Tools for Sustainable Building

The Web represents a particularly important innovation by offering access to text -based information, searchable databases, photographs, sound recordings, and video images. For energy professionals, the Web is more than a place to post one's favourite paper-based reports; it's a venue for one-on-one as well as group communications, tracking down detailed energy data, acquiring software, running dynamic on-line calculations, and even collecting energy data from remote sites. Tools and software that incorporate environmental cost and considerations could be a valuable help to take well-informed decisions on environmental management and cost. Efforts to develop tools and methodologies have increased. Industry consultants and companies are developing new software systems and tools. Even if numerous initiatives still in experimental phase, the engagement of important government agencies (DOE U.S. Department Of Energy, EPA U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) in the putting to point of some of these instruments indicates concrete possibilities for their dissemination in times not excessive long. The aim of this relation is to provide information to users of existing tools and software available on the Internet. Elementary rules, guides, handbooks, guidelines, database and software are first examined; then LCA based systems, rating systems and web-based tools are focused. The web-based approach is the most promising: regardless of the computing resources they have available, users have access to powerful computational engines residing on the host server and tools are accessible regardless of platform. Finally, the Web provides immediate access to all the other relevant information that is constantly evolving on the Internet.