The talk with present the key results of the IPCC Working Group III 5th assessment report. Concluding four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world, the report responds to the request of the world's governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge on mitigating climate change. The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness.

Climate change 2014 - Mitigation of climate change

In 2003, a joint effort between the Swedish government, a number of companies in the building and construction sectors, some municipalities, insurance companies and banks set a target that by 2009, all new buildings and 30% of existing Swedish buildings should be rated using a voluntary environmental rating tool. In a major research programme finished in 2008, a tool was developed to be used in this context. The tool covers three assessment areas: Energy, Indoor environment and Material & Chemicals. These areas are split into 11 aspects with one or a few indicators. Rating criteria are specified for each indicator, stipulating requirements for a rating Gold, Silver, Bronze and Rated. Indicator results can then be aggregated to aspect, area and a single rating for building level for enhanced result communication. The tool builds on previous experiences regarding environmental building rating tools and therefore includes some special characteristics which aim to tackle some of the criticism directed towards the first generation of such tools. At the time of writing, the first buildings have received official ratings and an independent stakeholder group is promoting broader implementation of the tool.

A Swedish Environmental rating Tool for Buildings

Application of generalized Choquet fuzzy integral method in the sustainability rating of green buildings based on the BSAM scheme

Digital tools help facilitate the implementation of sustainability practices in the built environment in the era of rapid urban developments. However, the extant literature revealed salient gaps in the use of cloud-based systems and digital tools to evaluate buildings' sustainability performance. Consequently, the current study aims to develop and implement a cloud-based sustainability assessment (CSA) system to evaluate and compare the sustainability performance of buildings based on the Building Sustainability Assessment Method (BSAM) scheme green rating system. A design science research (DSR) approach was adopted in designing, developing, and validating the CSA system. The developed CSA system is based on the SaaS model of cloud computing. The methods evaluation validation of the CSA system when compared with other systems revealed that the developed CSA system would result in higher time and learning efficiency for the users. The findings from the case study validation of the CSA system, using four building projects, indicate that the developed artefact offers a better secured, automated, reliable, and value-adding tool for the building sustainability assessment process. It also eases the automated process of updating data, evaluating, and comparing building projects towards improving the overall building sustainability profile. More so, the CSA system has a great potential to assist stakeholders in their buildings’ sustainability decision-making process and enhancing sustainable development.

Cloud-based sustainability assessment (CSA) system for automating the sustainability decision-making process of built assets

With the promotion of the concept of sustainable development and green buildings, green building rating systems are beginning to emerge and gradually attract more attention. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a widely used and influential rating system worldwide, and research on it has shown an increasing trend year by year. To establish a comprehensive understanding of the LEED research field, this article visualizes and analyzes the LEED research literature by CiteSpace to obtain journal, author, institution, and country collaboration networks, reference co-citations and clusters, keyword co-occurrence networks and citation bursts. The study found the relationships among journals, authors, institutions, countries, research frontiers, research hotspots, and research processes in the field of LEED research. A framework of the knowledge system of LEED research was constructed based on these findings to present the current status and future trends and provide a reference for future research.

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A Scientometric Analysis and Visualization of Global LEED Research

Public and private sectors are concerned with controlling the undesirable environmental impact of the new construction and the renovation of buildings. The building industry accounts for 32% of global energy consumption, 19% of energy-related CO₂ emissions, 25% of global water, and 40% of global resources depletion. The operational and maintenance phase of buildings accounts for 70% to 90% of the overall impact on environment. The literature review revealed many rating systems that were developed during the last few decades to assess the sustainability of buildings based on economic, social and environmental criteria. However, they represented local industries and none of them proposed a tool to select the best economic rehabilitation alternatives to upgrade building sustainability. Therefore, the main goal of this research is to establish an integrated sustainability rating and rehabilitation selection tool for buildings to fulfil the following objectives: 1) identify and study sustainability assessment attributes, 2) develop a sustainability assessment model for buildings, 3) build a sustainability scale and 4) establish a sustainability-based rehabilitation model for existing buildings. The research utilized several modelling techniques, such as fuzzy TOPSIS technique to determine the weight of each assessment attribute, simulation to determine the energy consumption, BIM-based model to assess building sustainability and the artificial immune system (AIS) to develop the sustainability-based rehabilitation model. Several types of data were collected and used to develop the aforementioned models utilizing questionnaires, case studies and interviews with facility managers from Canada and Egypt. 
The results showed the significant influence of the regional variations on both the weights of the sustainability attributes and the total sustainability assessment. By using a scale from zero to one, Canada showed the highest weights in energy, indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and building management criteria with values of 0.220, 0.167, and 0.156, respectively, whereas in Egypt, energy, site and water use criteria possessed the highest weights with values 0.2, 0.191 and 0.169, respectively. The sustainability-based rehabilitation model was implemented with a case study in Canada in which the results showed the capability of the developed optimization model to determine several optimal or near optimal alternatives to upgrade the sustainability with minimal life cycle cost (LCC). The developed tool was validated by experts through an interview and questionnaires showing the potential application of the tool to existing buildings. The assessment model was also validated through a comparative analysis between the proposed model and other well-known sustainability rating tools, which showed good potential. Sensitivity analysis was conducted showing the impact of the weight variation on the sustainability assessment. The research concluded the importance of introducing a multi-level weighting scheme in the assessment to reflect regional variations. 
The main contribution of the present research is to provide decision-makers with a two-tier tool that 1) determines the current sustainability of buildings and highlights the weak areas that require more attention, and 2) proposes various rehabilitation alternatives that upgrades the sustainability of the building with minimal LCC utilizing multi-objective optimization. The research also contributes to the body of knowledge by developing an integrated sustainability assessment and rehabilitation framework as a step towards establishing a comprehensive global sustainability-assessment tool.

Integrated Sustainability Assessment and Rehabilitation Framework for Existing Buildings

Multiobjective Optimization Model for the Life Cycle Cost-Sustainability Trade-Off Problem of Building Upgrading Using a Generic Sustainability Assessment Tool

Sherif Ahmed Ibrahim Mahmoud

Papers

Integrated Sustainability Assessment and Rehabilitation Framework for Existing Buildings

Multiobjective Optimization Model for the Life Cycle Cost-Sustainability Trade-Off Problem of Building Upgrading Using a Generic Sustainability Assessment Tool