published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

Resources like water and electricity are limited and the usage of these resources are increasing along with the city’s development. Information released by different environmental organizations suggests that the consumption of these limited resources by a conventional building is huge. Green building plays an important role in improving this situation. This dissertation first finds out the energy usage of conventional buildings from different environmental organizations and different scholars/ professionals through literature reviews. The goal of this research is to find out 1) the feasibility of turning a conventional building into a green building in Hong Kong; 2) owners’ knowledge of green building; 3) if financial factors affect owners’ decision to turn their conventional buildings into green buildings. Through literature review, we found out the reasons why people prefer/do not prefer green buildings. We also found out how government policies affect consumers’ and enterprises’ behavior. By conducting a survey, we know more about the owners’ understanding of green building, the important factors of green building among the interviewees, the attractive incentives/ benefits that trigger the owners’ decision to go green, the barriers that deters the owners from going green and the most attractive incentives/ benefits of green building proposed by the Management Company/ Incorporated Owners. Through data analysis of the questionnaire conducted, we found that the understanding of green building among the interviewees is good. The interviewees could define most of the green building characteristics but not “Regular inspection, maintenance and repair of the building” and “Ensure satisfactory quality of drinking water”. We also found that financial factors could trigger the owners to turn their buildings into green buildings. The most attractive financial factors are “Reduce bill in your own unit”, “Better selling price of your flat” and “Better rental price”. Likewise, when Management Company/ Incorporated Owners propose to turn the owners’ buildings into green buildings, “Financial aspect like saving energy cost” is the one advantage rated the most “Most attractive”. At the end of the dissertation, we discuss the implications of the study like the interviewees’ energy saving concerns, rising health awareness among the interviewees and the effects of financial incentives on owners’ behavior. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Cities evolve in a rhizome-like fashion interconnected nodes accelerating the flow of information, rate of innovation, and the accumulation of wealth, but also making apparent new inequalities and informal economies. Since the '70s, the green and feminist movements, and self-help housing, are challenging the duality of Western discourse, scientific methods, and the separation between working and living. The creation of productive livelihoods and self-sufficient households---including local food production---can help restore local cultural and ecological habitats in the urban milieu. Sustainability is redefined as maintaining, improving and restoring local household productivity levels. This multi-disciplinary study considers the evolution of technological, social and artistic innovation; it considers housing as a fluid interface between human and biological systems, thus a social organization defined by its human ecology. Overall productivity performance is measured in terms of cultural and biological diversity, and leisure time produced.

The green building market has seen tremendous growth in the past decade. Organizations such as the US Green Building Council have emerged to become a dominant leader in the building industry. Although the green building rating systems are cross-disciplinary, much of the focus has been directed towards design-related input. General Contractors play an important role in delivering successful sustainable construction projects. If an integrated project delivery method is chosen, the General Contractor may offer insightful preconstruction assistance by providing ideas on green construction methods and materials. As sustainable building practices become more prominent in the construction industry, General Contractors must remain knowledgeable on current green building standards in order to stay competitive. Two of the most important aspects of business for a General Contractor involve time and money. Through qualitative literature review and quantitative results from a case study, this research analyzes time and cost in sustainable construction projects from a General Contractor's perspective. The research also examines whether the management of a sustainable construction project is substantially different than a non-sustainable construction project for a General Contractor. Finally, because the green building process involves multiple parties, the collaboration effort from all parties involved in a green building project will be studied.

A dissertation submitted to The Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment University of Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Building / The world population continues to grow resulting in continuous demand for development. The building and construction industry is the avenue by which a vast majority of human settlements are developed. With this in mind, it is an industry that can have a far reaching effect on human and ecological well-being across the globe and South Africa is no exception. This study posits the problem that the correct building procurement systems to enhance client satisfaction in Green Building practices are not being applied in South Africa and as a consequence the application and integration of Green Building is being curbed. The overall aim of the study was therefore to determine how to improve client satisfaction through the correct use of building procurement systems in order to increase Green Building implementation across South Africa. The relationship between building procurement systems, client satisfaction and Green Building implementation remained the focal point throughout the study. This relationship was broken down within the literature as well as through the analysis of a questionnaire submitted to South African Green Building professionals, including clients. This examination determined that the client is the key to whether a project is developed and how it is procured. Moreover, it established that the choice of procurement strategy is the defining factor in the successful outcome of a project and ultimately the outcome of client satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The results indicated a significant correlation of the views in practice with that in theory whereby it was determined that the most appropriate procurement systems for Green Building are collaborative systems , including Design and Manage as well as Design and Build. On the contrary the findings illustrated that the Traditional System is the least appropriate for Green Building as it is a segregated building procurement system. Furthermore, the respondents confirmed the hypothesis that incorrect building procurement systems are being applied on Green Building projects in South Africa as the Traditional System was found to be the most utilised system for Green Building across South Africa even though it is the least appropriate system. This is a noteworthy finding, as environmental progress will continually be curbed on account of low levels of client satisfaction from inadequate building procurement systems. This research gives clear solutions on which building procurement systems to use and which not to use for Green Building. By applying this knowledge client satisfaction will be enhanced and so too the Green Building environment of South Africa.

