There has been much progress in recent years in the development of sustainable building assessment tools as a means to promote sustainable buildings. However, many assessment tools face issues with assessment methods and system frameworks, which greatly undermine their credibility and applicability. If these problems persist, the role of sustainable building assessment tools as decision making aids during the design stage will be greatly limited. The objective of this study is to suggest a systematic model for sustainable building assessment tools by establishing a logical performance assessment framework. For this purpose, analysis of performance assessment tools for sustainable buildings was conducted using the EIA framework. Based on the results of the analysis, a framework for the performance assessment of sustainable buildings was established. According to the structural framework, a sustainable building assessment model was developed. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.