A study on establishing the sustainable building environment assessment tool for communities in Taiwan

Based on SBTOOL (2008 version) promoted by the World Sustainable Building Conference (WSB), this study first discovered assessment items related to “symbiosis” and “disaster resistance” through literature review, selected the assessment factors using an “expert evaluation method,” and calculated the weighted value of each indicator through an “analytic hierarchy process (AHP).” The weighted values of the assessment aspects according to the expert groups are: “disaster prevention and community safety” with 0.191, “environmental loading” with 0.152, “energy and resource consumption” with 0.127, “symbiotic community environment and life” with 0.126, “indoor environment quality” with 0.1, “site selection, project planning and development” with 0.084, “social and economic aspects” with 0.081, “service quality ” with 0.073, and “cultural and perceptional aspects” with 0.067. Expert identification analysis on the descriptive statistics indicated that general experts most strongly identify with “B. energy and resource consumption,” followed by “H. symbiotic community environment and life” Meanwhile, experts from industry, government, and academia fields strongly identify with “I. disaster prevention and community safety” and “C. environmental loading.” These results suggest that in addition to focusing on “energy and resource consumption” and “environmental loading” regarding sustainable building developments, Taiwanese experts highly regard the issues of “symbiotic community environment and life” and “disaster prevention and community safety” under extreme climates.