Comparative review of widely used building environmental assessment tools and suggestions for developing countries

Abstract

When aiming to reduce environmental impacts of buildings during the life cycle process, a yardstick for measuring environmental performance is needed. Building environmental assessment (BEA) tools have become widespread in recent years and attracted the construction sector and public awareness in sustainability. This paper overviews the development of BEA methods and makes a comparison between the widely used tools, in terms of their characteristics and limitations in assessing the sustainability of buildings, and make suggestions for developing countries, which tend to develop their own assessment tool or make regional adaptations of the existing tools. Due to the limited scope of the study, only widely used criteria-based tools, BREEAM of UK, LEED of USA, CASBEE of Japan, Green Star of Australia, Green Globes (International), SBTool (International) and GSBC of Germany are selected. © 2010 Taylor and Francis Group, London, UK.