Pembangunan metrik penilaian universiti lestari

Sustainable development means what we owned today will be owned by the future generations. It has been introduced and considered in education sector. The concept of sustainable universities had been implemented by international universities in 1970. However, it is a transformation and a challenge to local universities in moving towards sustainability. The main challenge is that no comprehensive evaluation metric for measuring the level of sustainability in local university. The main objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive Sustainable University Evaluation Metric for Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). To achieve the mentioned objective, there are four stages have been conducted. First, a search of literature review to identify the concepts, models and metrics of sustainable university. Second, the characteristics of sustainable university are identified. Third, identification of the appropriate characteristics to develop evaluation metric for sustainable university. Finally, interviews with expert were conducted to verify the evaluation metrics which involved two phases. In the first phase, an expert interview was conducted to obtain information to improve and to verify sub-elements and the characteristics of the proposed Evaluation Metric for Sustainable University. In the second phase, expert interview was repeated to gain comments and suggestions to improve the evaluation metric. This analysis was conducted by using qualitative methods known as content analysis. The outputs of the study are sub elements, characteristics of sustainable university based on elements of environment, social and economic, and a comprehensive evaluation metric for the UTM. The evaluation metric will serve as guideline to monitor and evaluate the performance of sustainable initiatives in UTM and other local universities

Homeownership conceptual framework for urban livability

House is a basic need for individuals and families. Difficulty in owning a house has always been one of the major issues debated by the government, people and private sectors in Malaysia. Current economic conditions have made house purchasing almost impossible to many people due to drastic increases of house prices since 2000. The increases was influenced by macro and micro factors based on demand and supply of houses. Among them are migration of rural population to urban areas that leads to increasing demand for owning and renting a house. Hence, developers and investors have taken this migration process to their advantage by increasing their housing and rental prices to gain more profit. With the increase of home values, homeowners were also burdened with rising costs of maintenance which includes assessment of property tax, costs of maintenance and service. The increasing of house prices and the cost of home ownership will affect the population livability in the city. A conceptual framework has been developed. First, to identify the parameters that affects the ability of prospective first home buyers for middle-income earners in the home. Second is to evaluate the housing access indicator parameters on affordability of homeowners in reference to population livability in the city. The outcome of this study is the development of capability parameters to own a house and housing access for livability. This study findings highlight important criteria required to ensure home ownership to improve livability of urban community. Finally, the criteria could be used in developing a guideline for the government and developers to comply and support to the need of the National Housing Policy

Development of metric evaluation for sustainable University

Awareness towards the enviroment by the university community has started since 1970 through various activities such as ‘Earth Day’celebration. The aim of such activities was to make sure that the university emphasized on the sustainanble practices among the community in preserving the enviroment. The initiative to transform the local university to a sustainable university has been carried out by a number of research universities, namely; UTM, UKM, USM, UPM, and UM. This can be seen in various efforts carried out by the university such as setting up research centre solely for the enviroment; carrying out activities for sustainable university, forming sustainability policy and etc. However all these efforts would be furtile if a metric was not used to measure the level of sustainability to evaluate through practices at the university. A research has been done to develop a metric evaluation for sustainable university that has characteristics of sustainability. This research is carried out by interviewing 13 sustainability experts who are well-werse in the field of social economy and enviroment. The outcome of the research are the characteristics and sub elements of a sustainable university together with a comprehensive metric evaluation. This metric evaluation will function as a bench mark to observe the initiative level of sustainability at UTM as well as other local universities. This metric would guide universities to assess the level of sustainability of the university

Energy conservation opportunities in Malaysian universities

The Ministry of Education Malaysia has urged all education centres to conserve energy. Energy wastage tends to occur in Malaysian universities mainly due to inefficient use of energy and lack of awareness among building users. In this context, energy conservation should be implemented to optimize energy use. This paper discusses the concept of a sustainable university with a view to propose some steps to conserve energy and achieve sustainability. Review of literature reveals that energy conservation methods can be classified into two categories: structural and non-structural. Within the context of these two categories, five high-impact energy conservation methods are suggested, including renewable energy, improvement of energy efficiency, energy usage management and monitoring, promotion and integration of energy concept, improvement on energy-saving awareness and energy-use behaviour. Based on the recommendations in this paper, Malaysian universities can adopt energy conservation methods that can be in harmony with their policies and strategies