A Sustainable Eco-Building Assessment Method for the Evaluation of Residential Buildings in Greater Khartoum

Abstract

This research aims at investigating the present situation of residential buildings in Greater Khartoum, and to evaluate them using a sustainable assessment method. The problems of residential buildings that are to be investigated are environmental problems in the indoor and outdoor environment and services in Greater Khartoum. The methodology of the research starts by reviewing the principles of ecological design; the suitable passive solutions for hot-dry climates; the conditions of the case studies; the environmental assessment methods; previous methods adopted to evaluate the case studies; and the quantitative, the qualitative and sustainable assessment methods. The previous methods are not applicable to the case study conditions; hence, reflecting the identified eco building principles to the case study conditions, and then rationalizing a new method of assessment that evaluates the residential areas in the hot-dry climate of Greater Khartoum was the way forward. The proposed assessment method contains eight main categories, which are sustainable site, indoor environmental quality, outdoor thermal control, building form, materials and resources, water supply and drainage systems, power supply system and environmental design process. The system has a scale -2,-1, 0, +1, +2 and a total points of 125 points, the research studied forty-eight cases in the residential areas in Greater Khartoum that were selected according to the certain criteria. The method has a scale of points for evaluation; main categories and sub issues contribute towards achieving points to get the result of evaluation for the building. The evaluation is range from excellent, very good, good and weak. The field work includes the criteria of selecting of the samples, method of documentation, method of analysis, and presenting the data in tables and figures, then the discussion conclusion and recommendations. The research outlines that zero of the case studies were excellent, 20.8% of the cases studies were good, 25% of the case studies were pass and 54% were weak. The analysis of buildings showed good results in sustainable site, outdoor thermal control and indoor environmental control; and weak results in building forms, materials and resources, drainage and water supply systems, power supply systems, and environmental process for first group. However, it showed weak results in all categories in the areas of the third group. The research proposed a sustainable evaluation method in order to evaluate the sustainable- eco-buildings in residential buildings in Greater Khartoum; and general conclusions for the areas of the study in the main categories are set in the conclusions and recommendations in urban, house, construction, services and community levels and global challenges for future research are set up to be applied in sustainable ecological buildings in Greater Khartoum.