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Buildings and Urban Microclimate Challenges: Impacts on Thermal and Wind...
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Buildings and Urban Microclimate Challenges: Impacts on Thermal and Wind Environments

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 2136

Editors

Dr. Yasuyuki Ishida

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Architecture & Building Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan
Interests: ventilation path; engineering; urban environment; CFD
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Zheng Wang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Architecture and Art Design, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300103, China
Interests: heat island; local climate; urban environment; GIS
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Yifei Peng

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Architecture and Art Design, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300103, China
Interests: thermal environment; thermal risks; urban design
Dr. Xilin Zhou

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
Interests: environmental behavior and spatial design; urban heat island; outdoor thermal comfort; wind environment; energy consumption; relocated households; acoustic environment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With the advancement of urbanization, the distribution of buildings and urban spatial patterns has changed significantly. High-density development and building construction have made urban thermal and wind environment problems increasingly serious. The unreasonable layout of buildings is becoming an important cause of the enhanced urban heat island effect, the decline of ventilation performance, the deterioration of residents' thermal comfort, and the increase of energy load.

This Special Issue focuses on the core role of buildings in the urban microclimate environment, aiming to explore the impact of building form, layout, and spatial scale on the urban thermal and wind environments, as well as the corresponding climate-adaptive design and optimization strategies. We welcome research results from various means, such as theoretical research, empirical analysis, numerical simulation, and architectural design practice, to promote the development of climate-adaptive buildings and urban environments.

Relevant topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • The impact of building form and distribution on urban thermal and wind environments;
  • The impact of building layout on urban heat island effect and local climate;
  • Building and street block design strategies to improve thermal and wind environments;
  • Building and urban climate assessment and regulation through big data or AI;
  • Microscale and mesoscale local climate analysis based on remote sensing, GIS, CFD, ENVI-met, etc.

Dr. Yasuyuki Ishida
Dr. Zheng Wang
Dr. Yifei Peng
Dr. Xilin Zhou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • building form
  • building layout
  • local climate
  • ventilation path
  • street canyon effect
  • wind and thermal environment
  • thermal comfort
  • ENVI-met
  • CFD
  • GIS

