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63A Comprehensive Overview of Software Programs for Green Building DesignThe International Journal of Construction Management (2003) 63 - 72

INTRODUCTION

In remote antiquity, our ancestors lived in sheds or caves to protect them from adverse climatic
conditions. With improved technology, buildings are being built higher and more luxurious.
People can enjoy the comfort brought by advanced equipment and complicated mechanical
systems such as heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and artificial lighting. However, new
problems appear. The energy crisis in the 1970s warned people of over-dependence on fossil
fuels and prompted people to take energy-efficiency measures (Susan 2001). In the last two
decades, global warming, an ever-thinning ozone layer and deteriorating living areas are being
gradually realised and verified by scientists. It has been the common recognition across the
whole world that effective measures must be taken to pursue sustainable development. Buildings
are the main consumers of resources - energy and materials, and their influence on the
environment cannot be underestimated. In the U.S.A, for example, the construction industry
(including infrastructure) is responsible for some 15% of CO2 equivalent emissions
(Hendrickson & Horvath 2000). In the European Union, buildings are estimated to consume
approximately 40% of the total energy, and are also responsible for some 30% of CO2 emission,
and generate approximately 40% of all man-made waste (Sjöström & Bakens 1999).
Furthermore, the sick building syndrome reported by persons living in modern houses even
urged designers to rethink the traditional design criteria. They now face the challenge of
designing both comfortable and healthy houses, physically and psychologically, the insides
and outsides, as is the essence of the green building.

A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF SOFTWARE

PROGRAMS FOR GREEN BUILDING DESIGN

Qian SHI 1 and Weimin WANG 2

1 Department of Construction Management and Real Estate, School of Economics and Management,

Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, P. R.China.

E-mail: qshi@hotmail.com
2 Centre for Building Studies, Department of Building, Civil, and Environmental Engineering,

Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd.W. Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada.

Abstract
Buildings are energy gluttons and produce a large portion of the total green house gas emissions, air
pollutants, and solid wastes. Against the background of the predominant contribution of buildings to the
global climate change and other energy-related environmental issues, much effort have been made to
develop appropriate software programs for a better building design with respect to environmental
performance. However, in practice, it is natural for designers to ask the following two questions. First,
how to select from the available programs for the design tasks in hand? Second, what improvements can
be made for the current programs in order to better suit them with practical requirements? With the
above two questions, an overview of the programs for green building design is presented in this paper.
Due to the large number of programs falling into the scope of this study, a classification system was
established to group the available programs into several categories for discussion. A few representative
programs for each category were selected and briefly discussed with emphasis on their pros and cons.
On the basis of the programs’ analysis, a model is proposed at the end of this paper to hopefully address
the drawbacks of most programs for green building design.

Keywords

Green building, Overview, Software, Life-Cycle Assessment, Environmental impact