Environmental assessment criteria and protocols for residential developments

Abstract

This research endeavors to identify a set of design, construction and management criteria for residential buildings and to develop a building environmental assessment protocol relevant to Singapore's tropical and high density living city context with respect to residential developments. Environmental issues relevant to local residential buildings are identified through literature review, survey of local residents, survey of 171 local building experts, and case studies of existing HDB blocks. Weighting scales are established for these issues based on their priorities according to local building experts' opinions. Environmental assessment criteria and protocol for local residential developments are then developed based on the identified environmental issues and their weights. To evaluate the new developed protocol, two HDB buildings have been assessed using the protocol as case studies. The new protocol could be used to assess building performance at three levels: unit level, block level and precinct level, and under six categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy use, materials & resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation & design process.In order to determine the environmental sustainability of local residential buildings, two HDB buildings have been assessed using LEED-NC and the new developed protocol. Extensive measurements as well as a short survey with the residents were carried out of the two buildings to investigate their indoor and outdoor environmental conditions. The assessment results demonstrate the improvement as well as reveal the limitation of sustainable development of local residential buildings. The results also indicate the limitation of LEED-NC when applied to local residential buildings assessment.