INCLUSIVE BUILT FACILITIES: A CASE STUDY OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

misbe2011 Tracking Number 176

Building an inclusive society has been a goal with universal appeal. In respect of sustainable design and construction, due consideration in disability inclusion is necessary for it has social, economic, legal and environmental implications. It is not a new subject; however, there is still a long way for our built environment to be inclusive. In this paper, a practicable means to appraise the inclusiveness of built facilities quantitatively, the Building Inclusiveness Assessment Score (BIAS), is proposed. Literature, guides and standards of barrier-free access and universal design are reviewed so as to construct a hierarchy of relevant inclusion attributes. A multiple-criteria analysis technique, the Non-structural Fuzzy Decision Support System (NSFDSS), is then applied to analyse the weightings of attributes. On-site assessments are undertaken to collect data for grading individual inclusion attributes. The inclusiveness of built facilities in the University of Hong Kong is studied. In BIAS, a hierarchy of inclusion attributes is appraised. The outcomes are integrated in form of a score. Notwithstanding the research project is still ongoing, preliminary findings from on-site assessments are presented. A novel insight is provided to sustainable design and construction which should not only regard environmental and economic sustainability but also social sustainability. Compare with earlier attempts to quantify the accessibility of buildings, BIAS further reduced the subjective elements. The framework of BIAS can also be modified to assess built facilities of other uses.