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Are LEED-certified healthcare buildings in the USA truly impacting sustainability?

Authors :
Zeeshan Ullah
Ahsen Maqsoom
Abdul Waheed
Muhammad Jamaluddin Thaheem
Source :
Indoor and Built Environment. 29:7-23
Publication Year :
2019
Publisher :
SAGE Publications, 2019.

Abstract

Healthcare buildings are energy and water intensive, which remarkably impacts their sustainability. They also share a larger portion of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) has been rating healthcare buildings under a separate category of Building Design and Construction (BD + C): Healthcare to acknowledge their role and importance. This research investigates the credit points achieved by these buildings using all versions and rating systems of LEED BD + C: Healthcare. The results report a very small number of Platinum-certified buildings as compared to other certification levels. Further, Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution is applied on credit points and certification levels according to their rating system, climate and location to reveal that buildings require a lot more effort to raise their certification level from Gold to Platinum as compared to the effort required between Gold, Silver and Certified. Based on this, a new certification level is proposed. Furthermore, buildings located in dry weather and South region of the USA have been shown to achieve better credit points. The findings can help designers in scoring better LEED points, which could help promote the culture of rating systems.

Details

ISSN :
14230070 and 1420326X
Volume :
29
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Indoor and Built Environment
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........a9a65beac09da53e33d317615c401fdd
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1177/1420326x19853324