Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in Buildings and Urban Areas

Dear Colleagues,

The increase of people living in large cities and the expansion of new urban areas are keys to defining new sustainable models. It is estimated that about 70% of the EU’s population lives in urban areas, and this is expected to reach 80% in 2030. The rapid increase of energy demand is a general constant around the world. This growth responds to various reasons, among which the increasing awareness of global warming caused by greenhouse emissions, the inevitable exhaustion of traditional energy sources in the following decades (fossil fuels), and the need for countries to assure energy self-dependence stand out. In addition, the contribution of energy consumption from buildings is about 40% of the overall energy use in developed countries. For developing countries, growth in population and urbanization, increasing demand for building services and comfort levels, together with the increased time spent inside buildings assure that the sharp rise in trends in building energy use will continue for a long time.

Therefore, climate changes and urbanization are the main causes behind the increase of floods, heat waves, drought, hurricanes, and rising sea levels all around the world. In large cities, air temperatures, both in summer and winter, are higher than in the surrounding rural areas and contribute to the urban heat island phenomenon.

This Special Issue intends to cover the gap between single-building investigation perspectives and the larger scale (neighborhoods, districts, cities) in order to achieve energy savings, mitigate the urban heat island, and improve indoor or outdoor thermal comfort. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of a rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Urban heat island;
• Climate change;
• Thermal loads of buildings;
• Building and urban area simulation;
• Energy retrofit of buildings;
• Urban building energy modeling;
• Microclimate mitigation analysis;
• Indoor and outdoor thermal comfort;
• Weather analysis under a climate change context affecting energy performance of the built environment;
• Urban energy balance analysis and simulation;
• Building energy resilience to climate change;
• Case studies;
• Cool materials;
• Green wall and green roof;
• Energy efficiency in buildings;
• Retroreflective materials.

Therefore, manuscripts within these research areas are most welcome.

Dr. Gabriele Battista
Dr. Emanuele de Lieto Vollaro
Dr. Claudia Guattari
Editors

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