Rating the ratings

The Fifth Estate today looks into recent claims by the HIA and The Australian that the NatHERS sustainability rating scheme is inconsistent and that there is a, “lack of correlation between actual energy performance of houses and their star ratings”. The CSIRO, developer of NatHERS-accredited Accurate software, says that they weren’t rating the ratings software correctly – “apart from a few minor glitches with the way the software was running, the main issue was due to errors made by assessors and incorrect interpretation of the results.”.

Alan Pears, Adjunct Professor at RMIT, comments:
“The software could be better but it is nothing short of miraculous that it works as well as it does given the complete lack of funding for research and development in this area. It is appalling that the government has spent so little developing and improving these rating tools.”

Read the 5th Estate article here .

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Posted by Peter on 28.10.10 in sustainability and computing