A Review of sustainability assessment tools on prioritizing physical safety and comfort to effectively control accidents in streets of Colombo

Abstract

The definition of sustainability has evolved since it was defined by the Brundtland commission in 1987, and become comprehensive over time with defined social, environmental and economy based ‘Sustainable Development Goals’. Today the necessity and feasibility of inclusion of safety and comfort as key components of sustainable development of urban streets has become vital considering the number of accidents and crimes taking place in urban contexts. High number of road accidents have been recorded in Colombo as noted from the report issued by the Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics. This is primarily due to lack of regulations or any ratification on enforcing physical safety and comfort aspects. Therefore considering the principles of sustainability, and sustainability rating being established an universal quality assessment tool, it is important to incorporate physical safety and comfort as an element of sustainability in designing urban streets. The analysis is done by defining sustainability through literature review, identifying the research gap on physical safety and comfort using VOSviewer software, and assessing the significance of safety and comfort in designing urban streets using available online data.