Date of Publication: Aug 13, 2014

Author: Mohammadreza Dabbaghian , Kasun Hewage , Bahareh Reza , Keith Culver & Rehan Sadiq

Summary:

Green building practices are gaining in popularity as a means to mitigate environmental and human health impacts of construction and development. Green buildings incorporate environmentally responsible and resource-efficient technologies to reduce environmental impacts over their life cycle. Recently various environmental assessment methods have been developed to assess the environmental performance of green building technologies. Methods developed to date are, however, insufficient for accurate quantitative estimation and evaluation of triple-bottom-line (TBL) sustainability performance objectives (i.e. economic, environmental and social) in the context of green building technologies. Moreover, selection processes for these technologies often involve significant uncertainty and subjectivity. As a result, currently available approaches to estimation of sustainability performance over a technology’s life cycle may be unreliable and misleading. This paper aims to remedy some of the shortcomings in current approaches, providing an improved quantitative sustainability evaluation framework for green building technologies. The proposed framework integrates a fuzzy-analytical hierarchy process with a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment to address interactions and influence of various TBL criteria. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by its application in comparison of the sustainability performance of two generic green roof systems contrasted with a conventional roof. The results show that an extensive’s green roof system is a more desirable option in terms of long-term sustainability performance criteria.

Link to Full Reading:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2093761X.2014.923794