A comment on "A multicriteria lifespan energy efficiency approach to intelligent building assessment", by Zhen Chen et al. [Energy Build. 38 (5) (2006) 393-409]

Four limitations or problems of the Intelligent Building Index (IBI) of Asian Institute of Intelligent Buildings (AIIB) are discussed. The first problem is that they actually pay less attention to functional variation in different types of buildings, which influence the emotional as well as the physical well-beings of human beings, and the design and the management of buildings. The second problem is the non-determinism of IBI and was first introduced into the IBI Manual Edition 3.0. The third problem is related to the adoption of Cobb-Douglas function by the IBI Manual to summarize individual scores of elements to form one sub-index and to summarize the ten sub-indices into one IBI. The fourth problem is the non-organization assessment procedure. The IBI of AIIB has been the most organizational assessment procedure in the world based on the fact that the SIBER model, the ET model, and the IBAssessor approach are all based on elements inside the IBI Manual.