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International Sustainability Alliance (ISA)
The International Sustainability Alliance (ISA) is a global network of corporate occupiers, property investors, developers and owners of commercial buildings, who share best practice in the sustainable management of their property portfolios. ISA is dedicated to achieving a more sustainable built environment through the better measurement, benchmarking and understanding of building performance. Purpose With 40% of carbon emissions coming from the built environment, real estate owners, occupiers, developers and funders around the world are facing ever increasing demands concerning the need for greater sustainability in the use of existing buildings. ISA is a response to the growing legislative and economic pressure across the world to address building sustainability. It helps members to develop a common understanding of how their buildings perform, what measures can be taken to improve them and what this means in terms of value and return on their investment. ISA has a database o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. Benchmarking is used to measure performance using a specific indicator (cost per unit of measure, productivity per unit of measure, cycle time of x per unit of measure or defects per unit of measure) resulting in a metric of performance that is then compared to others. Also referred to as "best practice benchmarking" or "process benchmarking", this process is used in management in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best-practice companies' processes, usually within a peer group defined for the purposes of comparison. This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to make improvements or adapt specific best practices, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-off event, but is ofte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carbon Emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and large oil and gas companies, many state-owned by OPEC and Russia. Human-caused emissions have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by about 50% over pre-industrial levels. The growing levels of emissions have varied, but it was consistent among all greenhouse gases (GHG). Emissions in the 2010s averaged 56 billion tons a year, higher than ever before. Electricity generation and transport are major emitters; the largest single source, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, is transportation, accounting for 27% of all USA greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation and other changes in land use also emit carbon dioxide and methane. The largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Key Performance Indicators
A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it engages. KPIs provide a focus for strategic and operational improvement, create an analytical basis for decision making and help focus attention on what matters most. Often success is simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some levels of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction), and sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals. Accordingly, choosing the right KPIs relies upon a good understanding of what is important to the organization. What is deemed important often depends on the department measuring the performance – e.g. the KPIs useful to finance will differ from the KPIs assigned to sales. Since there is a need to understand well what is important, various technique ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Public Real Estate Association
The European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA), is a non-profit association representing Europe's publicly listed property companies. It is run by an independent Board of Directors chaired by Pere Viñolas Serra. History From its formation in Amsterdam in 1999, partnering initially with Euronext and later with FTSE and NAREIT, the three bodies established the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global Index series which is now used as the global indices platform from which to benchmark the performance of stock exchange-quoted property companies and real estate investment trusts. The association has been located in Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ... since 2009. Activities Raising the understanding of real estate in relation to investments and its role in society in g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a form of international private business self-regulation which aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature by engaging in or supporting volunteering or ethically oriented practices. While once it was possible to describe CSR as an internal organizational policy or a corporate ethic strategy, that time has passed as various national and international laws have been developed. Various organizations have used their authority to push it beyond individual or even industry-wide initiatives. In contrast, it has been considered a form of corporate self-regulation for some time, over the last decade or so it has moved considerably from voluntary decisions at the level of individual organizations to mandatory schemes at regional, national, and international levels. Moreover, scholars and firms are using the term " creating shared value", an extension of corporate social responsibility, to explain ways of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Certification
Certification is the provision by an independent body of written assurance (a certificate) that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit. Accreditation is a specific organization's process of certification. According to the U.S. National Council on Measurement in Education, a certification test is a credentialing test used to determine whether individuals are knowledgeable enough in a given occupational area to be labeled "competent to practice" in that area. Types One of the most common types of certification in modern society is professional certification, where a person is certified as being able to competently complete a job or task, usually by the passing of an examination and/or the completion of a program of study ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BREEAM In-Use
BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), first published by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in 1990, is the world's longest established method of assessing, rating, and certifying the sustainability of buildings. More than 550,000 buildings have been 'BREEAM-certified' and over two million are registered for certification in more than 50 countries worldwide. BREEAM also has a tool which focuses on neighbourhood development. Purpose BREEAM is an assessment undertaken by independent licensed assessors using scientifically-based sustainability metrics and indices which cover a range of environmental issues. Its categories evaluate energy and water use, health and wellbeing, pollution, transport, materials, waste, ecology and management processes. Buildings are rated and certified on a scale of 'Pass', 'Good', 'Very Good', 'Excellent' and 'Outstanding'. It works to raise awareness amongst owners, occupiers and designers of the benefi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Building Research Establishment
The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is a centre of building science in the United Kingdom, owned by charitable organisation the BRE Trust. It is a former UK government national laboratory that was privatised in 1997. BRE provides research, advice, training, testing, certification and standards for both public and private sector organisations in the UK and abroad. It has its headquarters in Garston, Hertfordshire, England, with regional sites in Glasgow, Swansea, the US, India, the Middle East and China. Programmes BRE is now funded with income from commissioned research, commercial programmes and by a number of digital tools for use in the construction sector. BRE's certification arm – BRE Global – is an independent, third-party certification body responsible for sustainability certification schemes such as BREEAM (for buildings and communities), CEEQUAL (for infrastructure), the Home Quality Mark (for housing) and LPCB certification (for fire and security prod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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