An exploration of public private partnership in infrastructure development in South Africa

Building energy efficiency assessment (BEEA) is an important area in both the built environment and energy management. Over the years it has received increasing attention among researchers due to the pertinent sustainability issues. What is the common practice in building energy assessment research methodology? This study attempts to find the common practice in BEEA research methodology to find out how developing countries can be equipped to do more research in this field. In this paper five major journals in the field of building energy are quantitatively reviewed with a particular interest in identifying what methods and approaches have been presented or employed in BEEA. A scanning of the search results gave a list of 63 articles that are considered relevant to the research interest. The assessment methods were introduced and categorized in a manner that helps the readers get the best sense of the overall picture. The results indicate that 65% of the studies employed more than one research method and documentation dominated BEEA research. The study showed that to develop the research capacity of developing countries in this area the need for expertise, availability of data and policy direction needs to be in place