Assad, M; Hosny, O; Elhakeem, A and El Haggar, S (2015) Green building design in Egypt from cost and energy perspectives. Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 11(1), pp. 21-40. ISSN 1745-2007
Abstract
Sustainable concepts in building designs have potential to enhance building performance and to reduce operating cost. With investors in developing economies overlooking all considerations except profit, this paper aims at promoting green construction in Egypt by presenting possible savings that investors could earn. The paper introduces an integrated framework to allow building design stemming from basic sustainable approaches. The framework can function as an optimization/simulation platform to automatically improve building designs. Following the framework principles, a model was developed that functions through four modules: a System Builder to create various envelope systems alternatives; a Building Integrator to form a complete design; a Design Evaluator to assess costs and energy; and Design Adaptation that allows optimization and simulation. The model represents a comprehensive yet easy application tool for cost and energy trade-off analyses that suits early design stage. A comparative analysis showed that green designs exhibited lifecycle and annual energy savings reaching 16.3% and 50%, respectively. A sensitivity analysis was performed to show the relationship between changes in electricity prices and percentage saving in lifecycle cost, optimum design and payback period. Furthermore, simulation of possible building designs is conducted to offer trade-off comparison between initial and energy costs of different designs.,
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | design optimization/simulation; green buildings; lifecycle cost; modeling; sustainable design |
| Index terms: | building design, investor, energy cost, platform, sustainable design, sensitivity analysis, building performance, profit, builder, developing economy, comparative analysis, savings, adaptation, energy-saving, green building, lifecycle, payback, module, operating cost, Egypt, modelling, design optimization, early design stage |
| Subjects: | environmental hazards, quality assurance, cost management, sociology, design process, digital design, Geography, architectural elements, design practice, economic development, architectural design, economic analysis, analytical methods, project delivery, data analysis and analytics, energy systems, practitioner, user focus |
| Topics: | International Construction, Quality Management, Digital Applications, Design Practice, Engineering Principles, Project Management, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Sustainability, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here