Use of estidama rating tool to assess existing building in hot dry climate

Abstract

Energy consumption in buildings has significantly increased over the last two decades in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Moreover, most of the existing buildings in the region were built without any consideration for energy efficiency. To control this trend, the UAE government adopted green building rating systems for new buildings such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), which were not suitable for countries in a hot dry climate. However, the use of Estidama Pearl Rating System (PRS), developed for Abu-Dhabi emirate, was not adopted by the other emirates. In addition, the retrofitting of existing buildings to green building status has not received adequate attention. Thus, the aim of this study is to reduce environmental impacts that have evolved from the high energy consumption of existing buildings. The study involves an assessment of a case study building located at Ajman University of Science and Technology to simulate retrofitting of the building to become environmental friendly using Estidama PRS points that incorporates cool building strategies, daylighting, and water use reduction, which are appropriate in hot dry climate. The building was assessed using a computer simulation software called Integrated Environmental Solutions Virtual Environment (IES-VE), to compare the actual situation of the building against a new suggested situation. The results show that daylighting retrofitting efforts involving changing of the glass type and adding light shelves failed to achieve any score. However, the retrofitting succeeded in achieving a reasonable rating score in the cool building strategies category by installing aluminium cladding on the external walls. In terms of water usage, new toilet fixtures reduced the amount of internal water usage by almost one-third. Based on these results, major changes to daylighting, and minor changes to cool building strategies and water use reduction are needed to help retrofit buildings to become more environmental friendly.