%0 Journal Article
%T Building Sustainability Assessment throughout Multicriteria Decision Making
%A L¨˛cio VillarinhoRosa
%A Assed Naked Haddad
%J Journal of Construction Engineering
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/578671
%X Opinion and choice strongly influence sustainability concepts. The building construction industry, in particular property developers, has been charged with promoting excess environmental impacts ranging from overuse of resources to pollution generation. This paper presents an application of sustainability concepts to building projects, as well as to the development of practices, methodology, and tools for evaluating existing buildings. This study will detail how current systems to evaluate building performance operate and how to improve them. This approach utilizes the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). AHP is a multicriteria method that evaluates the relative importance of criteria, subcriteria, and families of indicators, used in the proposed system of technical characteristics applied to the local culture. At the same time, AHP makes visible the critical factors involved in evaluation of sustainability of these buildings. A result of the application of this type of modeling is a system for sustainability assessment and evaluation of environmental aspects and socioeconomic perspectives of existing buildings in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 1. Introduction The term sustainable development has the meaning ˇ°emphasis on quality of life,ˇ± thus enabling people to live in a healthy environment while incorporating continuous improvement of social conditions and economic and environmental issues for the present and future generations [1]. A result of this awareness is that society is considering the construction sector to be a major source of impacts on the environment. This view takes into account the perceived excessive consumption of resources and generation of pollution during the phases of construction and use [2]. Occupancy consumes 80% of the energy expected to be used throughout the life cycle of a building. Occupancy represents the primary target for actions aimed at energy efficiency to reduce adverse impacts on the environment, human health, and economy [3]. It should be noted that while buildings are large contributors to environmental degradation they are important for the sustainability of business and quality of life, as city dwellers spend 80% to 90% of their time indoors [3, 4]. At this point, it is important to note that green buildings provide certain outcomes when subjected to specific requirements. These include minimization of disturbances of the ecosystem and other improvements throughout the life cycle as well as optimization of efficiency of resource management and operational performance leading to minimization of risks to human
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jcen/2013/578671/