True Green and Sustainable University Campuses? Toward a Clusters Approach

Abstract

Campus greening is often the first step universities take towards sustainability. However, the diffusion of sustainability reporting methodologies and rankings is still at an early stage, and is biased in mainly measuring energy efficiency indicators while omitting basic features enabling meaningful comparisons among centers or addressing social (users) aspects related to long term sustainability transitions. This paper aims to introduce a critical perspective on sustainability university frameworks through: (i) a review of current Campus Sustainability Assessments (CSAs); (ii) performing and comparing the results obtained from the application of two internationally recognized CSAs (namely, Green Metric and ISCN) to two case studies (the Politecnico di Torino, in Italy, and the Hokkaido University, In Japan) and, finally, (iii) proposing a new CSA approach that encompasses clusters of homogeneous campus typologies for meaningful comparisons and university rankings. The proposed clusters regard universities' morphological structures (campuses nested within city centers versus outside of a city compact ones), climatic zones and functions. At the micro scale, the paper introduces the need for indicators beyond measuring pure energy efficiency, but which are attentive to local and societal constraints and provide long-term tracking of outcomes. This, better than a sheer record of sustainability priority actions, can help in building homogenous university case studies to find similar and scalable success strategies and practices, and also in self-monitoring progress toward achieving truly sustainable university campuses.

Sustainability Assessment and Benchmarking in Higher Education Institutions—A Critical Reflection

“…Much work has been done on the development of tools to assess sustainability specifically in HEIs, showing the importance of the theme. Several articles have reviewed these tools from different perspectives (e.g., [7,9,14,16,17,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]). However, it is observed that in these various reviews, the systematization is not homogeneous, noting a lack of common designations and objectives and including tools that do not have as main objective the assessment of the implementation of ESD or are not per se an assessment tool.…”

Sustainability in the Higher Education System: An Opportunity to Improve Quality and Image

“…The UN, OECD and EU [49][50][51] interventions led to a general convergence of the concept of sustainable development to ensure intergenerational equity, participation and regulatory compliance, and justice [52,53]. In this sense, the university environment is the best place to reflect on education for sustainable development.…”

Explorative Multidimensional Analysis for Energy Efficiency: DataViz versus Clustering Algorithms

“…Many of the parameters needed for time series and cross-country analyses depend on the obtainability of disaggregated data from wide-ranging surveys and cross-section analyses, and there are several critical methodological problems that still impede the creation of such operational indicators of energy efficiency [29]. Regarding specifically the university campus realm, Sonetti et al [30] already argued the lack of a precise analysis based on building types or functions, in one of the most popular green ranking for universities, the UI GreenMetric-World Universities Rankings. The need of three clusters based on urban morphology, climate zones and university functions has been highlighted for sound comparisons among campuses.…”