Heat-Resilient Buildings: Sustainable Design Strategies for Indoor Comfort and Sleeping Environments
A Special Issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050) belonging to the section "Green Building".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2027 | Viewed by 99
Editor
Interests: indoor environmental quality (IEQ); thermal comfort; indoor air quality (IAQ); indoor sensing and Internet-of-Things (IoT); indoor pathogen transmission; building sustainability and carbon neutrality
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Extreme heat has become one of the most pressing climate-related challenges affecting the built environment. With the increasing frequency, duration, and intensity of heatwaves, buildings are under growing pressure to maintain safe, healthy, and comfortable indoor conditions while minimizing energy consumption and carbon emissions. Indoor overheating and heat stress can significantly affect occupants’ health, productivity, thermal satisfaction, and overall well-being, particularly among vulnerable populations such as older adults, children, people with chronic illnesses, and low-income households.
In addition to daytime thermal comfort, nighttime heat exposure has received increasing attention due to its adverse impacts on sleep quality, physiological recovery, and long-term health. Bedroom environments and sleeping comfort are especially critical under extreme heat conditions, as elevated nighttime temperatures can reduce sleep duration and quality, increase heat strain, and limit the body’s ability to recover from daytime heat exposure. Sustainable and resilient building design therefore needs to address both daytime and nighttime indoor thermal environments, integrating passive design, adaptive comfort strategies, advanced monitoring, smart controls, efficient cooling technologies, and occupant-centered solutions.
This Special Issue aims to gather research efforts focused on sustainable building design, operation, and technologies for mitigating indoor heat stress and enhancing thermal resilience under extreme heat conditions. Scholars are invited to contribute research articles, reviews, communications, case studies, and concept papers addressing topics such as indoor overheating assessment, heat stress monitoring, thermal comfort modeling, bedroom thermal environments, sleeping comfort, passive and low-carbon cooling strategies, building adaptability, occupant behavior, health impacts, and climate-resilient design frameworks.
The goal of this Special Issue is to advance interdisciplinary knowledge on how buildings can better protect occupants from extreme heat while supporting sustainability, energy efficiency, and climate resilience. Contributions that combine building science, environmental health, human physiology, sleep research, urban climate, smart technologies, and sustainable design are particularly encouraged.
Dr. Tsz Wun Tsang
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
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Keywords
- extreme heat
- heat stress
- heatwave
- indoor thermal comfort
- sleeping comfort
- bedroom environment
- nighttime heat exposure
- climate change
- building resilience
- sustainable building design
- passive cooling
- low-carbon cooling
- adaptive comfort
- building sustainability
- health and well-being
- climate change
- smart monitoring and control
- energy efficiency
- vulnerable populations
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