Technology and Management for Sustainable Buildings and Infrastructures

According to a report published in 2019 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the building sector accounts for 38% of all energy-related CO2 emissions when adding building construction industry emissions. [...]

According to a report published in 2019 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the building sector accounts for 38% of all energy-related CO 2 emissions when adding building construction industry emissions [1]. Yudelson (2008) argued that the building sector accounted for 45% to 65% of landfill waste [2].
Given this fact, the building sector must be one of the major causes of global warming and the resulting climate catastrophe. Therefore, research on the technology and management of the entire process including design, construction, O&M, and decommissioning is urgently needed for sustainable buildings and infrastructure that minimize energy use throughout their life cycle. At this point, it is judged that it was timely to hold a Special Issue under the topic of "Technology and Management for Sustainable Buildings and Infrastructures".
Among the published papers, 13 papers directly addressed words such as sustainable, life cycle assessment (LCA) and CO 2 [5][6][7]11,12,14,16,19,20,22,25,27,28], and 17 papers indirectly dealt with energy and CO 2 reduction effects [3,4,[8][9][10]13,15,17,18,21,23,24,26,[29][30][31][32]. Sustainability research related to CO 2 and the resulting climate change started in the construction field more than 20 years ago. Although life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) has dealt with the energy use of buildings for more than 40 years, it focuses on cost rather than CO 2 reduction. In the 21st century, research on net zero or near zero energy use of buildings has been conducted, but research on embodied CO 2 resulting from the design and construction stage has been excluded because it is limited to the operation and maintenance stage. Until recently, many design and construction studies focused on maximizing economic benefits, and rarely focused on carbon neutrality or CO 2 emission minimization. As a result, there are not yet many papers directly dealing with energy and CO 2 reduction throughout the construction project life cycle.
As mentioned above, although the construction sector is a key influencer that harms the global environment, many studies have been focused on cost, time, quality, and safety. However, future research should be conducted on the basis of carbon neutrality or CO 2 emission reduction. For example, previous cost minimization studies should be conducted as cost optimization studies based on CO 2 emission reduction or minimization. As such, if all research is conducted in the direction of pursuing sustainable buildings and infrastructures, the global environment will be gradually improved.
Finally, I would like to thank Maggie Sun of MDPI and others for their active cooperation in making this Special Issue successful, research colleagues who submitted excellent papers, and reviewers who have been active in the review process.

Conflicts of Interest:
The author declares no conflict of interest.