Green building rating systems and their application in the Mexican context

Abstract

This article offers a review of the scientific literature aimed at putting forward a proposal on the main variables or categories of sustainable design to take into consideration to manage, plan, design, build and maintain buildings in Mexico. The methodology consisted in reviewing 5 successfully tried international green building models (rating systems), from which a series of requirements by sustainable category were taken in order to propose categories and variables proper to the Mexican context. The result was a checklist that comprises sustainable design requirements broken down by categories: natural, human, technologic and economic to apply in the Mexican context. It is concluded that successfully tried green building international models such as: LEED®, BREAM®, CASBEE®, ESTIDAMA® or Green Star® can be very useful to manage, plan, design and construct sustainable buildings around the world.