In the last few decades, there has been well documented evidence that the performance of the public building projects in local authorities in Indonesia does not fully meet the expectation of the stakeholders involved and demonstrates sustainable practices. This mediocre performance impacts on the competitiveness of building industry, and therefore would require the development of a strategic approach to address these fundamental structural and cultural issues. The strategic approach, which facilitates sustainable practices, to a large extent, depends on the local priorities, goals and success criteria, which are dynamic and influenced by the expectations of various stakeholders involved in the procurement of public buildings. This research aims to develop a conceptual framework that will help local authorities to enhance sustainable practices of public building management. The empirical research work adopted case study strategy involving interviews with 24 public building practitioners and investigation of building defects on 34 projects. This research proposes LACU model, which represents a triangular relationship between contractors, local authorities and building end-users to illustrate the interactions between parties when undertaking their tasks throughout the project lifecycle. A framework of Sustainable-Dynamic Capabilities was developed and applied to enhance understanding of sustainability provisions in public building development. Based on this framework and stakeholders’ mapping illustrated by LACU model, this research has enhanced understanding on strategies of local authority to implement sustainable practices on public building projects. A template analysis through interview transcripts has been adopted to identify strategic approaches of local authority to deliver successful project by determining the roles of stakeholder at three different levels, provincial, regency or city and special authority. This research provides a novel empirically-based guidance for the local authorities to undertake sustainable public building procurement throughout project life cycle by adopting strategic approaches, such as employing innovative construction method, appropriate policy intervention by local leader, and changing business orientation.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-103)

