Sustainable lifepans of building systems in urban coastal tropical settlements : a literature review assessment methods

Many coastal settlements in humid tropical developing countries face the burdens of risks due to their location as well as due to a rather low quality of housing that does not meet the requirements of sustainability. The main aim of the paper is to investigate and identify the existing methodologies for the determination and adaptation of the performance for low cost housing in urban coastal tropical settlements towards improved sustainability. For this purpose a literature study was carried out whereby the existing methodologies are assessed by particularly investigating whether and how the sustainability requirements posed at present by the inhabitants as well as the possibility of future changes of these requirements during the lifespan of the houses are taken into account. Another aspect that was included is whether and how the local context such as that of urban coastal tropical settlements are taken into account in the assessment methodologies. This paper describes the literature review results on the assessment method and methodologies that have been used in previous research. The paper’s relevance is to provide proposals and recommendations for the development of methodological approaches to analyze building systems and research instruments that can be used for the assessment of context-dependent sustainability and lifespan performance of building systems. The methodology and research tools that will be developed are to be applied in a survey amongst low cost housing projects in urban tropical coastal settlements at Java, Indonesia. Once the performance of existing technologies as well as the features of the context in which they are applied is known, it will be possible to adapt or develop technologies that better respond to the contextual requirements. By means of applying the developed methodology and research tools in the survey also their usefulness will be validated for the purpose of increasing the insight and understanding of the sustainability and lifespan performance of building systems, particularly of those building systems that can be applied in low cost housing in urban coastal tropical settlements in developing countries. Key words: sustainability and lifespan, building systems, urban coastal tropical settlements, developing countries.