Industrial building design stage based on a system approach to their environmental sustainability

It is well known how the construction sector wields an enormous influence over economic activity, employment and growth rates. Further consideration still needs to be given to sustainability. Accordingly, an Integrated Value Model for Sustainable Assessment is presented in this article that applies a set of six study scopes to define the sustainability criteria of industrial buildings. Assignment of value functions to the sustainability criteria is then described in the context of a case study of a printing works, which demonstrates the effectiveness of this model at unifying both qualitative and quantitative indicators, in order to arrive at a specific "environmental sustainability index" for the industrial building. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.