A Novel Sustainability Assessment Framework Tailored to University Campus Environments

This paper is based on the preliminary phase of a larger project to develop a version of the ITACA Protocol specifically for university campuses in Italy. This phase is divided into two stages: theoretical and implementation. In the Theoretical part, 44 thematically relevant papers were reviewed in full text, and the indicators used in them were extracted, resulting in 258 unique indicators. The indicators were classified according to the SNTool’s categories. Then, their units and frequency of occurrence, defined as the number of papers in which each indicator appeared, were recorded. In the Implementation part, 20 of the most frequently used indicators-for which there was enough data from the Politecnico di Torino (POLITO)-were selected, and the sustainability score of POLITO was calculated based on them. In the next step, a Q-sort analysis was conducted to prioritize 10 SWOT-based actions, and 3 future scenarios were identified. Finally, for all the scenarios, feasibility studies were conducted to assess the improvement and corresponding sustainability scores. The scenario with the highest score was identified as the best option