No abstract

Water conservation is essential to sustainable development, and among human activities, buildings are responsible for a significant portion of total water consumption. Therefore, we present a systematic review that aims to search for valuable contributions from benchmarking and their potential significance to water conservation. The relevance of performing such a review is to support the research in the field, organise information, and highlight both the lack of data and valuable results in specific building types. Benchmarking highlights best performance buildings, while it also classifies performances, which allows developing interventions for different buildings. Seventy-two documents on the environmental performance of buildings were reviewed, and a variety of methods, metering procedures, and indicators were found as valuable data for water-saving initiatives. In addition to a systematic search in SCOPUS, searches were made in Science Direct and Google Scholar databases. Although the main challenge in this matter lies in the lack of procedures standardisation, it was found that performing benchmarking is relevant for accurately developing water conservation initiatives. Gains of over five million m3 per year in a set of buildings or above 151 thousand m3 per year in a single factory were found, which indicate the existing potential for water conservation.

The operation of buildings is significant among the human activities that withdraw water from nature, and evaluating the water efficiency of buildings is essential for sustainable development. Hence, this paper aims to assess the water efficiency in school buildings to identify benchmarks that could be used as targets in water-saving initiatives alongside highlighting which type of variable is more influential for each building. A cluster benchmarking system was developed and applied to 82 public school buildings in Florianópolis, Brazil. Data were obtained from the state water supply company and both state and municipal education departments. Water consumption drivers were defined through a literature review and the language R was used for clustering the sample. Water efficiency was then evaluated using suitable indicators for occupation conditions, building rooms and spaces and water appliances. High and low-efficiency buildings were identified in the five clusters generated through the k-means algorithm. Schools with excessively low or high consumption that could be related either to the under-measurement or leaks were identified, which is useful for water network management. In conclusion, water-efficient school buildings were highlighted as benchmarks and the type of variables that should be addressed for enhancing the accuracy of water-saving initiatives were highlighted.