A sustainability impact-assessment tool for selected building technologies in rural India :the case of the Andhra Pradesh primary education project

Abstract

The United Nations Commission on Environment and Development, AGENDA 21, The Millennium Development Goals, etc. indicate that there is a worldwide concern for sustainable development. Construction is an essential human activity in development programmes. It is an important component of sustainable development. The decision makers should examine every constructon projectb efore it is implemented.T herefore,t here is a need for an assessmentt ool to examinet he sustainabilityi mpactso f construction.T he existinga ssessmentm ethodsw ere found to be mostly based on environmental sustainability and thus, there was a need for developing an assessment tool, taking into account the social and economic issues also. The data and experience of the primary school construction project in a rural district of Andhra Pradesh (India) was adopted as a basis of assessment tool development The aim of this dissertation was to provide an impact assessment tool for the decision makers to select sustainable building construction technologies in the context of social infrastructure developmenti n rural India. It also aimed to demonstrateh ow to calculatet he socio-economica nd environmentailm pactst hrought he use of differentw alling and roofingc onstructiont echnologies. The dissertation's objectives were to examine the efficacy of the primary school construction project in Andhra Pradesh as a base for developing an impact assessment tool, to develop a process of calculation and determining the actual values of the socio economic and environmental impacts of selected building technologies, to demonstrate the selection process of the combination of walling and roofing technologies having optimum life cycle socio-economic and environmental impacts, to demonstrate the effect of weights on the selection process and to enable decision makers to develop databases on new construction and life cycle impacts in other contexts and to select sustainable building construction technologies.