Enhancing Sustainability Benefits through Green Retrofitting of Healthcare Buildings

Author:

Ergin Aslihan,Tekce Isilay

Abstract

Abstract Green retrofitting practices have critical importance in both the construction industry (CI) and healthcare industry (HI) due to the adverse effects of the existing healthcare buildings on both the environment and public health. Ironically, existing healthcare buildings consume critical amounts of energy, produce wastes, and CO2 emissions, which have considerable diverse harmful impacts on the health and well-being of the society as well as the environment. Especially, given the main goals of healthcare, green retrofitting is crucial to provide a healthy future for patients and staff of healthcare buildings. There is a sensitive link between providing sustainable healthcare buildings with improving health of the patients. Therefore, green retrofitting of healthcare buildings (GRHB) can be seen as one of the significant contributors that have a critical role in reducing the harmful impacts of the existing healthcare buildings. Nowadays, due to coronavirus pandemic, nations will focus on the physical conditions of their healthcare buildings more than ever for strengthening their infrastructure with appropriate retrofitting approaches. Therefore, the worldwide concerns put the prominence of the importance of patient safety and strong health infrastructure on the agenda of nations. Improvements in the health infrastructure are inevitable for the future, and with regarding this motivation, we looked at the benefits of GRHB in the first place. In the existing literature, there is a lack of comprehensive review associated with the GRHB. This paper focuses on conducting a systematic literature review to investigate the benefits of GRHB with selected academic studies. After the identification of healthcare and green retrofitting specific studies, the benefits of GRHB were determined by frequency analysis and classified under four dimensions, which are environmental, economic, social, and functional. Results demonstrated that reduced energy consumption, reduced costs, and improved energy performance of the building are the three major benefits. In terms of healthcare perspective, the critical outcomes of this study as the main benefits differ from other types of green retrofitting projects, which are improved infection control and improved recovery rate. The results of this systematic review will enhance the understanding of the importance of GRHB and its benefits, which will be useful for academics, green building professionals as well as healthcare building providers.

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Subject

General Medicine

Reference82 articles.

Cited by 3 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3