Water Efficiency and Management in Sustainable Building Rating Systems: Examining Variation in Criteria Usage

Jamal Al-Qawasmi, Muhammad Asif, Ahmed Abd El Fattah and Mohammad O. Babsail
Additional contact information
Jamal Al-Qawasmi: Architecture Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
Muhammad Asif: Department of Architecture Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
Ahmed Abd El Fattah: Architecture Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
Mohammad O. Babsail: Architecture Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 8, 1-16

Abstract: The building sector, due to the significant energy and environmental footprints it creates, needs to adopt sustainable approaches to help prevent global warming and climate change. Sustainable Building (SB) rating systems have been developed around the world as a method to promote sustainability in this sector. Water is one of the most vital natural resources, and is extensively consumed in the building sector. This article examines the coverage of water-related aspects in 11 prominent SB rating systems under the three key sustainability dimensions: environmental, economic, and social, using a comprehensive coverage analysis approach. Findings highlight a wide range of variation between the examined SB rating systems in terms of water attributes being assessed, water assessment criteria used, the optimal number of these criteria, and the weight assigned to them. Results also show that in general, most of the examined systems exhibit low representativeness and comprehensive coverage of major water subcategories and themes related to sustainable buildings. However, some moderate to high comprehensive coverage was found in water attributes that focus on the environmental and social aspects. The results indicate that representative and comprehensive coverage of social-related water attributes are less than that of environment-related water attributes. The results also highlighted the effectiveness of using coverage analysis techniques as a systematic and efficient way to assess comprehensive coverage of water criteria in SB rating systems.

Keywords: water; sustainable building rating systems; sustainable buildings; sustainability; dry regions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/8/2416/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/8/2416/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:8:p:2416-:d:225370

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().