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The Assessment of Municipal Services: Environmental Efficiency of Buildings Construction

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Book cover Exploring Services Science (IESS 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 247))

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Abstract

This paper develops an innovative methodology to assess municipal performance concerning the environmental efficiency of new buildings construction, focusing on the consumption of different types of materials. This study aims to support local governments in the definition of policies for improvements in service provision based on the results of a benchmarking study. The methodology developed includes two stages. The first step concerns the evaluation of municipal environmental efficiency using Data Envelopment Analysis and the identification of factors that may explain different levels of performance. The second step enables the classification of municipalities in terms of the efforts required to achieve environmental efficiency. For this purpose, we used clustering analysis, namely the k-means algorithm. To illustrate the methodology developed, we analyzed the data of the major materials used in the construction of new buildings (metals, non-metallic minerals, fossil fuels, and biomass) in the municipalities of Lisbon metropolitan area between 2003 and 2009. The study revealed that the environmental efficiency of new buildings construction varies considerably among municipalities, suggesting a high potential for performance improvement.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Leonardo Rosado from Chalmers University, Gothenburg, for compiling some of the data used in this study. The authors also acknowledge the financial support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through iTEAM project (MIT-Pt/SES-SUES/0041/2008) and MeSUr project (PTDC/SEN- ENR/111710/2009).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Isabel M. Horta, Ana S. Camanho & Teresa G. Dias

  2. Instituto Superior Técnico - Universidade de Lisboa, Campus Taguspark, Lisboa, Portugal

    Samuel Niza

Authors
  1. Isabel M. Horta
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  2. Ana S. Camanho
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  3. Teresa G. Dias
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  4. Samuel Niza
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Isabel M. Horta .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Automatic Control & Computers, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Theodor Borangiu

  2. Faculty of Automatic Control & Computers, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Monica Dragoicea

  3. Faculty of Engineering - FEUP, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Henriqueta Nóvoa

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Horta, I.M., Camanho, A.S., Dias, T.G., Niza, S. (2016). The Assessment of Municipal Services: Environmental Efficiency of Buildings Construction. In: Borangiu, T., Dragoicea, M., Nóvoa, H. (eds) Exploring Services Science. IESS 2016. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 247. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32689-4_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32689-4_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-32688-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-32689-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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