As a major energy consumer and CO2 emitter, buildings have an undeniably important role to play in cutting carbon emissions and combating climate change. Over the recent decades, green buildings have gained increasing attention and popularity from various stakeholders in the construction industry. Green building design practice builds upon the conventional building design practice but adds the concerns of environmental impacts and occupants’ well-being in the design philosophy. Many researchers advocate utilizing optimization for green building design due to its capability in obtaining improved design solutions and providing building designers a better understanding of the design space. A comprehensive and in-depth review on previous relevant optimization models has revealed the following two limitations which might undermine their application in practice. Firstly, the focus of optimization in most of these models was on the reduction of cost and energy consumption while occupants’ comfort level in terms of indoor environmental quality was seldom considered. Secondly, for those models which have set comfort level of indoor environmental quality as a design objective, only thermal comfort was taken into account and thus they failed to address other essential factors governing indoor environmental quality such as visual comfort and indoor air quality. Aiming at addressing the limitations of previous related studies, this research has developed an improved optimization model for green building design with a more comprehensive set of design objectives, namely minimization of cost, minimization of energy consumption, and maximization of occupants’ comfort level in terms of indoor environmental quality. The importance of the three design objectives and the necessity for including them in the model were verified through a series of semi-structured interviews with respondents from different stakeholder groups in relation to green building design and construction. The three design objectives are evaluated in the developed model in terms of (i) cost according to life cycle cost; (ii) energy consumption analyzed by a widely-adopted building energy performance simulation program – EnergyPlus; and (iii) comfort level of indoor environmental quality by adopting an empirical-based multivariate-logistic regression model identified from literatures. Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II, a powerful multi-objective optimization technique, was selected as the optimization engine in the developed model. The developed model was then implemented into to a prototype tool in the MATLAB environment which can be utilized by building designers to determine the appropriate design solutions. Through a hypothetical office building design problem, the applicability of the model was demonstrated. Finally, the developed model was validated through demonstration and face-to-face discussion with experts. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Buildings worldwide account for over a third of carbon emissions, which have a tremendous impact on climate changes. Meanwhile, their contribution in Hong Kong is much higher, being up to 60%. Therefore, low carbon building (LCB) has been regarded as an effective approach to reducing carbon emissions worldwide especially in Hong Kong. There have also emerged a wide range of measures for achieving LCBs. However, the effective utilization of LCB measures faces the challenge of identifying and selecting those proven to be environmentally, technically, financially and socially sustainable in the long term. This challenge is particularly significant at the design stage of LCBs due to the limited or unknown design information. These problems may be well addressed by the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). However, the current body of knowledge of LCB has two limitations. Firstly, most of previous research did not categorize the possible LCB measures from a systematic perspective, which results in fragmented evaluation. Secondly, the MCDA method still has not been widely used for solving the decision-making problems regarding LCB thus lacking the supportive information for its effective utilization. In addressing these limitations, this research aims to develop a MCDA model for the selection of appropriate LCB measures for office buildings in Hong Kong. Office buildings are a great representative of commercial buildings which contribute more than 60% of the carbon emissions of the building sector in Hong Kong. This research was carried out through the combination of a critical literature review, a questionnaire survey, a project case study and personal interviews. The literature review was focused on examining the frameworks for identifying LCB measures and selecting decision criteria. A questionnaire survey was carried out with 355 BEAM Professionals in Hong Kong, which expanded and verified the results from the literature review. The case study was conducted with an office building project using building performance simulation (BPS) for further investigation. The interviews were semi-structured in nature, carried out with 10 construction experts in Hong Kong. Through the research 10 LCB measures and 6 decision criteria for the LCB measure selection were identified, which were mostly used or considered for office buildings in Hong Kong. The developed MCDA model contains 5 modules that help to structure the decision-making process. The relative importance of the 10 LCB measures was obtained by a general implementation with proper weighting method and MCDA method. The results demonstrate the importance of lighting and building envelope for low carbon office building design and the need for accurate data for informed decision-making. Software eQuest was used for evaluating the carbon reductions in the case study building, and Software Visual PROMETHEE was adopted for selecting the best alternative among the LCB measures investigated. The developed MCDA model should support design decision-making for selecting appropriate LCB measures for office building projects. Despite the adopted multi-criteria decision-making, building energy regulations and government incentives in favour of building carbon reductions were mostly expected for delivering LCBs in Hong Kong. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Desk-top research found that the performance of green building development in Hong Kong has lagged behind other countries or cities of similar international status. The main reason for that is the lack of green building policy to coordinate the existing measures. Hence, this dissertation aims to fill the gap by finding out whether green building policy should be implemented in Hong Kong and what instruments or tools should be included in the policy if it is formulated. Further to the focus study on four selected countries, i.e. Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, it is noted that an effective green building policy should contain a quantitative target as goal achievement and comprise mandatory instruments, economic instruments and information tools as policy options. After identifying some suitable policy options, a survey has been conducted to collect people’s views. Survey results supported that there is a need for the buildings in Hong Kong to be greener and for the Hong Kong government to formulate a set of green building policy. It is recommended that Hong Kong green building policy should include quantitative commitment for both new public and private buildings in short run; and extend to existing public and private buildings in long run. The government should keep reviewing and extending its mandatory requirements on green building design and energy performance, and introducing mandatory energy audit for disclosure of key consumption data for public viewing and full report during premises or building transactions. As mandatory energy audit is a fresh idea in Hong Kong and may not be easily accepted by citizens, the government should provide sufficient assistance at the teething stage when implementing it. To further promote green building development, it is suggested that the Hong Kong government should provide financial incentives, such as the provision of tax credits for green building investment and subsidy for upgrading energy performance of existing building. However, energy tax may not be a suitable option to implement at present in view of its necessity and respondents’ objections from the survey results. Apart from mandatory and economic instruments, it is opined that the Hong Kong government should allocate resources for research and development, and education for promoting green building development. This is also greatly supported by respondents according to the survey results. As green building may still be a new concept to many building practitioners in Hong Kong, the government should also set up a designated team to administer green building issues and provide a wide-spreading platform for knowledge exchange and experience sharing. Developing green building in Hong Kong not only requires commitments from the Administration and contributions from the stakeholders, but also the involvement of every citizen. With the support from everyone, this definitely can smoothen the formulation and implementation of green building policy, and make the built environment green and sustainable for the next generations to enjoy! / published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management