Sustainability assessment of urban systems

Summary

This course enables students to think critically about sustainability and to carry out a sustainability assessment based on problems of urban areas. At the end of the course, students are able to develop their own sustainability assessment using the Sustainability Solution Space methodology.

Content

Keywords

• Sustainability assessment of urban systems
• Sustainability issues in urban systems
• Systemic, normative and procedural aspects of sustainability assessment
• Sustainability solution space
• Interdisciplinaryy work
• Science-policy interface

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the student must be able to:

• Assess / Evaluate a series of options from a sustainability perspective
• Design a study in which the assessment method can be applied in a meaningful way
• Distinguish between systemic, normative and procedural aspects of sustainability
• Apply the sustainability solution space methodology to a real world problem
• Distinguish between systemic, normative and procedural aspects of sustainability
• Apply the methods relevant for sustainability analysis to a specific problem
• Apply the multi criteria decision analysis method to assess sustainability options
• Formulate a critical perspective on sustainability assessment

Transversal skills

• Communicate effectively with professionals from other disciplines.
• Make an oral presentation.
• Identify the different roles that are involved in well-functioning teams and assume different roles, including leadership roles.
• Write a scientific or technical report.
• Assess one's own level of skill acquisition, and plan their on-going learning goals.
• Access and evaluate appropriate sources of information.
• Continue to work through difficulties or initial failure to find optimal solutions.
• Demonstrate the capacity for critical thinking

Teaching methods

Lectures, exercises, group project with the presentation of a poster, flipped classroom sessions.

This course offers a series of tools to adapt to students' learning patterns by alternating learning modes, and by offering a wide variety of teaching materials (slides, scientific articles, MOOC extracts, quizzes).

To anchor the questions and answers formulated throughout the course, professionals are invited to share their experiences.

Expected student activities

We expect students to attend to the lectures and the exercises offered. The lectures and exercises will be closely interlinked and taught openly within the three hours allocated to the course. They are expected to develop their own case study, perform a sustainability assessment and a critical review of another sustainability assessment.

Assessment methods

The students will be evaluated as follows:

• Group project:
  • Development of a poster and presentation (30%)
• Critical evaluation of other projects (10%)
• Final exam (60%)

30% of the final mark will be determined by the group work and 70% (final exam and critical assessment) will be individual.

Supervision

Resources

Bibliography

Videos, articles, slides will be uploaded on Moodle.

References will be shared throughout the course to provide additional material. The course is based on the following book, which is freely available from EPFL.

Binder CR, Wyss R, Massaro E, eds. In: Sustainability Assessment of Urban Systems. Cambridge University Press; 2020:i-ii.

Access here

Ressources en bibliothèque

• Find the reference at the Library

Notes/Handbook

Will be uploaded to moodle

Moodle Link

• https://go.epfl.ch/ENV-461