Sustainable design and construction elements in green highway

Sustainable development principles have been implemented in various sectors including construction. Proper development and operation of infrastructure projects such highways can contribute significantly to the mission of sustainable development. Previous studies shown that most of conventional highways are unsustainable in many ways. Highways are facing severe challenge such as deteriorating condition, congestion, energy supply, and shortfall of funding for maintenance and capacity expansion to meet increasing demand. However at the same time, they consume huge amount of natural minerals and energy and generate waste and emission which contributing to climate changes and global warming. Therefore, sustainable design, construction, operation and maintenance have become priority these day. The aim of this paper is to determine critical elements for sustainable design and construction based on ranking of the priority level of the weighted value of each criteria. The questionnaires survey were developed and distributed to related respondents in order to obtain the agreement level for the element. The data was analysed using SPSS with factor analysis method. Result from the analysis shown the criteria, weightage and score for main criteria for sustainable design and construction activities for green highway

Key influencing factors for green public hospital building development in Malaysia

The green hospital movement began years ago, following by several countries release their green rating system for the hospital buildings. In the past few years, a few newly constructed private hospital buildings in Malaysia have strived for the green building index certification. Paucity studies demonstrate that public hospital buildings have established for certifying the index. Despite the recognition of the importance of green building in achieving sustainability goal and the existence of many studies on issues associated with green innovations adoption in general, few have specifically examined factors influencing the development of green public hospital building. As a result, with the intent to enhance green building promotion efforts, the primary objective of this study is to investigate the key factors influencing the development of green public hospital building. A review of literature has been conducted and a set of factors were identified. A questionnaire survey was carried out based on the literature review to solicit experts’ opinions. The experts were requested to evaluate the degree to which factor was an important in the implementation of green public hospital buildings. Feedbacks from 82 design experts were collected and analysed using descriptive analysis. The findings indicate that several factors were identified as key factors for the development of green public hospital buildings. The identified factors have incorporated with the accomplishment of environmental stewardship, social responsibility and economic prosperity

Multi-criteria decision analysis for evaluating sustainable lifts design of public hospital buildings

Sustainability is a big trend in today's building industry. For instance, energy use, resource efficiency, materials selection, safety, and life-cycle management are all important considerations in making the transition to greener buildings. In the past, lifts have been overlooked in green building planning yet including them is a useful way to improve overall building functionality and efficiency. Lifts use a relatively small amount of energy compared to the overall energy consumption of a building yet they provide both daily carrier service for user and so they should be included in sustainability planning. With so many building products being marketed with a sustainable angle, lifts also need to be included in this improvement. Building process has become complex due to the involvement of multiple benchmark like social, economic and environmental dimensions. A significant challenge for those involved in the building industry is identifying and incorporating sustainable features into each of the building stage. This in turn puts constrains to decision makers in selecting the finest decision in achieving sustainable goal for every aspect of building processes. This paper investigates the multi-criteria decision analysis for sustainable lifts design, namely; criteria selection, criteria weighting, evaluation and final aggregation. Decision analysis plays a vital role for designing the systems by considering various criteria. The criteria were grouped based on economic, environmental and social dimensions. Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods were employed to rank the most important criteria that need to be considered in making the decision. A design team from hospital project specifically from mechanical and electrical department have been chosen for this study due to their expertise in planning and designing the mechanical aspects for a project. As a result, it shows the process of decision analysis and provides the direction for sustainable lifts criteria selection which has a significant effect on the design. The result shows the preference dimension for sustainable lift design is economic aspect including its criteria required as decision analysis output for planning and designing lifts systems for public hospital buildings

An evaluation of sustainable design and construction criteria for green highway

Sustainability has been widely debated in the construction industry in recent years. Though various assessments have previously been developed to help improving sustainability of construction projects, those assessments seem missed the base network for cities and buildings which are highways. Therefore, there is the need to select variety of design and construction activities criteria for green highway and determine the weightage factor for every criterion in order to categorize which criteria that most contribute to the green practices based on the priority. The aim of this paper is to explain the determination of weightage for criteria of design and construction activities. The methodology processes begin with data collection by using questionnaires distribution to the expertise who involve in highway development and also green issues. There were 140 respondents had been chosen to fill in the questionnaires survey. The data had been analysed using SPSS with factors analysis method. Results from the analysis show the evaluation of the criteria base on the important criteria in design and construction action of green highwa

Multi-criteria decision analysis for evaluating sustainable lifts design of public hospital buildings

Sustainability is a big trend in today's building industry. For instance, energy use, resource efficiency, materials selection, safety, and life-cycle management are all important considerations in making the transition to greener buildings. In the past, lifts have been overlooked in green building planning yet including them is a useful way to improve overall building functionality and efficiency. Lifts use a relatively small amount of energy compared to the overall energy consumption of a building yet they provide both daily carrier service for user and so they should be included in sustainability planning. With so many building products being marketed with a sustainable angle, lifts also need to be included in this improvement. Building process has become complex due to the involvement of multiple benchmark like social, economic and environmental dimensions. A significant challenge for those involved in the building industry is identifying and incorporating sustainable features into each of the building stage. This in turn puts constrains to decision makers in selecting the finest decision in achieving sustainable goal for every aspect of building processes. This paper investigates the multi-criteria decision analysis for sustainable lifts design, namely; criteria selection, criteria weighting, evaluation and final aggregation. Decision analysis plays a vital role for designing the systems by considering various criteria. The criteria were grouped based on economic, environmental and social dimensions. Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods were employed to rank the most important criteria that need to be considered in making the decision. A design team from hospital project specifically from mechanical and electrical department have been chosen for this study due to their expertise in planning and designing the mechanical aspects for a project. As a result, it shows the process of decision analysis and provides the direction for sustainable lifts criteria selection which has a significant effect on the design. The result shows the preference dimension for sustainable lift design is economic aspect including its criteria required as decision analysis output for planning and designing lifts systems for public hospital buildings

Assessment index tool for green highway in Malaysia

Green highway is a highway project that has been designed and constructed with the sustainability requirements and global standard. Basically, green highway is one of the major parts for sustainable concept where three major aspects are addressed which are economic, social and environment. The main focus for economic aspect is to increase profitability by making more efficient use of resources especially material, improve the quality of life by fulfilling the nation’s need for social aspect while protecting the environment from the impact of CO2 emission and using of natural resources efficiently for the purpose of environment aspect. Therefore, it is important for highway stakeholders to incorporate sustainable criteria in their projects. The implementation of sustainable concept in highway needs to be evaluated by green highway rating tool assessment. Thus, the purpose of this study is to establish a tool to assess and certify a green highway in Malaysia. The data for this study was obtained through group discussion with highway experts and questionnaires that were distributed to identify the sustainability factors. Then the data were analyzed using factor analysis method. The findings of this study indicated that, there are five major sustainable factor which are Sustainable Design and Construction Activities, Social and Safety, Energy Efficiency, Environmental and Water Management and Material and Technology that are included in the development of green highway rating system