Water footprint assessment as a tool for improving sustainability in buildings: case study social housing project in cairo, Egypt

Background: Water issues related to scarcity, drought and quality are serious problems in many countries worldwide. In the building sector; water efficiency has a vital rule in achieving sustainability. Buildings rating systems are a way to measure the water efficiency in buildings but most of the rating systems consider only the direct water use and neglect the embodied water. Objectives: The research aims at evaluating the total water footprint of buildings; in order to analyze the aspects affecting the sustainability of the project and to configure the best strategies which could be used to improve water efficiency. Methods: The research adopts the water footprint assessment; which takes into account direct and indirect water use and the blue and grey WFPs; to assess the water footprint of a social housing project in Egypt. To account for the indirect water footprint Athena IE and BEES softwares are used and for direct water LEED V4 water use reduction calculator is used. Results: The results showed that the direct WFP/ year for one building was found to be 17 times greater than its embodied WFP and there were disparity between the results of the blue, grey, direct and embodied WFPs. Conclusion: The research showed the importance of considering embodied water footprint in addition to direct water footprint. The research concluded the opportunities available for improving the water efficiency in the project.