchmarking guide has been developed by United Nations Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) to introduce sustainability and benchmarking tools for built environments and includes introductions to BREEAM, SBAT and BEST.

Specific objectives of the guide are to:

  • Establish the rationale for building sustainability assessment and benchmarking
  • Identify challenges and limitations that occupants, policy-makers and building practitioners face in applying or interpreting building sustainability assessment or benchmarking tools
  • Provide a sample overview of some environmental sustainability assessment and benchmarking tools for buildings and housing as well as those attempting to measure social and economic impacts
  • Identify pathways for the wider uptake of assessment tools by industry, professional bodies, policymakers, vocational and higher education, and other actors working within the built environment

Copies of the guide are available to download from here.

How far can you walk in 30 minutes, an hour and 2 hours?

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Walking speeds vary depending on age, and health of walkers. However, an average comfortable walking speed is about 5 km per hour and 9km per hour can be achieved by many people. This means that in 30 minutes it should be possible to easily walk 2.5km and in 2 hours it should be possible to walk 10km.  In cities, these are the distances that people nearly always drive or use buses, buses and taxis. Often, the argument is that there is not enough time to walk.

However, a quick calculation, that includes time looking for parking, or time waiting for buses or taxis, may reveal that there is not much difference in journey time. There are also many advantages of walking. Walking enables people to know their cities; they can talk to different people, visit parks, shops, markets and experience a diversity of neighbourhoods. Walking keeps people fit and healthy and reduces pollution and noise.

Walking distances have been mapped for Seattle for 1, 2 and 3 hours in the diagram above. This shows that most of the city can be accessed in 2-hour walk.

 

The Green Overlay

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Green building rating tools (such as BREEAM) and sustainable building assessment tools (such as SBAT) have been effective at getting designers to think about environmental and sustainability issues in their designs in order to achieve a design rating at a particular point in the design development of buildings.

These tools, however, are less effective in ensuring that environmental and green building issues are effectively integrated into every aspect of the project. For instance, the achievement of a design rating early in the project may mean that sustainability design intentions are ‘forgotten’ later in the project and there may be little attempt to consider more sustainable construction and building operation options.

Avoiding this requires ongoing attention and sustainability must be considered at every stage of a building’s lifecycle and integrated into the building ”product” and ”processes” in appropriate ways. This can be supported by a structured framework. An example of an early version of this was the Sustainable Building Lifecycle.

More recent frameworks address design processes in more detail and an example of this is the Green Overlay. This was developed by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) as an overlay to their Architects’ Plan of Work and aimed to ensure that sustainability issues were embedded in the work stages undertaken by Architects. A copy of the overlay can be accessed here.

 

Sustainable Building Life cycle

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The Sustainable Building Life cycle (SBL) framework has been developed to enable performance targets to be set for buildings and to ensure that these are achieved through effective integration. It enables assessment frameworks, like the SBAT, or green building rating tools to be used to maximum effect by ensuring that required performance is addressed throughout a building’s life cycle, and not just for a once-off rating.

The framework is designed to ensure that at particular stages, targets are set and agreed by key stakeholders (during the briefing, site analysis, and target setting stages) and that these are then used to guide design decisions and the selection of procurement and construction options.

There are a number of key principles within the concept of a Sustainable Building Life cycle. These are:

  • There is a shared understanding of sustainability and agreement on the setting of strategic sustainable development objectives for the project.
  • Detailed, challenging and responsive performance targets are set and their achievement monitored.
  • Multidisciplinary interactive processes are used to generate imaginative and innovative solutions capable of achieving the performance required.
  • The strategic sustainable development objectives set at the onset inform all stages of the building life cycle and the specific body of knowledge on how these are achieved in the building is transferred from one stage to the next.

These principles are integrated into conventional building processes by introducing actions and supporting decision-making, at specific stages in a development. These can be described in terms of a sustainable building life cycle and occur at the following stages: Briefing, Analysis, Target Setting, Concept Design, Detailed Design and Construction, Handover, Operation, and Demolition/Reuse/Recycle. At each of these stages, the SBL framework provides for:

  • Targets that must be achieved
  • Methodologies for confirming the achievement of targets
  • Persons, such as members of the design team, responsible for achieving targets, including signature(s) indicating confirmation of achievement
  • Persons, such as members of the client or operator team, responsible for accepting achievement of targets, including signature(s) indicating acceptance of achievement.

Tailored SBL frameworks agreed with clients, the design team and other key stakeholders are an effective way of ensuring that sustainability is effectively integrated into buildings. Contact us for more detailed examples of how these frameworks and how they can be developed and tailored for projects.

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