An Investigation into Environment- Floating Buildings in relation to Sustainability Indicators for Planning and Design Process

There are over 180 scientific organizations that monitor global climate changes. The position they hold is that climate change has been caused by human action. In addition, several academic reports have predicted that sea-levels are rising every year, and will continue to rise at a rate much greater than previously calculated. Since more than 80% of the world's cities and population are concentrated near the sea (IPCC 2007), some countries have built floating buildings and have begun planning floating cities. Their plans are designed to prevent houses and land being lost by sea-levels rising. The main problem is that some floating projects are of a very large scale and the process of construction of floating buildings, floating cities and floating islands from initial planning, to manufacture, to placement will have a considerable environmental impact on the surrounding area. Since floating buildings and floating cities are still new research objects, not every country has considered this concept in relation to environmental protection. Furthermore, there are no sustainable planning and design guidelines for floating buildings, not to mention floating city projects (Olthuis and Keuning, 2010). The aim of the research is to set up a series of Sustainable Indicators for the development of floating buildings, SFBIs. This will be illustrated through the literature review, case studies, field observation and interviews with seven users and thirty-four relevant architectural experts. Furthermore, and the testing of the draft indicators by five architectural, engineering and policy maker experts will be presented. The conclusion of the research is that Sustainable Floating Building Indicators (SFBIs) were seen to have value in their practical application by the relevant architectural experts. Additionally, the research proposes recommendations regarding future environmental impact concepts for all floating city projects.