Climate Change and the Built Environment: Pathways to Resilience, Sustainability, and Equity

Dear Colleagues,

The escalating climate crisis presents unprecedented and complex challenges to the built environment across multiple scales, from individual buildings to entire urban and regional systems. Rising temperatures, the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, sea-level rise, and altered precipitation patterns significantly impact the design, construction, operation, performance, and resilience of our cities and infrastructure. Furthermore, the built environment itself is a major contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through energy consumption and embodied carbon, creating a critical feedback loop that underscores the urgent need for transformative, integrated solutions encompassing both mitigation and adaptation.

Addressing this complex interplay necessitates innovative, interdisciplinary approaches, and recent advancements in data acquisition (e.g., remote sensing, IoT sensors, etc.) and computational methods (e.g., machine learning, urban modeling, simulation techniques, geospatial analysis, etc.) offer unprecedented opportunities to assess climate change impacts, particularly at broader spatial and temporal scales. These advanced modeling approaches enable more sophisticated analysis of complex system dynamics, vulnerability assessments, and the evaluation of potential adaptation and mitigation pathways across the built environment spectrum.

This Special Issue aims to provide a prominent international platform for disseminating cutting-edge research on the multifaceted relationship between climate change and the built environment. We seek to integrate perspectives ranging from building-level strategies to macro-scale impact assessments, with a particular focus on studies employing advanced modeling techniques. We invite high-quality original research articles, comprehensive reviews, and insightful case studies that advance fundamental understanding, demonstrate methodological innovation, and contribute to the development and implementation of sustainable, resilient, and equitable built environments capable of navigating the complexities of a changing climate.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Regional, urban, and building-scale vulnerability assessments of climate change impacts (e.g., heat stress, flooding, sea-level rise, wildfires, etc.).

Modeling the cascading effects of climate change on interconnected infrastructure systems (energy, water, transportation, etc.).

The spatiotemporal analysis and modelling of the impacts of climate change on urban morphology, land use, energy dynamics, and population distribution.

The application of machine learning, AI, and big data analytics for predicting climate impacts, identifying vulnerabilities, and optimizing adaptation/mitigation strategies.

The development and application of urban-scale simulation models (e.g., urban climate, energy, hydrological, integrated assessment models, etc.) incorporating climate projections.

The integration of multi-source remote sensing data (satellite, aerial, drone-based, LiDAR, etc.) with modelling techniques for large-scale monitoring, mapping, and assessment.

III. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies:

The role, performance, and modeling of nature-based solutions (e.g., green infrastructure, urban forestry, sustainable drainage, etc.) for climate adaptation and mitigation.

The methodologies and applications of life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprint analysis for buildings and urban systems.

Strategies for post-disaster recovery, resilient reconstruction, and building back better.

Scenario analysis for and the optimization of policy interventions for climate-resilient urban development.

The exploration of social equity, environmental justice, and community engagement in climate adaptation and mitigation planning.

Assessing the co-benefits of integrated climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

We particularly encourage submissions that adopt interdisciplinary approaches, demonstrate methodological innovation (especially using advanced modeling and data-driven techniques), utilize novel datasets, address challenges of scale and complexity, and offer clear, actionable implications for policy and practice.

Dr. Chang Xia
Dr. Anqi Zhang
Dr. Yifu Ou
Guest Editors

Chengfeng Luo
Guest Editor Assistant

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-blind 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.

• climate change
• built environment
• climate adaptation
• climate mitigation
• urban planning and design
• data-driven methods