URA

12 MANAGING DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT conditions conducive to the formulation of new building rehabilitation strategies addressing specific problems and needs. The URA also surveyed owners’ representatives of 3,000 building blocks to understand their views on building repair and maintenance, and the difficulties encountered therein, with an aim to explore how to put forward supportive measures that address their needs. Initial findings revealed that owners generally lack the professional knowledge to comprehend the scale and complexity of major maintenance works. In response to this, the URA began in last year the setting up of a Building Rehabilitation Platform with its first stage of service to give Owners’ Corporations a one-stop access to the practical guidelines and codes of various repair and maintenance works, as well as tender and document templates for appointing consultants and contractors, thereby reducing owners’ anxiety about carrying out rehabilitation works for their buildings. In addition to making reference to the policy, strategy and regulatory framework for building rehabilitation in other countries or regions, the New Building Rehabilitation Strategy Study will also review the roles played by different stakeholders in the long- term building rehabilitation strategy, and make recommendations to the Government on policies including, among others, the establishment of a special fund with mandatory and regular contribution mechanisms for owners in order to promote the culture of preventive maintenance, which is a key to address the fundamentals of building rehabilitation in the long run. Sustainability Study: Setting Performance Indicators for Urban Renewal The Urban Renewal Strategy requires the urban renewal process to be forward-looking and to create sustainable, positive impacts for the community, covering not only the financial sustainability of the work of urban renewal, but also lasting results that benefit the socio-economic status, environmental protection, and the living quality of residents. Therefore, a framework is required to measure the impact of urban renewal from various perspectives. Last year, the URA commenced the Sustainability Study that aimed to formulate a framework of the performance indicators for URA’s urban renewal works. On top of a number of sustainability factors which are common criteria of assessing sustainable developments, namely Society, Environment and Economy, the framework also includes Process and People to give a more comprehensive representation. The next phase of the Study will focus on developing a series of indicators for each factor so as to specifically measure and track the impact and benefits of each project on society under the five urban renewal strategies that cover redevelopment, rehabilitation, preservation, revitalisation and retrofitting. The measurement of these social impacts and benefits of our projects, as reflected by the indicators, will be instrumental in the process of formulating URA’s business strategies in future. Science and Technology: Leading the Future As urban renewal work becomes increasingly arduous while social resources are limited, we need to be more innovative and efficient so as to transcend our current limitations and maintain efficiency and quality through the application of technology in urban renewal work. In the past year, the URA started to introduce the Smart Building concept and incorporated for the first time various smart features, including home energy and water consumption system, home health and wellness system, smart displays, home waste management system, building information modelling (BIM), as well as building management system, in the buildings of Peel Street/Graham Street redevelopment project (Site A) (H18), Fuk Chak Street/Li Tak Street demand-led redevelopment project (DL-6:YTM), and Reclamation Street/Shantung Street development project (YTM-010). In addition, BIM technology has also been applied to the Shanghai Street preservation project to rationalise the engineering procedures and enhance their effectiveness. To further facilitate its planning and decision-making, the URA is also establishing a geographic, information- based Urban Renewal Information System for the analysis and integration of big data covering statistics on urban land use, district planning, development density, road network, infrastructure, building conditions, population distribution and commercial operations. This will strengthen our ability to process and analyse the vast amount of planning information. The URA is reaching out to different government