Multidisciplinary, Design-Interactive Evaluation of Large-Scale Projects

At the present time, considerable emphasis is being placed on evaluation of the impacts of large-scale environmental design projects. But the state-of-the-art is immature, especially with regard to a structured framework of theory and method. This paper presents and demonstrates improvements based upon the beginnings of a generalized impact model that has evolved through a series of encounters with real-world projects. It goes far beyond the usual checklist of environmental parameters, and considers social and human impacts as well. The method has several key features that are explained in depth: design interaction, identification and partitioning of key variables, a network model of impact channels, multidisciplinary cooperation among diverse specialists, ability to perform with inadequate or uneven state-of-the-art, and educational or catalytic gaming. In the paper, the evaluation method and its theoretical foundations are developed and explained in depth. The method is illustrated briefly by means of an actual case study.