Assessment framework for social aspects of sustainable building

Social aspects are an integral part of sustainable building alongside environmental and economic aspects. While current Green Building Rating Systems such as LEED, BREEAM, and SBToolCZ address primarily technically quantifiable social issues including indoor environmental quality, health, and user comfort, the broader social impacts of buildings and construction processes across their entire life cycle remain insufficiently assessed. Building projects significantly influence the quality of life of various stakeholder groups and local communities, particularly within specific social, cultural, and economic contexts. Recent research highlights the absence of a comprehensive and structured framework for evaluating these wider social aspects in practice. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a holistic assessment framework for social sustainability that covers both buildings and construction processes throughout the whole building life cycle. The framework was developed through an extensive review of scientific literature and existing sustainability assessment tools and subsequently refined through an international, multidisciplinary questionnaire survey. Its applicability was validated through an in-situ case study of the Kashitu School project in Zambia, incorporating feedback from the local community and involved architects, engineers, and sustainability experts. Compared to existing social assessment schemes, the proposed framework introduces a structured set of clearly defined social criteria and indicators enabling transparent and measurable evaluation of social quality. The framework is organized by project phases, is context-sensitive, and applicable across diverse social, cultural, and economic conditions. It is designed for practical use in real building projects, particularly in early design stages and in the evaluation of existing buildings. • introduces a structured set of social criteria enabling measurable evaluation of social quality, • organized by project phases, is context-sensitive, covers the entire life cycle of a project, • designed for practical use, applicable across diverse social, cultural, and economic conditions, • developed through an author’s experience with social projects and deep literature review, • validated through an international survey and real case study of the social project in Zambia.