Abstract
Smart sustainable cities are rapidly gaining momentum as a holistic urban development approach. Thereby the concept is evolving into a realist enterprise across the world, not least within ecologically and technologically advanced nations. In this overall quest towards sustainability, cities are either adopting the “Smart City approach” or result in reaching a certain level along the process through private and scattered initiatives ranging from green buildings to environmentally friendly neighbourhood. Green Rated buildings are constructions that comply with international, regional, or national standards and that in their design, construction, or operation, can reduce or mitigate negative impacts, on the natural environment. The intelligence of the city is created by interconnecting digital telecommunication networks, the intelligence integrated into systems sensors, and physical components as well as software tools. Located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean basin, Lebanon is a small, mostly mountainous country, of 10,452 km2 with a population of approximately 6 million inhabitants. Over the past decades, Lebanon has witnessed unplanned and unregulated urban sprawl resulting in an increased pressure on natural ecosystems and resources. We wonder to what extent the Green Rating Systems (GRS) can contribute to the creation of a nucleus towards Smart Cities in a complex socio-political city such as Beirut and its direct suburbs. This paper attempts to evaluate the possibility of shifting to Smart Cities or smart neighbourhood based on the existence of certified Green Rated Buildings, environmental initiatives and assessing the potentials of the implementation of Information systems to green building towards Smart Cities. We have developed a matrix comparing the criteria of International (LEED; BREEAM) and national (ARZ) Green Rating Systems and have also built a Geographic Information System (GIS) to enable data collection, data analysis and data storage. Information on the total number of buildings per neighbourhood, number, and location of Green Rated Buildings (GRB), the distance between GRB are recorded into the GIS database. Our results show that Green Buildings, certified under either LEED, BREEAM or ARZ rating systems represent an important step to establishing Smart Cities, however, their contribution to the overall pathway towards them remain very shy.