Evaluation of indicators within the green building index for residential new construction (GBI-RNC)

Green building assessments are part of the globally accepted climate change mitigation method. The Green Building Index for Residential New Construction (GBI-RNC) from Malaysia belongs to a cohort of similar assessment schemes that evaluate various types of buildings throughout the world. There are similarities between GBI-RNC and other schemes such as LEED for Homes (US) or CASBEE for Detached Houses (Japan) in the use of indicators to measure the environment, social and economic aspects of houses. In order to continually improve the implementation of GBI-RNC, the indicators used to rate Malaysian houses need to be analysed and revised. Hence, this study evaluated the indicators in GBI-RNC against three existing Malaysian green homes. These three case studies are the CETDEM Demonstration, Cool and Energy Efficient House in Petaling Jaya, the Smart and Cool Home in Semenyih and the CoolTek House in Melaka. From this study, it was found that 13 out of 33 indicators with a combined score of 52 out of 100 points have to be revised due to various incompatibilities against the case studies. It was also found that the total GBI-RNC scores did not represent the inherent green home credentials of the assessed case studies due to various reasons. It is hoped that this revelation would help GBI authors to tailor future upgrades of GBI-RNC to reflect real life situations.