Defining and capturing "Quality criteria"

[yarondassonneville]

During the previous webinar there was confusion around the meaning of quality criteria. Linking a building and its quality criteria (such as surface, volumes, functions, energetic, performance etc.) is a use case coming from the ICEG building charter. That is the reason why the working group is trying to define what are the quality criteria. In an attempt to clarify the situation, please find below some definitions.

Quality is defined by Merriam-Webster as follows: “peculiar and essential character”, “an inherent feature, property”. According to Cambridge English Dictionary “Quality” is defined as “a characteristic or feature of someone or something”. This means that “Quality criteria” are about the intrinsic criteria of a Building.

At the moment, following “quality criteria” were already added to the model: ‘Elevation’, ‘Function’, ‘BuildingNature’. For the discussions about these topics we refer to the meeting report of Webinar #3.

The project team identified possible quality criteria, out of other standards such as INSPIRE:

• publicAccess: Is the building accessible for the public or not?
• energyPerformance: EPC rating
• Materials used in the construction of the Building

If you want to add additional quality criteria to the model, do not hesitate to contribute to this thread while giving a rationale.

[GeertThijs]

I think quality as an adjective was meant by the WG, not quality as a noun. In the former case it is about fitness for purpose. In the latter it is just about the characteristics of something, and yes, Buildings have characteristics, like everything else in the world. Which is the reason why we model it as a Class with attributes, the attributes model the characteristics. Quality as an adjective is entirely something else: fitness for purpose is a difficult concept as it is worthless if you do not know the purpose of the Building. So it is possible that a Building is perfectly suited as a studio for a painter but not suited at all to live in (eg because there is no heating). The characteristics mentioned (elevation, function, buildingNature, publicAccess, energyPerformance, materialsUsed) are indirect indicators of fitness for purpose so they should probably be included. But if we include them as quality indicators I would want to know if there exists some overall Building quality index (Belgian or international) and if yes on what characteristics it is based and only then decide which of those characteristics we should add to the model.

[bahimc]

As a summary;

Both quality as a noun and quality as an adjective are covered by the model;

• Quality as an adjective, i.e., fitness for purpose, can be determined through the characteristics of the building;
• Quality as a noun, i.e., characteristics or criteria, can be determined through attributes such as currentUse, buildingNature, elevation, etc.

As we were not made aware of any Quality Index or even the need to have one, "quality" in its primary meaning, won't be modelled. Therefore this issue can be closed, as no additional attributes (i.e., characterisitics) were requested.