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Building Sustainability: Credit Rating Criteria

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Office Buildings

Part of the book series: Design Science and Innovation ((DSI))

Abstract

Nearly 600 tools and dimensions are available in evaluating building sustainability and lifecycle phases of buildings. A global set of benchmark parameters would be unanimously agreed upon in establishing a unified building rating, with due account of national and regional characteristics, climatic and environmental conditions, sociocultural structure, and building stocks in the region. This chapter peeps through the building environmental assessment tools, structural content, and parameters for different building typologies, approaches in the evaluation and accreditation, and summarization indicators of assessment. Most rating schemes seem to adopt a similar approach and categories of assessment. However, they differ regarding the framework, weights, scoring methods (e.g., point-based or weighted approach) and procedure of performance evaluations. Different scores of the categories yield the total final score, and accordingly, buildings can be certified (four levels in LEED certification, i.e., certified, silver, gold, and platinum; six levels in BREEAM certification, i.e., unclassified, pass, good, very good, excellent, and outstanding). Many popular systems, such as BREEAM, HQE, DGNB, TQB, conform to guidelines of the CEN/TC 350 that included quantifiable environmental and social indicators of sustainability assessment. Keeping in mind that the professionals would require orientation on components of the assessment scheme, quantitative valuation of a building project using BREEAM and LEED is extensively discussed herewith for easy understanding and implementation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment and Disaster Management, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Pranab Kumar Nag

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  1. Pranab Kumar Nag
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Nag, P.K. (2019). Building Sustainability: Credit Rating Criteria. In: Office Buildings. Design Science and Innovation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2577-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2577-9_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-2576-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-2577-9

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