INCLUSIVE BUILT FACILITIES: A CASE STUDY OF A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION

Building an inclusive society has been a goal with universal appeal. In respect of sustainable design and construction, due consideration in disability inclusion is necessary for it has social, economic, legal and environmental implications. It is not a new subject; however, there is still a long way for our built environment to be inclusive. In this paper, a practicable means to appraise the inclusiveness of built facilities quantitatively, the Building Inclusiveness Assessment Score (BIAS), is proposed. Literature, guides and standards of barrier-free access and universal design are reviewed so as to construct a hierarchy of relevant inclusion attributes. A multiple-criteria analysis technique, the Non-structural Fuzzy Decision Support System (NSFDSS), is then applied to analyse the weightings of attributes. On-site assessments are undertaken to collect data for grading individual inclusion attributes. The inclusiveness of built facilities in the University of Hong Kong is studied. In BIAS, a hierarchy of inclusion attributes is appraised. The outcomes are integrated in form of a score. Notwithstanding the research project is still ongoing, preliminary findings from on-site assessments are presented. A novel insight is provided to sustainable design an