Daylighting and Visual Comfort in Buildings' Environmental Performance Assessment Tools: A Critical Review

In this paper, some well-known buildings' environmental performance assessment tools and methods are reviewed with regard to the consideration of visual comfort in their structure and assessment process. Specifically, the parameters used for visual comfort's assessment in widely used tools (BREEAM, LEED, SBTool and CASBEE - versions for office buildings) are examined; the type and the kind of criteria used for the assessment, the weightings applied and references to relative standards are reviewed and comparatively assessed. Although the presented results cover the issue of visual comfort as a whole, emphasis is given on daylighting-related factors.