Assessing the Resilience of LEED Certified Green Buildings

Abstract

The Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification program is dedicated to the design of sustainable buildings by incentivizing reductions in energy, water, and building materials consumption, while at the same time enhancing occupant health and overall community connectivity. While green buildings certified by the program do reduce the environmental footprint of buildings, they must also be designed for resilience to withstand external stressors that may arise over the buildings’ lifetime for it to be truly sustainable. Therefore, a resilient building should be able to adapt and remain functional while under pressure from more frequent and severe climatic events. The goal of the study was to analyze existing inherent overlaps between resilient design principles and the LEED certification system. Synergistic opportunities together with improvements for better integrating resilient design into the LEED checklist, and hence green buildings, by modifying existing or proposing new credits were discussed. The use of climate projections instead of historical climate data during design was recommended. Regional priority credits need to be specified further to address the unique regional needs of each project to improve resilience in light of a particular region's future climate outlook.