Towards sustainability index for healthy buildings-Via intrinsic thermodynamics, green accounting and harmony

As, fossil energy resources are closer to their exhaustion, global warming in raise, and more catastrophic weather extremes are occurring worldwide, there are more and more warnings that the risks to the Earth humanity survival are also in growth. The Earth/humanity as a whole is becoming more complex system than ever. Trying to find a way to make a turn from the current one-way irreversibility to sustainability, it is necessary to find universal schemes, quantities, indicators and criteria relevant for the Earth and humanity's resilience and sustainability. Presented is a review of the multi-criteria sustainability analysis methods (intrinsic thermodynamic based on energy, exergy, sustainability index, analytic hierarchy process, etc.). It has been shown that crucial sensitivity of all methods is related to the selected sets of energy criteria (economical, social and environmental) and to the mathematical algorithms for the determination of the weighted factor and sub-indicators agglomeration. Also, shown is that concerning buildings sustainability is missing indicator relevant to the indoor comfort and people health, accompanied with a comprehensive, physically sound assessment methodology for building's synergetic environmental performance - twofold metrics with the reference to outdoor and indoor built environment concerning people health and comfort. A scheme of a structure and spatio-temporal vision of the Global sustainable development is presented - showing that the approach to the global sustainable development can be reliable only if it is based on a system of real human and ethical values applicable to every social, cultural and economic situation. Finally paper summarizes needs for future multidisciplinary, inter- and cross-disciplinary study on healthy sustainable buildings, interwoven with harmony and holistic people health and well-being research. That research is to be physically sound - intrinsic thermodynamic, harmonious green, and relevant metrics is to be free of the short-term politically shaped and quasi-economically distorted approaches, because the world is to get what is painfully missing - a standard metrics of the sustainability index, universally acceptable. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.