Developing a Methodology to Evaluate the Environmental Performance of an Existing Building in Developing Countries

Evaluation of building performance is a comprehensive assessment which includes different aspects such as structural, environmental, architectural, energy utilization and other components. There are many features to an environmental assessment of a building. Consideration of the construction challenges faced in the Syrian Arab Republic, a typical developing country, requires modification and updating building performance evaluations. In our research, we concentrated on occupied buildings up to 20 years old to improve upon the current available construction technologies and discover environmental weaknesses. There is no Syrian construction code for environmental assessment. By applying different international standards, codes, and experts' views (questionnaire), we determined the most important environmental considerations for construction projects in Syria. This is done by selecting the common criteria through the codes, modifying some criteria, and identifying the different weights of criteria according to experts' views and decision making analysis. The objective is to develop an environmental assessment methodology for existing buildings in Syria that represent the Syrian construction professionals’ opinion which can be generalized to similar construction markets in other developing countries. Our research concluded that the comparison between those standards coupled with those standards identified by our questionnaire reveals more interest to cover the main environmental aspects for its environment as identified by LEED with the highest weight given for energy while the lowest weight is given for water efficiency. "Innovation and Regional Priority" was largely excluded. This is why we want to develop a methodology that suits the current existing environmental aspects of buildings in Syria. 576 ICSDEC 2012 © ASCE 2013