Upgrading locally-regulated green buildings to LEED standards: A Dubai case study

Abstract

With Dubai aiming to be one of the greenest cities in the world, the local government has set various requirements and regulations to achieve this goal. The Dubai Municipality has already established and implemented its own locally-developed green building regulation, Green Building Regulations & Specifications (GBR&S), to address major concerns associated with buildings' resource efficiency. This study proposes a comparison between the GBR&S system with USGBC's LEED v4 rating to identify where GBR&S falls short and how much it would cost to upgrade to the various levels of LEED certification. The authors also hypothesize that access to efficient, mass public transportation systems is a major factor when determining the cost of LEED certification. With this in mind, proximity to a public transportation network and its effect on the cost of a LEED upgrade were investigated.