Search

The aim of this research study is to illustrate the role of the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and Leadership in Energy and Design (LEED) within low-cost urban housing projects through the analysis of multiple factors and motivations impacting the outcome of construction projects. The rate at which climate change is advancing demands that the construction industry change their practices to decrease the natural resources it consumes as well as improve the environmental efficiency of the world's building stock. The introduction of BREEAM and LEED in 1990 and 2000, respectively, provided a system where buildings are evaluated on their energy performance. Issues, however, began to develop as research that illustrated the system's drawbacks undermined its utility. In turn, the role of the green building certifications ought to be researched so that policy and stakeholder communication frameworks can be developed by contractors and designers to ensure the success of BREEAM and LEED projects. The research study was completed through a literature study of prior research as well as by the publishing of a snowball sampling-based survey questionnaire undertaken between practitioners, architects, engineers as well as researchers involved in the UK construction industry. The results of the survey were then collated using IBM's Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) and then a confirmatory factor analysis as well as a correlation matrix was completed. The confirmatory factor analysis illustrated that the two most important factors were climate change and quality. Thus, contractors and designers ought to develop practical policies and stakeholder frameworks to achieve value for money for the market demographic. The results of this study hold potential to increase the application of BREEAM and LEED. The improvement of practice in low-cost urban housing projects will improve the accessibility of BREEAM and LEED housing projects and, in turn, the energy efficiency and sustainability of new building stock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the rapid environmental changes, the transitions to sustainable practices in the construction industry is vital now. Though the developed construction industries have already made efforts to switching to more sustainable and environment friendly practices, the developing countries are still lacking it. This research was organised to understand the role of project management practises and integrated methods in the sustainable development in the developing countries, for looking on how such practices can help these construction sectors become sustainable. The moderation effect of industrial attitudes and behaviours on sustainable construction was also conducted to understand the intermediary impacts. A survey based on the snowball sample of 208 construction professionals in Ghana was conducted to determine the impact of project management practises and integrated methods on sustainable construction. Research model was tested by employing bivariate correlation and multiple hierarchical regression analysis techniques, to establish the interrelationships among the project management practices, integrated approaches, industrial attitudes and behaviours, and sustainable construction and to explain these constructs in terms of their common underlying dimensions. The findings highlight that the project management practices and integrated approaches are significantly impacting on the sustainable construction practices in terms of BIM, Digital Twin, LEED, and BREEAM. Whereas the industrial attitudes and behaviours were found to be affecting the project management practises and integrated approaches through moderating role on sustainable construction. The study was concluded by suggesting the importance of sustainable construction practices and shaping industrial attitudes and behaviours towards such practices in the developing construction industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Banking activities have crossed the border and spread worldwide. Internationalization is known as the need of the day for sustainability in height competitive banking sector trends. Is there any effect of internationalization on profitability to sustain in a competitive market or just increases risk factors? Here, the study investigates the need and effect of internationalization on bank risk in developing country like Pakistan by using seven public commercial banks' quarterly data that are being taken for the duration from 2007 to 2016. The study constructs hypotheses to justify the significance or insignificance relation of risk with internationalization variables and some other bank‐specific variables that independently affect the risk‐taking of internationalized banks. The main variables are Z‐score for risk measurement and to evaluate the degree of internationalization. The study used foreign loan ratio and foreign income ratios. To support our work, the study also constructed some control variables like size, income diversification, and listed. We find that internationalization is associated with higher income earning in significant and positive relation with risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This data presented in this article is specifically employed from the Asian region based on the top position in the list of oil exporting and oil-importing countries around the world. Asia as the biggest continent on the earth had high consumption of energy [1]. Here we employed the daily prices of crude oil and seven oil trading countries, out of which three are oil exporting (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iraq) and four are oil-importing countries (China, Japan, South Korea, India), from the time period of 1-09-2009 to 31-08-2018. The data is collected from an authentic database Bloomberg. This data is related to the research paper "Volatility spillover impact of world oil prices on leading Asian energy exporting and importing economies' stock returns. Energy, 188 (2019), 116002, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2019.116002 [2]". This data is useful to compare the oil prices impact on the leading oil trading countries and also compare a set of countries affected most by oil prices' fluctuations, oil-exporting countries or oil-importing countries. Since this data covers the period of latest oil-crisis, so the impact of oil-crisis could also be analysed., (© 2019 The Author(s).)