Environmental, Economic, and Social Parameters in International Green Building Rating Tools

Abstract

The concept of sustainability is regarded to be threefold: environmental, economic, and social. This is usually identified as the triple bottom line of sustainability and is often represented by three intertwined circles. Therefore, for a construction to be sustainable, it should be environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. However, the extent to which green building rating tools evaluate the three pillars of sustainability is questionable. This research aims to analyze the effectiveness of eight international green building rating tools in evaluating environmental, economic, and social sustainability in buildings. The credit points of each rating tool was initially categorized based on the related category of sustainability and a comparison analysis was carried out based on a normalized score. Finally, the comparison result is presented with a radar diagram. Further, three case study buildings were also analyzed based on the credit points achieved. Accordingly, environmental sustainability is widely considered in green building rating tools while economic sustainability is rarely evaluated. Further, social sustainability is evaluated in all the green building rating tools, which would approximately amount to 20% of the credit points allocated by each rating tool.