SMART NET-ZERO BUILDINGS ARE NOT ENOUGH SUSTAINABILITY INCLUDES SOCIETY

Vian Ahmed American University of Sharjah

Professor of College of Engineering Department of Industrial Engineering

Sustainability requires a synergy of actions taken on many fronts, across dimensions that include social, economic as well as environmental. Dr. Vian Ahmed, Professor and researcher, at the Department of Industrial Engineering, at the American University of Sharjah UAE, has along with her students developed decision-making tools that assist stakeholders in making smarter, more efficient sustainable projects and programs touching both the soft side of humanity and hard side of concrete.

Her research aligns with the UAE’s efforts to meet its Net Zero 2050 strategic initiative as well as the country’s preparations for hosting the upcoming COP28.

The Social aspect of Sustainability

According to Dr. Ahmed, in the past, social sustainability was not clearly defined in literature. The United Nations Global Compact defined, “Social sustainability is about identifying and managing business impacts, both positive and negative, on people including employees and workers.”

Dr. Ahmed took this definition further and applied it to the mental health and well-being of employees by setting criteria for mental health well-being, and validating these criteria, because it is her belief that it has become important to be mindful of the long-term impact of what became known as ‘social sustainability’ on employee retention and productivity.

Her supervision of an AUS doctoral study focused on the construction industry not only because it is the backbone of economies but also because it has the highest documented suicide rates. The research developed a decision support tool based on 37 underpinning criteria that define employee mental health and well-being in the construction sector.

As she explained, the aim of our study was to underpin the criteria that define Employee’s Social Sustainability and develop a Decision Support Tool that assists decision makers with making strategic decisions that enhance employees’ mental health and well-being within the UAE construction sector. The Decision Support tool (DST) identifies training and development, work environment, Equity Factor, Contract type, organizational support, work-life balance, and work control as the optimal way of investing to ensure the social sustainability of its employees.”

The decision support tool would allow organizations to invest in equipping employees with what is needed to lift their mental health and well-being, a very important dimension in overall sustainability goals.

The decision support system entails a Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), the most popular Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique. The MAUT, which is an extension of Multi-Attribute Value Theory (MAVT), is known as the most rigorous approach to include risk preferences and uncertainty in multi-criteria decision-support strategies. The MAUT approach integrates expected utility theory to determine the best and optimum solution in a given scenario by allocating a utility to each possible attribute and measuring the best possible utility.

The utility function allows organizations to determine rational choice theory to analyze human behavior and preferences. Besides, the major benefit of adopting MAUT is that it considers the uncertainty, which is not accounted for in many MCDM methods.

The Smart Campus

As noted, sustainability goes beyond just one dimension, and at many times smart technology is considered automatically as ensuring sustainability, but this is not always the case because smart technology needs to be accompanied by smart decision-making.

In the research paper “An Investigation into Stakeholders’ Perception of Smart Campus Criteria: The American University of Sharjah as a Case Study”, Dr. Vian Ahmed, Karam Abu Alnaaj, and Sara Saboor, looked into what constitutes a smart campus and developed a decision support tool to aid in deciding what smart applications should be implemented.

In the study, a smart campus consists of integrating and combining applications based on the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and GIS technology to support the campus information acquisition, sharing, and services, in order to promote the intelligence process of teaching, scientific research, and services. Based on these definitions, it can be concluded that Smart Campus applications require a sophisticated infrastructure to operate on.

In addition, the report highlighted several smart campus applications, such as smart lighting, video surveillance with analysis, parking, transportation management, facility access control, interactive signage and kiosks, asset protection, and wayfinding.

Dr. Ahmed’s research found that stakeholders’ perceptions are certainly important to validate the smart applications since they are the targeted people who will deal directly with these features and changes in educational institutes.

The study concluded that to comply with and integrate the concept of a smart campus, it is important to initiate deeper technical research on each of the designated criteria inside the proposed framework; implement guidelines on each of the smart applications inside the Smart Campus framework; carry out cost–benefit analyses on each of the proposed Smart Campus criteria; and engage industry experts to help develop a full understanding of all challenges and limitations.

As such the research study developed decision support tools that aid with decisions regarding which smart application to invest in or not invest in, based on the budget, vision, and current preferences of campus stakeholders.

