A Methodological Framework for Sustainable Office Building Renovation Using Green Building Rating Systems and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Abstract

Sustainable development is a priority for the future of our society. Sustainable development is of particular importance to the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, both for new buildings and for the renovation of existing buildings. Great potential for sustainable development lies in the renovation of existing office buildings. This paper introduces a new framework for identifying the best set of renovation strategies for existing office buildings. The framework applies selected green building rating system criteria and cost-effective sustainable renovation solutions based on cost-benefit analysis (CBA), and thus provides a novelty in decision-making support for the sustainable renovation of office buildings at an early-stage. The framework covers all necessary steps and activities including data collection, determination of the required level of renovation, selection of the green building rating system, identification of impact categories and criteria, and final evaluation and decision-making using CBA. The framework can be used in conjunction with different systems and according to different regional characteristics. The applicability of the addressing procedure is shown through a case study of a comprehensive renovation of an office building in the city of Maribor.

Green Retrofitting Simulation for Sustainable Commercial Buildings in China Using a Proposed Multi-Agent Evolutionary Game

“…Broadly speaking, economic benefit contributes to the core motivation of green retrofitting; thus, ensuring its cost-effectiveness using numerical and quantitative methods is significant. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of green retrofitting with a focus on the optimization of rating systems [13,14,16,18,21,[56][57][58][59], decision-making methods [10,12,[60][61][62], single-technique energy-saving potentials [41,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69], and policy barrier commendations [39,45,53,55,59,62,[70][71][72] (Figure 2). A static agent focuses on one enterprise itself, but not the entire lateral industry, indicating that it is essential to investigate the promotion level of all enterprises in the developer group or enterprise group.…”

“…Nevertheless, financial-based benefits are considered as the most fundamental and significant indicator. Multiple project benefits have been introduced and identified as an effective means to ensure additional benefit and monetary value using a quantitative cash flow method [21,81], and the analysis of results using this methodological framework indicates that complexity caused by semi-shareholders may result in incorrect economic calculation. Hence, the attained benefit should be considered by a multi-agent rather than a one-side developer or investor.…”

“…Dalirazar and Sabzi [20] reviewed previous studies using the PESTLE technique, and categorized legal regulation obstacles as "complex procedure", and other obstacles, including complicated contract problems, non-ideal certification, benefit ambiguity, and unstable and precarious regulations. In addition, green building specialists in Sweden, the United States, and New Zealand have reported that social and monetary unwieldiness, including long payback periods, as well as environmental tasks, high initial tasks, and low sustainable building demand, have contributed to negative retrofitting development [20,21].…”

A Framework for the Assessment of Public Buildings Sustainability in the Palestinian Territory

“…The first fold is related to the significant environmental, social and economic role of the building sector 7 [1]. Indeed this sector is responsible for approximately 40% of the energy consumption, 36% of CO 2 emissions, 33% water consumption, and 30% of waste generation 18,4 [2,3]. In addition, the building construction industry consumes a significant amount of resources: 25% of wood and steel products and 70% of cement [4].…”

“…Standards and certificates were set in these countries for designers, practitioners, and decision-makers. Examples of these certificates are LEED in the USA, BREEAM in the UK, CASBEE in Japan, DGNB in Europe, GB Tool in Canada, Life-cycle-based tools in the Netherlands, and Eco-Effect in Sweden [2,9,10]. Since these certificates were developed within developed countries, they could not be directly applicable to developing countries because of specific policies, regulations, public awareness, geography, climate, resource, and construction materials [4].…”