Sustainability Indicators for Buildings: Network Analysis and Visualization

Nowadays rating systems to assess the sustainability of the built environment are available worldwide. The idea that a rating system based on indicators and a sustainability score can guarantee architectural quality, reliability, energy efficiency, economic convenience and finally a sustainability label, produces an increased value of the building on the real estate market giving an “aura” of advanced product to the building itself. It is well known that different rating systems can give a different sustainability score because similar areas of evaluation in different rating systems are not equal in term of indicators’ weight. Moreover, the continuous updating of the rating systems tries to include in the assessment procedures a tailored vision coming from field experience. The building rating systems were born in the last 15 years (i.e. 1998-2004), while rating systems for urban districts are more recent (2009-2012). The paper provides a survey on the more influential and worldwide diffused rating systems, highlighting the differences in terms of organization and relationship between evaluation areas and comparing existing rating schemes with recent EU research projects and initiatives such as the “Common European framework for Sustainable Building Assessment” (CESBA) framework. The paper aims to report the preliminary analysis on the similarities and differences among rating systems, towards a harmonization of sustainability practices to be applied to new and existing buildings. A network analysis and visualization tool has been applied to show the structural analogies among rating systems through an innovative methodological approach which aims to enable a further development in this field by linking more directly these tools with computational tools used in the building lifecycle.