Tips for desgning green buildings

When designing a green building, the designers should factor in the risks that result from heightened energy efficiency and green building. This is all featured in a new report entitled "The Influence of Risk Factors on Sustainable Development," which was just recently released by FM Global.

Other tips were provided:<br /' As the trend to build greener facilities increases, so does the potential for unintended consequences.
' Efforts to improve sustainability solely by increasing energy efficiency (without consideration of risk) have the potential to increase the relevance of risk factors by a factor of 3.
' Barring natural disasters, fire is the greatest risk to any non-manufacturing structure and in a standard office building, the risk of fire increases carbon emissions by 1 percent to 2 percent over the lifecycle of the structure.
' Fire risk factors can add as much as 14 percent to the carbon emissions of a facility exposed to extensive fire hazards over the lifetime of that structure.
' In areas exposed to natural hazards, such as strong high winds on the East and Gulf coasts in the U.S., risk from wind damage increases carbon emissions over the lifecycle of a typical industrial building by 1 percent to 2 percent.

Read the full article here.