Risk management in green building: a review of the current state of research and future directions

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in investigating risk factors in Green Building (GB) projects, with increasing debates in recent years. This study aims to investigate tendencies and identify gaps in the GB risk literature, which can define future research guidelines, with an extensive analysis of the latest contributions. A systematic literature review was conducted by analyzing 64 relevant studies from 2006 to 2020. The results revealed that the GB risk topic is somewhat nascent but growing and almost limited to several countries, including Singapore, the USA, Australia, and China. Notably, this research discovered and classified the main themes of GB risk studies: (1) identify risk factors in implementing GB projects, (2) create risk assessment models for GB projects, (3) study according to specific types of GB risks, and (4) investigate risks in green retrofit projects. Also, a comprehensive list of GB risk factors was provided that could be a helpful reference for industry practitioners and future researchers. Furthermore, this research identified gaps in the current literature, such as inconsistency in identifying GB risk factors, lack of investigation of the relationship between GB risks and project outcomes, and lack of exploring in cross-country or developing countries. Finally, this research suggested future research directions to enrich the literature. Thus, this study contributes a valuable platform for both practitioners and researchers to comprehend the development of the GB risk literature.

The Major Obstacles and Factors Facing Green Building in the KSA: A Background Study

“…In addition to the above reviews, few studies have specifically focused on a particular domain or area of green building research. Such as some studies highlight the benefits of green building (e.g., ), few focused on exploring the drivers of green building (e.g., Darko, Zhang, & Chan, 2017;Ahn, et al, 2013), some specifically discusses the barriers or risks of green building (e.g., Nguyen & Macchion, 2022;Chan et al, 2018;Nguyen, 2017;, project delivery outcomes e.g., (Ahmad, & Aibinu, 2017;Korkmaz, Horman, & Riley, 2009)), and few suggests some critical success factors (e.g., Chen, et al, 2022;Gunduz, & Almuajebh, 2020;Sfakianaki, 2018) and some highlight the strategies to overcome the barriers (e.g., Sabbagh et al, 2019;Teng, et al, 2016;Hoffman & Henn, 2008). Balabel and Alwetaishi (2021) compared green buildings with traditional construction.…”

A comprehensive risk assessment model based on a fuzzy synthetic evaluation approach for green building projects: the case of Vietnam

“…In summary, a number of studies have attempted to investigate the risk factors in implementing GB projects in recent years (Nguyen and Macchion, 2022). However, the identification and classification of GB risks remain inconsistent in previous studies (Nguyen et al, 2021).…”

“…This section provides an overview of GB risk studies to position this research within the existing literature. The results of the literature review indicated that a growing number of studies had investigated risk in GBs in recent years (Nguyen and Macchion, 2022).…”

“…There has been a dearth of studies on GB risk in developing economies (Ahmad et al. , 2019; Nguyen and Macchion, 2022). This highlights the necessity to investigate risks in GB projects in developing countries.…”

“…In addition, most previous studies only used traditional methods to evaluate risks (i.e. multiple impact levels with probability) (Nguyen and Macchion, 2022). Moreover, these studies were mainly limited to developed economies such as Singapore, Australia, US and China (Nguyen et al, 2021).…”