Sustainability Performance of Green Building Rating Systems (GBRSs) in an Integration Model

A Scientometric Analysis and Visualization of Global LEED Research

With the promotion of the concept of sustainable development and green buildings, green building rating systems are beginning to emerge and gradually attract more attention. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a widely used and influential rating system worldwide, and research on it has shown an increasing trend year by year. To establish a comprehensive understanding of the LEED research field, this article visualizes and analyzes the LEED research literature by CiteSpace to obtain journal, author, institution, and country collaboration networks, reference co-citations and clusters, keyword co-occurrence networks and citation bursts. The study found the relationships among journals, authors, institutions, countries, research frontiers, research hotspots, and research processes in the field of LEED research. A framework of the knowledge system of LEED research was constructed based on these findings to present the current status and future trends and provide a reference for future research.

Comparative Review of Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment Tools

The paper aims to evaluate criteria for appraising the existing urban transformation projects in view of the social dimension of sustainability. Within the case study of the recovery project of “G. Prandina” barrack in Padua, north-east of Italy, the paper compares two different Italian rating systems to evaluate neighborhood sustainability: “GBC Quartieri” and “ITACA Scala Urbana”. The GBC Quartieri rating system, with a point scheme, allots credits for neighborhood design features, and integrates the environment, infrastructures, and buildings for the creation of sustainable communities with a relationship net and a pre-existence connection. The “ITACA Scala Urbana” procedure consists of a multicriteria evaluation of the environmental sustainability and the compilation of a group of worksheets, one for each different internal performance indicator. The results show the main differences and analogies among the different tools, and this analysis confirms that new neighborhood protocols originating from building rating systems dedicate little space to social aspects and to the concept of inclusion, instead of the newly developed neighborhood protocols. Through this examination, the research can also conclude that the identification of common macro-areas is present, which highlights the different levels of importance given to the various features connected to social sustainability in neighborhood transformation.