Dr. Ahmed noted, “The multi-criteria decision support tool helps stakeholders to assess which criteria is most important to the university using mathematical modeling giving each criteria certain weights, giving decision makers the information they need to help them know which is most viable economically and strategically.”

She adds, “This tool, while developed for smart campuses, could be utilized for other organizations depending on their processes and taking into consideration what would make it a smart organization based on its nature.”

The economic dimension of Sustainability

In addition,heading a team comprising AUS undergraduate and graduate students, Dr. Ahmed developed an accurate machine learning model that identifies patterns and relationships between socio-economic factors and solid waste generation, providing valuable insights for policymakers on effective waste management strategies.

“The findings suggested that economic growth alone, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), may not be the primary driver of waste generation. Instead, the countries Gross National Income (GNI), which considers account income generated domestically and abroad, and indicates a shift towards a more affluent lifestyle, potentially results in the generation of the more non-biodegradable waste and packaging materials. As such, policymakers and waste management authorities should consider GNI as a factor when designing waste management strategies and policies,” she said.

In a more positive light, it shows that after a certain period of time, nations will have gained sufficient capital and economic resources to begin investing in effective MSW management systems. Citizens will start to gain awareness on how crucial it is to adopt strong waste management practices.

However, in a more realistic sense, it shows that if countries aren’t careful, then they may reach the tipping point far too late, to the point where landfills reach full capacity and waste begins to be dumped into water bodies, roads, and much more.

The environmental dimension

Dr. Ahmed also carried out a study on Net-zero buildings comparing them with traditional and sustainable buildings. The study found that net zero buildings consumed 38 percent less energy than traditional buildings, resulting in significantly reduced CO2 emissions as well as lower energy costs.

The study was carried out with the cooperation of SEWA (Sharjah Electricity and Water Agency) as well as the UAS (American University of Sharjah) sustainability unit. By studying the electricity bills of three buildings, traditional, sustainable, and net zero buildings, the study revealed the vast differences in energy consumption.

As per Dr. Ahmed, “The net zero buildings consumed 38 percent less energy than traditional buildings. In addition, if traditional buildings are retrofitted, like introducing ventilation systems, and cavity walls in buildings allowing less energy to be wasted, these buildings can become sustainable as well.”

She adds that there are also net zero-plus buildings that are so self-sufficient in terms of energy that they actually have a surplus that can be given back to the grid.

Currently, in the UAE there are three net zero-plus buildings under construction in Abu Dhabi at Masdar City, one of which will be completed by the end of the year. The buildings will run on solar power. Its solar panels will produce 9 percent more energy than it needs during the course of the year, and the excess will be fed back into the grid.

Retrofitting traditional buildings to make them sustainable has faced resistance from landlords because of the high costs of installing solar panels, insulated walls, and sustainable components. Dr. Ahmed explains, “If landlords were to retrofit buildings this would mean increased rent which tenants would find hard to accept, however while the initial cost may be high in the long term the return on investments is lucrative.”

However, the UAE is currently implementing locally-relevant green building regulations and rating schemes for new buildings have been adopted across UAE’s Emirates. A federal-level program has been implemented to retrofit government buildings. Abu Dhabi’s Building Retrofit program, similarly, targets retrofitting of government buildings and will be rolled out in due course to nongovernmental buildings. Dubai has set a target to retrofit 30,000 buildings in the Emirate by 2030. Ras Al Khaimah’s Retrofit Program aims to retrofit 3,000 buildings by 2040.

Dr. Ahmed noted that more financial, technical,social and policy work is required to transform traditional homes into sustainable ones.

Conclusion

As a result of these various researches, Dr. Vian Ahmed presented that sustainability is not a standalone activity, it is more than just having smart buildings but includes the human element, their well-being. It also includes policies that foster net zero targets and an understanding of the economic impact on sustainability. As such sustainability is the sweet spot between many disciplines and sectors.

Title of published Paper:

An Investigation into Stakeholders’ Perception of Smart Campus

Criteria: The American University of Sharjah as a Case Study

Published In: Sustainability

The Impact Factor: 3.889

It is published by MDPI AG

The Journal is indexed UGC CARE Scopus

The SJR ( SCImago Journal Rank) 0.656