Significance of sub-criteria in measuring sustainable performance of building envelope development

Abstract

Currently, several building performance assessment methods are in use around the world but these methods fail to incorporate the needed sustainable energy performance indicators and sub-criteria, thus the necessity of current lack of capability to determine the actual sustainable performance of building envelope. Besides, aggregate criteria are extremely complex to create and are often criticized for simplifying the complex issues of sustainability into one performance issue. The aim of this paper is to create more effective sub-criteria that can be assessed under these sustainable energy performance indicators and infl uence the capability of building performance assessment methods. To create these sub-criteria, a comprehensive survey of the construction industry professional was conducted using a questionnaire technique while the data was analyzed using correlation and regression analysis techniques. Suggestions were made on those sub-criteria that should be assessed under the sustainable performance indicator to be incorporated into a sustainable performance model for the buildings' envelope development. Keywords: Building, effi ciency, energy, envelope, environmental, indicator, material, performance, sub-criteria, sustainable. 1 INTRODUCTION Today, great deal of effort is being placed all over the world in achieving sustainable performance in the construction industry. Such efforts can be seen in the area of passive building, building performance assessment and standards [1][2][3]. The objectives of these efforts are to regulate the energy consumption and to ensure building sustainability in extreme climatic condition and sustainable effi ciency design in building. These objectives can only be achieved through assessing the actual sustainable performance of the building and envelope using appropriate building assessment tool [1][2][3]. Moreover, the rapid growth of energy use, worldwide, has already raised concerns over the problem of supply, the exhaustion of energy resources and severe environmental impacts (ozone layer depletion, global warming, climate change etc.) that are affecting the building sustainability [4,5]. Besides, the fact that the integration of indicators in the existing building assessment methods is limited, the residential building envelope sustainable performance was not accounted for in those methods. Therefore, building designers can contribute to solving the energy consumption problem if proper early design decisions are made regarding the sustainable building envelope and integration of sustainable building envelope materials [6][7][8]. As a result, efforts to improve building energy effi ciency should not only concentrate on the design of the air conditioning system but also include the sustainable building envelope [9]. Numerous demands are placed on the building envelope as the energy interface between the ambient conditions and the internal climate needs of users and occupants [10]. Thus the necessity of this study to address the complexity surrounding the determi...