Date of Award

2008

Degree Type

Dissertation

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

First Advisor

Kocher, Walter

Subject Headings

Sustainable buildings -- Design and construction -- Standards, Buildings -- Energy conservation, Buildings -- Environmental aspects, Sustainable architecture, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System, AHP, Design, Green building, LEED, MCDM, Sustainability, Life cycle assessment, Electronic books. local

Abstract

This study presents a tool that has been developed to measure and subsequently improve the sustainability performance of a building over its entire life-cycle while still at the conceptual design stage. This forecasting tool is called GREENOMETER-7. GREENOMETER-7 is a LCA tool and it evaluates the projected building at two levels: micro- and macro-assessment. The micro-assessment level provides in-depth analysis of the building products, components, and operations however, the macro-assessment level measures the sustainability performance of the building as a whole and covers areas that are not applicable at the product or component level. Both levels consist of categories and indicators. The micro-assessment level has 12 categories that fall into the following major areas: energy, water and wastewater, resources, contaminants, and economics. The macro-assessment level of GREENOMETER-7 has 7 categories. They are location, land use and land value, stormwater, heat-island and landscaping, water and wastewater, energy, resources, and environmental indoor quality (EIQ). The tool uses a 7-degree scale (0 to 6) to express sustainability performance, where 0 means extremely unsustainable, 3 means neutral and 6 means highly sustainable. The output is a score from 0 to 6 for the micro- and macro-assessment levels as well as for their categories and indicators. The micro-assessment level has three phases: inventory, impact assessment and interpretation. The inventory phase has two steps: hierarchy-analysis and "N" determination. The impact assessment phase has two steps: profiling and synthesis. Also, the interpretation phase has two steps: ranking and valuation (weighting). On the other hand, the macro-assessment level has two phases: inventory and interpretation. The inventory phase has two steps: macro-survey and macro-profile. The interpretation phase has two steps: ranking and valuation (weighting). The LEED scoring system is the predominant green building rating system in the United States. USGBC is in the process

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