Sustainable Construction for Humanitarian Action
A digital tool that supports humanitarian architects and engineers working on construction projects.
The Chair of Sustainable Construction teamed up with the ICRC and EPFL to develop a external page digital tool providing support to humanitarian architects and engineers working on complex construction projects. The tool supports the incorporation of sustainability throughout the whole project development, from site analysis to operation and monitoring. The project is part of the Engineering Humanitarian Action initiative.
The tool is intended for global use, with specific relevance for regions of interest for humanitarian operations, as conflict and crises-affected sites.
This digital instrument provides sustainability guidelines and assessment related to medium to large scale construction projects, as healthcare, educational facilities and more. It combines qualitative and quantitative sustainability feedback of the assessed project, inclusive of:
- Design recommendations, including material choice
- Carbon emissions related to materials and transport
- Hazard exposure and environmental threats alerts and mitigation strategies
- Water management including simple tank dimensioning sheet
- Energy performance including simple PV system dimensioning sheet
- Construction waste management
- Socio-cultural appropriateness
- Streamlined handover and maintenance support
external page View the video of the EPFL EssentialTech Centre.
The tool has been completed and delivered to the ICRC so to be internally distributed for its testing phase, to gather feedback for further development and improvement.
Project team:
- ETH Zurich Chair of Sustainable Construction: Dr. Giulia Celentano, Hager Al Laham
- ICRC Water and Habitat Unit: Pavlos Tamvakis
- EPFL Building2050 Group: Dr. André Ullal
- Software development Agency: Design to Production GmbH
- Project development funded via: Humanitarian Action Challenge initiative
- Tool development kindly supported by: EcoInvent Association
The Chair of Sustainable Construction intends to ground sustainability in all disciplines involved in the built environment. For more information visit our Website.