Sustainable Built Environment

A Sustainable Built Environment (SBE) should achieve the three objectives of environmental compatibility, economic viability and social responsibility (often described as people, planet and prosperity), in the context of the built environment. For NRC-IRC, this context includes both buildings and urban infrastructure, addressing mainly:

• residential, institutional, and commercial buildings
• urban road, tunnels, and concrete bridges
• water distribution and sewage networks

NRC-IRC's Strategic Plan for 2004-2009 introduced new initiatives to reorganize and expand activities addressing sustainability and climate change, to align more clearly with current industry and government priorities. The first stage was to identify a few key technology needs for SBE, and to seek stakeholder consensus on priority research issues [more]

NRC-IRC has begun to reorganize its cross-program multi disciplinary competencies and linkages to other NRC initiatives, to focus significant resources to deal with identified priorities:

• NRC-IRC's Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure Research in Regina will be a key player and example in this area. 
• As outlined in the rationale for the research focus, research and technology transfer activities will be focused on three overlapping themes:
  • Climate Change
  • "Green" Buildings
  • Life Cycle Performance