Ecosystem Services Delivery in the Built Environment

Abstract

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) delivery can be used for the development of net-positive buildings, by integrating ‘green’ design solutions that deliver these ES. Indicators are used to measure the degree of ES delivery by the chosen design solution. Indicators to quantify ES in the biological context exist, however only a few have been translated to the building context. This research tries to develop knowledge that contributes to the completion of the indicator set for the building context. The biological structures and processes that deliver ES in the ecological environment are identified through a literature review and translated to the built environment. Indicators for the built environment are proposed based on these results and existing indicators for the ecological environment. Also, a new framework is proposed to describe the ecological system (Boerema et al., 2017a) behind ES delivery. Based on this refined understanding of ES delivering infrastructures this research concludes that it is possible to formulate better indicators for the ecological environment and verify new indicators for the built environment. As a final step methodological triangulation, based on an interview and a literature review, was performed to verify the relevance and setup of a table proposed for communication of the knowledge developed in this research.