DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2019.770
title: Evaluation and development of green building assessment indicators for Myanmar

description: Buildings have a great impact on the environment and contribution to climate change. Green building is an alternative form of resource efficiency and human comfort that cannot be provided by traditional buildings. There are two main requirements to define the building’s greenness such as measuring the sustainability aspects of buildings and minimizing the environmental impact of buildings. Green building rating system development is crucial to fulfill these requirements because it assesses the building performance to meet green building objectives through certification processes. Green building rating systems are assessment tools that cooperate project teams, sustainable buildings, and societies in an integrated approach. Hence, a green building rating system is a necessary tool to assess the sustainability and environmental performance of the building throughout the building’s life cycle stages. Myanmar government has planned to implement smart city projects in Yangon and Mandalay by 2021 and to build 1 million homes by 2030 to accommodate the increased population. However, energy demand is the current crisis, and Myanmar presently has no standards and specifications for green buildings; it solely relies on the adoption of those from overseas, which may not always be compatible with the unique context of Myanmar. Hence, this study aims to identify the appropriate green building assessment indicators for Myanmar as an initial stage of rating system development through the comparative study of seven green building rating systems, the examination of problems related to green building development in Myanmar, and practical study of existing green buildings in Myanmar with an emphasis on the non-residential sector. Categories and criteria (indicators) were analyzed whether they are applicable to develop in Myanmar. After that, a survey was conducted to rank the importance level of these assessment indicators according to the local conditions of Myanmar. Common assessment indicators of seven rating systems and prioritized criteria of Green Mark rating system of three existing green buildings were selected. From this research, nine categories and forty-eight criteria were identified for Myanmar’s green building rating system framework. The pairwise comparison form was prepared based on the selected assessment indicators. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (Fuzzy AHP) and conventional analytic hierarchy process (AHP) by experts’ decisions were carried out to ascertain the weights of categories and criteria. The results from the analysis showed that most of the Green Mark criteria are applicable for Myanmar although project teams experienced some difficulties. From the Fuzzy AHP analysis, energy efficiency was the most crucial measurement with a weight of 17.48%. Water was at the second rank with 13.95% and indoor environmental quality was rated as the third priority with 13.23%. Management (13.13%), and waste and pollution (12.95%) categories occupied almost the same imperative position. Energy-efficient architectural design under the energy efficiency category was found as the topmost criterion among others criteria. Conventional AHP analysis was also carried out to compare with outcomes from the Fuzzy AHP; a significant difference of rankings and weights of assessment indicators between two methods was not found. These findings serve as an assessment indicators framework that is most relevant to Myanmar's built environment.