Multi-domain approach for quality evaluation of building designed to be nearly zero energy: Case study in Mediterranean climate

The sustainability objective in the building sector requires that the design of the built environment would address not only the environmental and energy aspects, but also the human dimension of its operation. On the other side, the operative phase of the building covers the longest time in its whole life cycle and thus it is important to evaluate the global quality after the construction taking into consideration the occupants' perspective. At this aim, the paper introduces a new multi-domain approach for studying the global quality of the buildings certified as nearly zero energy and it is applied to verify the feasibility of a case study in Mediterranean climate. The method is based on five criteria about both indoor comfort that energy aspects and it introduces a weighing procedure based on the answers of occupant's sample about the relative importance of criteria for residential usage. About it, the size and one-vote veto effects of individual factor satisfaction on overall quality are discussed. Results indicate that occupants are more sensible sensitive to indoor air quality and thermo-hygrometric aspects than renewable integration or building energy consumption. The maximum score reached for the analysed nearly zero energy building is 8.4 (up to 10) but there is a remarkable variation with the weight attributed to each criterion.