Shanghai Commercial Building Water-consumption Quota Standard Formulation And Study On Comparisons Of Applicable Water-saving Standards For Buildings

Recent years urban service industry has been developing rapidly, and modern commercial buildings (MCBs) have become the important carriers of commercial activities with the number increasing fast. Traditional water consuming organizations, like hotels, restaurants, catering, markets, offices and so on, have been partly replaced or integrated by MCB which turns out the large water consumer of urban service industry. The total building area of new buildings in China each year is approximate to2billion square meters, with existed buildings nearly40billion square meters, and60percent water consumed in cities coming from domestic water in buildings. With the total buildings’ water consuming and it’s ratio in city’s water using volume increasing, saving water has gradually become the priority of government water-saving management.A series of laws, regulations and policies concerned with building plan, design, evaluation, construction, supervision, operation and management, are made by the Administrative Department in line with MCBs’ water-saving management. After the analysis of MCBs’ current situation and development trend, an analysis and comparison is made between the Chinese Architectural Design Standard of Water Supply and Drainage, the Civil Buildings’Design Standard of Water-saving, Evaluation Standard for Green Building, LEED for New Construction&Major Renovations and national&provincial water consumption quota criteria, to give some advice to these applicable standards of MCBs’ water-saving.This paper also analyzes the specific administrative measures taken by the Water Administrative Department during the life cycle of commercial buildings, such as the assessment of the design on water conservation facilities and the planned allocation management carried out in Shanghai. From the current situation, some projects which have reached a certain scale in water consumption still do not build water reuse facilities under the requirement, and the mixed usage of the design standard and the water consuming quota standard have become the main problems of the assessment of the design on water conservation facilities. Compared with the planned allocation management, the standards or methods adopted in water consuming quota management are more scientific, and greatly reduce the possibility of "Power Rent-seeking" as well. Water consuming quota management still exist many problems such as water metering, institution construction, quota standardization, lack of scientific and systematic quota management system as well as the practical quota management and so on. Only by solving these problems can water consuming quota really replace planned allocation management and then play an important role in urban water resource management.Some suggestions are proposed in this paper in consideration of applicable water-saving standards for MCBs. At the phase of designing, to keep interlinking between water-saving design standards and evaluation criteria does good to improve MCBs’water-saving level from the beginning. At the phase of evaluation, Evaluation Standard for Green Building and LEEDTM pose much higher requirements for MCBs’ water-saving management as a result of the trend for water-saving management, which also need to become more practical and applicable. At the phase of management, Water Consuming Quota Standard, based on the Chinese Water Law, plays an important role in MCBs1water-saving management, but it also needs to solve its rationality and revision issues in time.In this paper, much research work on Water Consuming Quota Standard of MCB and its applicable standards is made under the support of Construction of Water-saving Society Research program, which is a key Philosophy and Social Sciences Project of Ministry of Education. Part of the research findings are published as Shanghai local standards called "Commercial Buildings Water Consuming Quota and it’s calculation method "(DB31/T567-2011), and an article called "Comparison of Applicable Water-saving Standards for Modern Commercial Buildings and Suggestions" is published as the first author on "China Water&Wastewater" too.