| dc.description.abstract | Residential apartments have been identified as the most popular solution for the
rapid increase of population in urban cities. However, in some cases, sustainability
aspects (environmental, social and economic) of these apartments are abandoned.
Further, there is no unique system to evaluate the sustainability of these apartments
in Sri Lanka, and most international green building rating systems have unequal
point distribution among sustainability subsets, which causes heterogeneity among
subsets. Thus, this research was designed to develop a modified sustainable rating
system for residential apartments in Sri Lanka, thereby reducing the sustainable
subset heterogeneity by introducing modified point distribution percentages
(Environment [40%], Social and Economic [30%]). The apartments certified under
the GREENSL rating system for the built environment were selected as three case
studies. The claimed points for GREENSL certification by GREENSL Platinum, Gold
and Silver-rated apartments were evaluated under the three sustainability subsets.
The results revealed that three subsets were not equally considered in the GREENSL
rating system (Platinum-rated: Environment [50%], Social [21.6%], Economic
[28.4%]; Gold-rated: Environment [50%] Social [29.5%) Economic [20.5%]; Silverrated:
Environment [47.6%] Social [27.8%] Economic [24.6%]). Further, the
sustainability status is satisfactory in the social dimension, irrespective of the level
of certification. Based on the findings, a modified rating system was developed for
residential apartments by adopting new sustainability criteria including
compartmentalisation, interior moisture management, air purification, enhancing
acoustic performance and disaster risk reduction. The study revealed that
sustainability practices of residential apartments in Sri Lanka need further
improvement, while providing more weight on social and economic pillars. | en_US |
