On February 8th and 9th, iiSBE held three meetings in Barcelona. 20 members of iiSBE attended, including many European members and also Vanessa and Maristela Gomes from Brazil.

The meeting on the 8th focused on the Academic and Research Forum, and was chaired by Ronald Rovers. The current core document describing the initiative was reviewed and updated, and several management decisions were taken. The website for Forum members is currently being finalised and it was announced that the initiative will be formally launched when 8 member organizations have made written commitments.

The first meeting on the 9th concerned the IMoSB (International Masters for SB) project and was chaired by Luis Bragança, who is head of the group as well as being President of iiSBE. Discussions covered the establishment of an external review group, a simplification of the scheme for the attendance of students at the four partner universities, and a reduction of the originally anticipated 90 ECTS academic units to 60. Luis Bragança also proposed to launch a doctoral program in parallel and this was accepted. Antonin Lupisek (CZ) suggested that we should find more private corporations to join as associate members.

The rest of the 9th was devoted to a review of the various technical projects that have been undertaken by iiSBE. Giulia Barbano of iiSBE Italia presented two initiatives: an on-line training international SB program that will be launched later this year, and an urban assessment tool that is being developed in cooperation with Serge Salat, who heads the Urban Morphology Lab in Paris. This is a funded project and the project is due to be completed by the end of the year. The concepts developed in the project will be presented at a conference in Trondheim during Jun and another workshop in Maastricht in October.

NL presented an outline of the SBTool for 2012, which is now complete. The system is scalable from a maximum scope of 100+ criteria, down to as few as a dozen, and it provides generic criteria for Design, Construction and Operations phases. There is a separate module for assessment of project sites. The work will henceforth be managed by Manuel Macias at UPM Madrid. The system will be mounted on the iiSBE website for feedback by potential users.

Nils Larsson also presented the status of the Synergy Zone project, which outlines approaches to maximizing efficiencies in neighbourhood-scale services. This project is now at a stage where further work required funding and a pilot project site. Larsson also presented the status of the work on Sustainability of Very Tall Buildings, which is now looking for partners to develop the concepts outlined in the work plan.

Finally, Charles Kibert joined the meeting by Skype from University of Florida. He is currently building membership in his group and expects to hold a meeting by mid-year.

--- Update: Presentations for download - see attachments. ---

Helsinki Workshop on SB Assessment Methods and Tools Sponsored by iiSBE and Formas was held from 12:00 to 18:20 on Monday, 17 October.

More detailed information coming soon - stay tuned and check this post for workshop presentations later on.

During last week's highly successful SB11 conference in Helsinki, iiSBE held its traditional SBChallenge - a collection of projects from all over the world.
Twenty-five projects from thirteen countries have entered the SBChallenge, and have provided a full paper, Key Performance Indicators and a video presentation.
This material is now available at http://sbchallenge.iisbe.org

Just few moments ago the world Sustainable Building Conference SB11 Helsinki was officially opened.

An overview of upcoming conferences.
Update Nils Larsson 20110907.

iiSBE partner BRI journal has just published two special issues:


BRI special Issue: Deconstruction, demolition and destruction
Guest editors: André Thomsen, Frank Schultmann, Niklaus Kohler
BRI July-Aug 2011 vol 39-4

BRI special issue:Motivating stakeholders to deliver environmental change
Guest editor: Raymond J. Cole
BRI Sep-Oct 2011, vol 39-5

In the attached August 2011 update you will find the following information:

Three iiSBE Meetings linked to the SB11 World Conference:

• Focused workshop on SB assessment methods and tools
• Sustainable Building Challenge
• Annual General Meeting

SB travels in Germany

Preliminary selection of the site for the SB14 World Conference, and review of proposals for SB13 national conferences

Special Issues from BRI

As many colleagues inside and outside of iiSBE are aware, we have supported the work of four European universities in developing an international degree program for a Masters in Sustainable Building and Construction. The so-called IMoSB (International Masters on Sustainable Building) working group consists of four partner universities – University of Minho of Portugal, Zuyd University in the Netherlands, Technical University of Prague, and the Politecnico of Madrid, led by Prof. Luis Bragança from University of Minho.
A proposal was submitted to the EU Erasmus Mundus program at the end of April to obtain funding support from that programme.
We have just received the results of the evaluation of the 177 proposals that were submitted to the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Commission. Unfortunately, our proposal was not selected.

This decision does not mark the end of our attempt to develop and launch this very important initiative. Part of the reason is that we can re-submit a modified proposal in April 2012, and the IMoSB members will work on this over the winter. We are deeply committed to obtaining an eventually positive decision and, based on the final paragraph of the EC evaluation (see below), this is not an unrealistic hope.

The proposal addresses a topic of global significance (sustainable building) in a convincing, detailed and comprehensive way. The added value and the Masters' contribution to competitiveness and innovation within a European context is clearly described and convincingly established. All the various components of the project (ranging from academic content, through to delivery and management structures, and to sustainability perspectives) are presented clearly and at a level of detail that is convincing regarding the 'maturity' of the undertaking. In all, this is a high-quality project, characterised by a very coherent approach, with all implementation and strategy issues adequately covered and consistently streamlined along the main rationale, and a strong international outlook in terms of added-value, professional perspectives of graduates and sustainability. Areas for improvement concern a more solidly scheduled approach towards recognition and establishment of a joint degree and additional clarifications for the implementation of external quality evaluation.

For further information, please contact Prof. Luís Bragança at braganca@civil.uminho.pt

Several iiSBE members met in Madrid on May 2 and 3, to hold an in-depth discussion on the current status and future direction of iiSBE's performance assessment system, SB Method, and its derivative national systems in Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

The meeting began with a presentation by Nils Larsson about current work on the core system, SBTool Generic, including its structure, weighting system and scoring. The status of the national versions was then discussed by their developers Andrea Moro, Petr Hajek, Luis Braganca and Manuel Macias.

Giulia Barbano presented a document prepared by her and Antonin Lupisek on a protocol for ensuring a gradual convergence of national systems with the core system. Attendees will be commenting on this in the near future so that it can be finalized.

Andrea Moro provided an interesting update on the introduction of a new commercial building rating system in Italy that has been developed in a partnership between iiSBE Italia, regional governments and the national research agency IRC-CNR.

Serge Salat initiated a discussion on the need for the SBTool Generic to provide more benchmarks for locational issues and urban development than is currently the case. A revised list of SBTool Generic parameters will be issued for discussion shortly.