BREEAM was established in the United Kingdom in 1990 and is the oldest building assessment system in the world. Under this system, buildings can be assessed at various stages of their life cycle, from design and construction through building operation to renovation or fit-out. The certification assesses the building’s impact on its surroundings, water and energy consumption, materials used, indoor environmental quality, and user attributes necessary for their effective use.
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is one of the world’s most recognized certification systems focused on building sustainability. Launched in 1994, this system evaluates a wide range of factors that influence building sustainability and impact the environment, occupants, and society as a whole. LEED provides developers, owners, operators, and occupants of buildings a structured framework for identifying and implementing sustainable solutions during the design, construction, operation, and management of buildings. In the Czech Republic, this system is widely used primarily for the certification of office and industrial buildings, and to a lesser extent for the certification of interiors.
The WELL certification was launched in the United States in 2014. WELL prioritizes the health and well-being of building occupants. The evaluation criteria are based on medical and scientific research into the impact of indoor building environments on human health and well-being. This certification is also widely used as an extension to LEED and BREEAM certifications, which focus primarily on environmental criteria with less emphasis on user well-being and health. In the Czech Republic, several buildings, primarily offices, are certified under this system.
SBToolCZ is a Czech certification tool for assessing the quality of buildings in accordance with the principles of sustainable construction. It is the Czech adaptation of the international SBTool system developed by the International Initiative for Sustainable Built Environment. One of the system’s advantages is its alignment with local climatic, construction, and legislative conditions. This tool has been available on the Czech market since 2010. To date, several dozen buildings have been certified in the Czech Republic.
DGNB is a certification system established in Germany in 2009. It is an international sustainability certification standard that aims to promote sustainability in the built environment by providing a systematic approach to sustainability assessment. Currently, there is one building in the Czech Republic certified under this system.
The Living Building Challenge (LBC) was launched in the United States in 2006 and is one of the most rigorous certifications of its kind. To achieve full certification, buildings must generate more energy than they consume, capture and reuse rainwater that falls on the site, and be constructed using environmentally friendly and healthy materials. The main goal of this system is to create buildings that are capable of functioning as "living organisms." In the Czech Republic, no building has yet been certified under this system.
The platform is being developed as part of the LIFE ClimArchiBase project, a collaboration among four Czech nonprofit organizations focused on the sustainability of buildings and cities.