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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42 pages, 50781 KB  
Article
Urban Outdoor Thermal Environment Analysis Based on Semantic Segmentation and Morphology Indicators: A Case Study of Residential Blocks in Wuhan
by Hongying Wang, Lin Cai and Kai Guo
Buildings 2026, 16(14), 2870; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16142870 - 19 Jul 2026
Viewed by 15
Abstract
Rapid urbanization has intensified urban heat issues. Previous studies often relied on subjective block selection and rarely integrated vegetation data. This study extracted vegetation from Wuhan’s satellite imagery and combined it with building geometry to generate large-scale 3D block models. Typical blocks were [...] Read more.
Rapid urbanization has intensified urban heat issues. Previous studies often relied on subjective block selection and rarely integrated vegetation data. This study extracted vegetation from Wuhan’s satellite imagery and combined it with building geometry to generate large-scale 3D block models. Typical blocks were identified by clustering, and thermal environments were simulated using ENVI-met to establish regression models. POI and spatial analyses validated the results. The study found that 1. t-SNE outperforms PCA and UMAP in dimensionality reduction. 2. K-means surpasses GMM, DBSCAN, and Spectral in clustering. 3. SVFave, FAall, VDW, VAR, and BBA are critical for block morphology classification and block outdoor thermal assessment. 4. The final ridge regression model based on these indices achieved high R2 values (0.805, 0.507, and 0.855), indicating excellent model performance. 5. The blocks in Cluster 1 (west of the Yangtze River) exhibit higher mean air temperatures. 6. the blocks in Cluster 2 (new areas) have high vegetation coverage, causing larger temperature differences between the inside and outside of blocks. This study provides a comprehensive workflow for urban block morphology classification and thermal assessment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buildings and Urban Microclimate Challenges: Impacts on Thermal and Wind Environments)
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28 pages, 9393 KB  
Article
Quantitative Control of Wind Environment-Adaptive Spatial Form for Residential Districts in Cold-Region Valley-Type Cities Based on Orthogonal Experimental Design
by Peng Cao, Shaobo Jiang and Caiyuan Zhao
Buildings 2026, 16(11), 2080; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16112080 - 23 May 2026
Viewed by 262
Abstract
To address the mismatch between spatial form and wind environment of residential districts in cold-region valley-type cities, which leads to poor thermal comfort, low ventilation efficiency and high building energy consumption, this study takes Hongyun Runyuan, a typical large-scale residential district in Lanzhou, [...] Read more.
To address the mismatch between spatial form and wind environment of residential districts in cold-region valley-type cities, which leads to poor thermal comfort, low ventilation efficiency and high building energy consumption, this study takes Hongyun Runyuan, a typical large-scale residential district in Lanzhou, as the research case. Using orthogonal experimental design, nine spatial schemes were developed with three core morphological parameters (building orientation, spacing coefficient, enclosure degree), each set with three levels. CFD simulations via PHOENICS were performed to analyze the influence weight of each parameter on the winter wind environment at 1.5 m pedestrian height. Results show that building orientation exerts an extremely significant effect on the winter wind environment (p = 0.006), while the spacing coefficient and enclosure degree have no significant independent effects (all p > 0.05). The optimal scheme, featuring 10° east of south orientation, 1.1 spacing coefficient and 0.3 enclosure degree, can effectively meet the winter wind protection demand. The quantitative optimization strategies proposed in this study provide scientific support for wind-friendly residential planning and building energy efficiency improvement in cold-region valley-type cities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buildings and Urban Microclimate Challenges: Impacts on Thermal and Wind Environments)
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32 pages, 25531 KB  
Article
CFD-Based Evaluation of Wind Comfort in High-Density Primary Schools: A Case Study of Planning Layouts in Shenzhen
by Zehua Ji, Hongbo Zhang, Liying Shen, Jiantao Weng, Qing Chun, Jindong Wu and Xiaoyu Ying
Buildings 2026, 16(4), 721; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16040721 - 10 Feb 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 622
Abstract
In Shenzhen, a high-density city facing severe land scarcity, the proliferation of compact primary school campuses poses significant challenges to the outdoor wind environment, which is crucial for outdoor thermal comfort in a hot–humid climate. This study employs Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to [...] Read more.
In Shenzhen, a high-density city facing severe land scarcity, the proliferation of compact primary school campuses poses significant challenges to the outdoor wind environment, which is crucial for outdoor thermal comfort in a hot–humid climate. This study employs Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to systematically evaluate wind comfort across a range of high-density primary school layouts. Typical design proposals are classified and analyzed based on three key planning aspects: education building forms, courtyard openness, and sports field configuration. Wind comfort area ratio and static wind zone area ratio are adopted as key performance indicators to evaluate outdoor wind performance. The findings demonstrate that decentralized teaching building forms, multi-courtyard layouts with openings oriented towards the prevailing summer wind, and juxtaposed sports field placement significantly enhance outdoor ventilation and comfort. Additionally, positioning the main entrance on the windward side and incorporating elevated voids or terraces to form coherent ventilation corridors are effective design strategies. This research provides theoretical guidance for designing high-density school campuses in hot–humid southern China. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buildings and Urban Microclimate Challenges: Impacts on Thermal and Wind Environments)
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Review

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24 pages, 7276 KB  
Review
A Review of Progress in Heat Health Risk Assessment Across Multiple Spatial Scales
by Yifei Peng, Jingyuan Ren, Zheng Wang, Youfang Li and Yasuyuki Ishida
Buildings 2026, 16(10), 2044; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16102044 - 21 May 2026
Viewed by 388
Abstract
With global warming and the increasing frequency of extreme heat events, heat health risk assessment (HHRA) has become a critical topic in climate change studies. However, the study themes, methods, and governance orientation of HHRA vary significantly across spatial scales, limiting the comparability [...] Read more.
With global warming and the increasing frequency of extreme heat events, heat health risk assessment (HHRA) has become a critical topic in climate change studies. However, the study themes, methods, and governance orientation of HHRA vary significantly across spatial scales, limiting the comparability and practical integration of assessment outcomes. This study conducts a review of the HHRA literature from 2007 to 2025, analyzing publication trends and evolving research paradigms. The results indicate the following: (1) rapid growth in the field with a notable shift from identifying static vulnerabilities to adopting “Hazard–Exposure–Vulnerability–Adaptability” (HEVA) frameworks, particularly at the micro-scale; (2) a clear scale-dependent hierarchy in assessment focus, where macro-scale studies identify regional trends, meso-scale research targets urban spatial heterogeneity and green–blue infrastructure, and micro-scale assessments emphasize housing conditions and individual perceptions; and (3) machine learning has been widely applied to capture complex nonlinear mechanisms and threshold effects. Finally, this study further emphasizes the importance of establishing a full-process feedback mechanism from macro-level early warning to meso-scale planning and micro-scale intervention, bridging the gap between regional policy and community-level action and providing a theoretical foundation for building climate-resilient cities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buildings and Urban Microclimate Challenges: Impacts on Thermal and Wind Environments)
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