Abstract
The global population now exceeds seven billion. This means that during the past 250 years or so, it has increased tenfold that of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, which is believed to have been 700 million. Eighty percent of the global population lives in developing regions, which means that the consumption of resources and energy will increase enormously in the future. Resources and energy are some of the most fundamental elements for the daily life of humankind. In recent years, it has been recognised that increasing fossil energy consumption could even change the global climate. It is anticipated that global warming will cause extremely serious problems in the future, in fact, climate change driven by global warming has already increased the intensity and frequency of weather action such as typhoons/hurricanes and torrential rainfalls, causing enormous damage; in addition, the frequency or intensity of heavy precipitation events has likely increased in North America and Europe1. On the other hand, developed countries,
such as EU, have accumulated a huge amount of infrastructure and building over a long
time. It means that these structures have to be properly maintained by taking cost, natural resources consumption, and more severe loading and environment into consideration. In other words, it is very important how to incorporate sustainability concepts into construction industry. SAFESUST is an acronym to mean SAFEty and SUSTainability. It identifies a research work-package on Impact of sustainability and energy efficiency requirements on building design and retrofit, being conducted by the European Commission - Joint Research Centre, Directorate Space Security & Migration, as a part of the project: Safe and Cleaner Technologies for Construction and Buildings.
The acronym appeared in the title of the workshop: A roadmap for the improvement of
earthquake resistance and eco-efficiency of existing buildings and cities, and the word soon during the discussions which took place, became a neologism. Expressions such as “SAFESUST concept”, “SAFESUST problem” and “SAFESUST approach” were commonly used. For this reason, in this freshly created word, possibly remain the essence of the roadmap which has been started to be drawn at the workshop: SAFEty and SUSTainability.
There is sufficient evidence of the fact that there could be not anymore safety without
sustainability. This evidence underpins actions to mitigate what could be the most difficult problem mankind have faced since ever: saving our only planet, and this was not to be discussed at the workshop. What became soon evident during the discussion is that there can be no sustainability without safety, in tackling the improvement of the existing building heritage.