Supported by the 10YFP SBC Trust Fund and developed by UN-Habitat, CRAterre-ENSAG, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the University of Cambridge, SHERPA is a free sustainable housing design tool. In the future, it is envisioned to also be a forum for discussing what sustainable housing means in the 21st century. The tool has been tested and applied by the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme, Yaam Solidaritè (Burkina Faso), Architecture sans Frontièrs Nepal and SofoNic (Nicaragua). The software itself has been developed by Aptivate, UK.
You can find the tool at www.sherpa4housing.org or app.sherpa4housing.org, if accessing it via your phone's browser.
Implemented in
- Africa
- Asia / Pacific
- Latin America / Caribbean
- Burkina Faso
- Kenya
- Nepal
- Nicaragua
Sectors of activity
Agricultural and Fishery, Environmental Services, Consumer Goods, Buildings and construction, Energy, Transport
Type of initiative
Capacity Building & Implementation, Education & Awareness Raising, Research, Analysis, Assessment
Type of lead actors
United Nations / intergovernmental organizations, Scientific and Technical, Business Sector
Budget
185000 US$
Start date
16/01/2017
Submitted on:
17/05/2017Objectives
The three main expected accomplishments of the project are the following:
EA 1: Existing SHERPA methodology markedly improved, made adaptable to various local contexts, and made accessible and freely available;
EA 2: Sustainability of selected housing projects objectively improved;
EA 3: Broad acceptance of SHERPA within the wider housing community of practice
The Sustainable Housing Design Tool ‘SHERPA’ is an effort to provide accessible and free guidance to project managers and housing practitioners of all professions. While sustainability of housing in developed countries has primarily focused on energy-efficiency measures and the improvement of the existing building stock, SHERPA will also cover socio-cultural, economic and resilience indicators. It aims at encouraging low-tech and low-carbon approaches along the life cycle of buildings and settlements and covering different scales impacting on social, cultural, environmental and economic aspects: from the territory and neighbourhood level down to the individual household.
Lastly, by providing an accessible space for sharing and evaluating housing projects online, it will be a forum for discussing and understanding the myriad impacts housing has on consumption and production patterns as well as the sustainability of lifestyles.
Activities
As collected through the One Planet Reporting
No activities have yet been reported under this initiative
Impact and Results
The following objectives have been achieved:
EA 1: Existing SHERPA methodology markedly improved, made adaptable to various local contexts, and made accessible and freely available;
EA 2: Sustainability of selected housing projects objectively improved;
EA 3: Broad acceptance of SHERPA within the wider housing community of practice
The project directly responds to SDG 11.1, 11.c and a number of provisions in the New Urban Agenda (and previous declarations) related to the environmental impact of housing production both in terms of operational energy as well as resource extraction, with the objective of influencing design decisions to the point where these impacts are markedly reduced. The slow uptake and currently minimal market share of building sustainability assessment and benchmarking schemes in the Global South has, however, shown that necessary conditions for quantifying these improvements are currently not given (cost barrier, lack of data and incentives for integration at policy or project level). The tool intends to strike a balance between ease of accessibility and allowing the user to infer reasonably the extent to which environmental objectives were archieved.
In addition, SHERPA provides housing practitioners from the public, private, community and non-governmental sectors, with or without extensive technical expertise, an accessible tool for evaluating their housing project's responsiveness to social, cultural and economic sustainability dimensions.+
Next steps and how to get involved
SHERPA 2.0 is now live at www.sherpa4housing.org and app.sherpa4housing.org (if you are accessing it via a mobile browser). Feel free to let us know what you think and how we can improve the tool at info@sherpa4housing.org.