SHERPA, a guide to Sustainable Housing for the Global South, is a self-evaluation tool that allows the user to identify and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of new, current, and past housing projects to achieve a more sustainable outcome. It is meant for project managers, communities, and other stakeholders involved in the planning, design, construction and assessment of housing projects.
SHERPA was developed in partnership with members of the Global Network of Sustainable Housing: UN Habitat, CRAterre/ENSAG, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, University of Cambridge. In addition, the following partners have tested the tool in the field and provided feedback: Architectes Sans Frontières Nepal, YAAM Solidarité Burkina Faso, the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme and EcoSur. Feedback has also been provided by students from over 10 developing countries. The software partner has been Aptivate.
The tool is free and runs both on PCs and intelligent phones. It can be downloaded at sherpa4housing.org. Currently it’s available only in English – French and Spanish versions will follow soon.
In conjunction with the Energy Efficient Buildings and Neighbourhoods Conference by the World Bank, SBC Programme organized a training on sustainable housing for around 60 mainly local experts in Abidjan 19 September 2017. Based on the strong interest raised in that event a follow-up webinar is planned to be organized in French to support wider use of the tool in West Africa and also to gather feedback for its further development.
The training session presented the SBC Programme, SHERPA tool as well as EDGE tool (edgebuildings.com) by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) belonging to World Bank Group. The development of SHERPA tool was supported by 10YFP Trust Fund in the SBC Programme, led by the Ministry of the Environment of Finland. 10YFP SBC Programme implements good sustainable construction practices.
Left: CRAterre students gave useful feedback in SHERPA development phase.Right: High level support to training was given by the president of the of the West African Monetary Union’s Regional Council (Le Conseil des Collectivités Territoriales, CCT/UEMOA), Mayor of Treichville, Minister François Albert Amichia (center in the picture).[hr]
For more information, visit www.scpclearinghouse.org. It is also possible to join SBC by contacting pekka.huovila@figbc.fi.
