Living Buildings in Land Use Planning with External Safety

摘要

Due to a shortage of space, large urban development projects are realized adjacent or above transport routes of hazardous materials, causing external safety risks for people present (living or working) in such an environment. In The Netherlands, the decision making on land use planning regarding safety is traditionally based on a risk acceptance, and safety is in this respect not more than a test tool. However, no design standards for land-use planning in multiple and intensive used areas are given by the legislator. This paper presents a new look on coping with risks. One of the main purposes of the paper is to consider safety as a design parameter at an as early as possible stage in the development of urban locations, in stead of a test tool, resulting in safety measures taken within the project budget. The design tool should also be used at different scale levels: urban level, area level and building level. By doing this, safety integrated design and engineering is introduced in development of complex projects, which are currently confronted with the continuous changing demands of the users and legislators. Resulting from these changing demands, flexibility and clear insight in the lifecycle processes with a focus on design is very important. In this regard, we discovered that the Living Building Concept (LBC) can be used as a tool regarding safety integrated design and engineering, through which the relation between urban/land-use planning, civil engineering, environmental engineering and risk and crisis management can be strengthened.