37º IAHS World Congress on Housing: - Universidad de Cantabria

XXXVII <strong>IAHS</strong><strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> on HousingOctober 26 – 29, 2010, Santander, SpainCODE: 269THE EVALUATION OF SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCEINDICATORSMaria Francisca Sampaio, Jorge Moreira da CostaDepartment of Civil EngineeringFEUP - Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Portugale-mail: francisca.msampaio@gmail.com, jmfcosta@fe.up.ptKeywords: Dwelling, Performance Indicator, Sustainability, Assessment Method, Embodied Energy.AbstractThe sustainability concept has been progressively recognized as an important pillar in theconstruction industry. This yields from the intense efforts already undertaken by somecountries on the creation of tools capable of its incorporation in the current approaches fordesign decisions. In this paper a first approach for the integration of some of these aspects in aDesign Quality Assessment Method for housing buildings developed at FEUP will bepresented. The proposed classification reviews two of the stages of the materials life cycle –the mining and the production ones - where a comparison is performed among the diverseconstruction materials in terms of their embodied energy, following the establishedorganization matrix for the assessment method. This work aims to provide procedures thatallow a more careful choice of the materials, taking in consideration the needs of theupcoming generations.37º <strong>IAHS</strong> <strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> On Housing Science 154