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Sustainable Development in the Smart Built Environment
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Sustainable Development in the Smart Built Environment

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: 30 August 2024 | Viewed by 3284

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Arman Hashemi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering, University of East London, London E16 2RD, UK
Interests: building performance evaluation/simulation; intelligent facdes; indoor air quality; thermal comfort; sustainable housing; modern methods of construction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

You are warmly invited to submit a paper to this Special Issue titled “Sustainable Development in the Smart Built Environment”. The emergence of the smart built environment (SBE), with integrated smart technologies, has revolutionised the construction industry in many areas, including in the design, engineering, construction, performance, security, and use. Intelligent buildings, Internet of Things, smart envelops, smart meters, and smart materials are only some of the terms that are being increasingly used in the construction industry. The role and the benefits of the smart technologies in SBE are undeniable; however, smart cities and smart buildings are ultimately about the people who live in them. The smart technologies have indeed provided opportunities to improve users’ experience by improving the interactions between buildings and their occupants. They help to better monitor, understand, and guide the occupants’ behaviours in a systematic approach, contributing to reducing the gaps between the predicted and actual performances of buildings. Smart technologies have also been successfully applied to deliver integrated retrofitted solutions in a practical and user-friendly manner in order to address existing issues, such as energy performance and indoor air quality, aiming to improve the comfort, health, and wellbeing of the occupants. Likewise, the digitalisation of design and construction, along with building information modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS), have provided new platforms for an enhanced flow of information, which could in turn improve construction processes while reducing costs and environmental impacts. BIM models, with the assistance of the smart monitoring and controlling technologies, could feed into the building management systems (BMS) to design intelligent buildings that could simultaneously address occupants’ health and comfort, while reducing operational energy and environmental impacts. To this end, this Special Issue aims to provide a platform where the emerging smart technologies and their effects on the sustainable development of the smart built environment could be discussed.

Dr. Arman Hashemi
Guest Editor

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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 monthly 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

  • Smart cities
  • Smart and intelligent buildings
  • Smart technologies and materials
  • Smart refurbishment and control strategies
  • Internet of Things (IoT) in construction
  • Robotics in construction
  • Digital construction
  • Building information modelling (BIM)
  • Building management system (BMS)
  • Geographic information system (GIS).

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 4153 KiB  
Article
Urban Green Systems for Improving Pedestrian Thermal Comfort and Walkability in Future Climate Scenarios in London
by Hashem Taher, Heba Elsharkawy and Haitham Farouk Rashed
Buildings 2024, 14(3), 651; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14030651 - 01 Mar 2024
Viewed by 835
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to investigate the thermal impact of urban green systems (UGS) (trees and living facades) and high albedo pavements on reducing the urban heat island (UHI) effect in London at the pedestrian street level. The research assesses the [...] Read more.
The purpose of this research is to investigate the thermal impact of urban green systems (UGS) (trees and living facades) and high albedo pavements on reducing the urban heat island (UHI) effect in London at the pedestrian street level. The research assesses the impact of UGS by suggesting practicable urban greenery-covering densities (25% and 50%) and using high albedo pavement in current and future climatic scenarios (2050 and 2080). This approach is intended to encourage pedestrians to walk longer distances for longer durations during the warmer months, following the Transport for London’s (TfL) 2017 Healthy Streets initiative. The research seeks to measure the advantages and assess the possible impact on the comfort and activities within urban streets. The study adopts a quantitative research design using ENVI-met modelling and questionnaires. Simulation results, the subject of this paper, confirmed that, across three climatic scenarios, the optimal UGS for thermal comfort is 50% trees followed by 25% trees, dependent on street orientation and solar access. Living facades (LF) with 25% and 50% covering had no discernible effect on the comfort of pedestrians, whereas high albedo pavement increases heat stress. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Development in the Smart Built Environment)
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25 pages, 1800 KiB  
Article
Monitoring the Sustainability of Building Renovation Projects—A Tailored Key Performance Indicator Repository
by Komninos Angelakoglou, Eleni Chatzigeorgiou, Ioannis Lampropoulos, Paraskevi Giourka, Georgios Martinopoulos and Nikolaos Nikolopoulos
Buildings 2023, 13(8), 2046; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings13082046 - 10 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1182
Abstract
This study aims to assist in the identification of suitable key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be used to assess the sustainability performance of buildings given their transition into zero-carbon, resource-efficient, and resilient structures. To that end, a four-step methodology is proposed in [...] Read more.
This study aims to assist in the identification of suitable key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be used to assess the sustainability performance of buildings given their transition into zero-carbon, resource-efficient, and resilient structures. To that end, a four-step methodology is proposed in this work; the first step includes the development of a KPI repository, which builds upon commonly accepted targets derived from the needs of different stakeholders as well as targets imposed by external factors. The second step refers to the expansion of the initial KPI repository, capitalizing on information from the literature. The third step includes the refinement of the repository based on predefined criteria (relevance, availability, measurability, reliability, and familiarity) and tailored feedback from key stakeholders. The final step concerns the development of KPI cards, which include all the necessary information for understanding and estimating the KPIs included in the final repository. This four-step methodological approach implementation was tested during the EU-funded HORIZON project ‘InCUBE’. The implementation of the first two steps of the proposed methodology resulted in a pool of 68 KPIs. Nearly half of these KPIs were extracted from Step 1 to fully support the monitoring of all InCUBE outcomes, while the rest of the KPIs were extracted from highly relevant Horizon frameworks, the B4P partnership, Level(S) framework, publications, and ETSI standards (Step 2). The implementation of Step 3 resulted in a shortlisted KPI pool which eventually defined the final InCUBE KPI repository, including 31 KPIs. To help with the coordination of the data gathering process and a shared understanding of the sort of information to be monitored among various stakeholders, selected KPI cards (Step 4) are presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Development in the Smart Built Environment)
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