Buildings

The microclimate of traditional blocks, a key component of urban fabric, directly affects the overall urban thermal environment. Creating a suitable microclimate is crucial for improving urban living quality. Field measurements, ENVI-met simulations, and the PET index were used to analyze the spatiotemporal variations and core drivers of thermal comfort. Temporally, five open space types showed a unimodal “rise–stabilization–fall” PET curve, with peak heat stress occurring at 11:00–14:00. Courtyards heated fastest, but green spaces had the most stable thermal environment because trees provided shading and transpiration for gentle cooling. Spatially, thermal comfort varied significantly. For example, green spaces rich in trees performed best (PET 5–8 °C lower than pure grassland), while squares and courtyards faced severe midday heat stress (PET mostly moderate or above). Alley comfort depended on aspect ratio and orientation—north–south alleys with an aspect ratio >2 were 2–3 °C cooler than open spaces, but east–west or narrower alleys (aspect ratio <1.5) and low-enclosed courtyard control apply to southern Hunan’s hot-humid zone. However, the synergistic principles can be extended to similar southern regions, providing technical reference for traditional block livability and climate-resilient cities.

Considering the complexity and hazardous nature of construction jobsites, selecting the effective safety risk control strategies is crucial to prevent accidents, protect labor crews, and achieve project objectives related to cost, schedule, and quality in the construction project. However, the evaluation of different safety strategies involves multiple conflicting criteria and uncertain expert judgments, making it a complex multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. To address this problem, this study develops a fuzzy-integrated MCDM framework that combines two methods: Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), which systematically captures the relative importance of safety criteria under uncertainty, and ELECTRE III, which ranks alternative strategies by modeling preferences and veto conditions, reflecting real-world “non-compensatory” safety logic. FAHP determines criterion weights based on expert judgments, while ELECTRE III evaluates and ranks alternative safety strategies. The framework is validated through a piping construction case study, where it successfully identified the optimal safety plan. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to confirm the robustness of results, and comparative tests with other MCDM methods further support its reliability. Therefore, the proposed fuzzy-integrated framework offers an effective approach for evaluating safety risk control strategies, enhancing both safety and overall project performance, and advancing systematic safety management in the construction industry.

Traditional villages are integral to the broader context of global socio-economic transition. This study developed a resilience evaluation model centred on built-environment indicators. This model integrates the community, economy, ecology, and culture dimensions. Clarifying the typology and key driving factors of traditional village built environment resilience can effectively activate the inherent potential of villages. The study provides a holistic approach to identifying traditional village built environment resilience types and analysing the key influencing factors. Utilising a method combining the SOM-K-means clustering model and the interpretable XGBoost-SHAP model, the study provides a holistic analytical framework for identifying traditional village built environment resilience types and quantifying the nonlinear action characteristics of various indicators across different types. Taking the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region as an example, the study demonstrates that traditional villages can be categorised into six potential resilience types, with differentiated key indicator combinations across these types. Furthermore, the nonlinear action characteristics and operational thresholds of the same key indicator differ significantly across various traditional village types. For instance, at medium-to-high threshold levels, the accessibility of cultural buildings contributes significantly to the sustainability of culture–service-driven villages but, conversely, becomes a detriment in ecology-cultural composite archetypes. Similarly, in industry–creative driven villages, once the density of cultural and creative spaces reaches a specific threshold, it exerts a significant positive effect on traditional village development and stabilises into a sustained positive state. However, in ecology–agriculture–organisation-driven villages, exceeding a certain threshold in the density of cultural and creative spaces has a significant negative influence. The results provide an analytical framework for the resilience typology and influencing factors of traditional village built environments, consequently offering a scientific basis for formulating refined, differentiated policies for traditional villages.