We conducted a bottom-up, spatially explicit building stock analysis to examine the social and spatial heterogeneity of operational and embodied emissions of residential buildings in Canton Vaud, Switzerland. Variations emerged between locations, household profiles and ownership types. Urban households exhibited lower embodied emissions per resident, but higher annual operational emissions (1500–1900 kg CO₂/resident), compared to rural households, which showed greater overall variation (1200–2200 kg CO₂/resident). Ownership patterns were less geographically distinct but stratified by type: mixed-ownership buildings exhibited the highest embodied energy, largest material stock and the most modern buildings, whereas community-owned buildings showed the widest variation in annual operational emissions (1500–2300 kg CO₂/resident). Our findings suggest that tailoring emission-reduction interventions to specific social and physical housing contexts would enhance the materials-energy nexus in the built environment. We discuss avenues for reducing energy losses, closing material loops, and incorporating sufficiency into building stock management.

A wealth of indicators and indicator sets, structured in the form of standards (e.g., ISO, OECD, SDG Index, etc.), have been developed and proposed over the past decades to define and measure urban sustainability. Unfortunately, literature studies confirm that there is a lack of knowledge systematisation for such indicator sets in the sustainability assessment domain. In this chapter, we present and describe a formal representation of knowledge about sustainability indicators and their interrelationships, through the development of a domain ontology. To increase the potential for its adaptability and reuse, as well as to facilitate its continuous redevelopment, we make the developed ontology available online, through a dedicated web portal.