The development of sustainable assessment method for Saudi Arabia built environment

Our built environment is responsible for some of the most serious global and local environmental change. The construction industry, therefore, faces pressure to increase the sustainability of its practices reflected in the development of stringent regulations and sustainability assessment methods, designed to mitigate such negative impacts. However, the well-established methods (e.g. BREEAM, LEED, SBTool, and CASBEE) have not originally been designed to suit developing countries (including Saudi Arabia). This study therefore proposes to customize an adapted Saudi Environmental Assessment Method (SEAM). This study, to begin with, investigates the most important and globally widespread environmental assessment methods: BREEAM, LEED, SBTool, and CASBEE. It identifes areas of convergence and distinction in order to enable the consolidation of environmental criteria into new potential schemes. As sustainable and ecological context are usually regarded as multi-dimensional, scientific evidence proposes that a technique based on consensus is most appropriate for the establishment of inclusive and efficient building environmental assessment schemes. Therefore, a consensus based approach is used to deliver: (a) applicable assessment categories and criteria for the Saudi Arabia context and (b) its weighting system. Hence, the Delphi technique and analytic hierarchy process are selected and conducted in four successive systematic consultation rounds, involving world-leading experts in the domain of environmental and sustainable assessment schemes, as well as professionals and highly-informed local experts from academia, government and industry. These two stages resulted in the development of SEAM criteria and its weighting system.