Special Issue "Climate Change and the Built Environment: Towards Sustainable Development and Resilience"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Air, Climate Change and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Leire Garmendia
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Mechanical Engineering Department, School of Engineering, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. Plaza Ingeniero Torres Quevedo s/n (48013) Bilbao, Spain
Interests: built environment; climate change impacts; risk assessment; adaptation capacity
Dr. Alessandra Gandini
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
TECNALIA, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Parque Tecnológico de Bizkaia, Astondo Bidea, Edificio 700 (48160) Derio, Spain
Interests: climate change; cultural heritage; urban planning; disaster risk management
MsC. Gemma Garcia Blanco
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
TECNALIA Research & Innovation, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Parque Tecnológico de Bizkaia, Astondo Bidea, Edificio 700 (48160) Derio, Spain
Interests: climate change adaptation; nature-based solutions; innovative spatial and urban planning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme events that impact the built environment. The definition of high-resolution scenarios and the assessments of vulnerability and risk of the built environment are essential to identify and analyze the main impacts of climate change. It is also fundamental to consider a holistic perspective that includes technical, social, environmental, cultural, and economic aspects of the built environment, both for the individual element and the assets as a whole. In-depth multidisciplinary analyses that consider relevant specificities of cities can lead to a good understanding of the current and future situations, including policy frameworks and governance structures in place, and support the subsequent decision making in interventions.

Current climate scenarios call for the implementation of adaptive actions in order to achieve resilient environments and societies able to withstand and recover from the impact of extreme events. Nevertheless, adaptive solutions must be integrated with disaster risk management, spatial and urban planning, adaptive management, and climate change policies. An adequate selection of effective, low-carbon solutions that are compatible with the built environment will minimize the vulnerability and risk and lead to sustainable conservation of the urban areas. Furthermore, any potential intervention must follow the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

As urban planning, building systems, and climate evolution operate on different temporal horizons and spatial scales, the development of comprehensible, manageable, accurate, predictive, low-cost models that can link various fields and facilitate the representation and understanding of their interactions has become fundamental, as has the use of multicriteria decision making (MCM) methodologies with an objective, integrated, holistic perspective.

Hence, the numerous technical challenges in integrating multidisciplinary, multiscale, and multi-temporal approaches should be addressed in order to achieve a sustainable and resilient built environment.

Dr. Leire Garmendia
Dr. Alessandra Gandini
MsC. Gemma Garcia Blanco
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 papers will be 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. Sustainability 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 1900 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

  • natural hazards
  • climate scenarios
  • vulnerability assessment
  • risk assessment
  • adaptation
  • resilient design

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Urban Heat Islands and Thermal Comfort: A Case Study of Zorrotzaurre Island in Bilbao
Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 6106; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116106 - 28 May 2021
Viewed by 673
Abstract
This study assesses the impact of a heat wave on the thermal comfort of an unconstructed area: the North Zone of the Island of Zorrotzaurre (Bilbao, Spain). In this study, the impact of urban planning as proposed in the master plan on thermal [...] Read more.
This study assesses the impact of a heat wave on the thermal comfort of an unconstructed area: the North Zone of the Island of Zorrotzaurre (Bilbao, Spain). In this study, the impact of urban planning as proposed in the master plan on thermal comfort is modeled using the ENVI-met program. Likewise, the question of whether the urbanistic proposals are designed to create more resilient urban environments is analyzed in the face of increasingly frequent extreme weather events, especially heat waves. The study is centered on the analysis of temperature variables (air temperature and average radiant temperature) as well as wind speed and relative humidity. This was completed with the parameters of thermal comfort, the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) and the Universal Temperature Climate Index (UTCI) for the hours of the maximum and minimum daily temperatures. The results demonstrated the viability of analyzing thermal comfort through simulations with the ENVI-met program in order to analyze the behavior of urban spaces in various climate scenarios. Full article
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Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: Investigating Cultural Heritage Resilience in Historical Areas: A Good Practice Collection
Abstract: Nowadays historical areas are more and more affected by climate change-related events, such as flooding, storms and wildfire, in addition to other destructive natural phenomena, such as earthquakes and subsidence. Due to the increase in frequency and intensity of such events, heritage managers and the entire community who rely on and benefit from the added value of heritage fruition face new challenges and needs. Both scholars and policymakers recognise that disaster risk management and climate change adaptation strategies share common approaches and methodologies around concepts such as resilience, vulnerability and capacity. Hence, it is necessary to build on already established national, European and international synergies, while integrating cultural heritage into the wider framework of sustainable development. Cultural heritage should be at the centre of the resilience of historical areas. The aim of this study is to provide an insight into the existing knowledge available to increase the cultural heritage resilience of historical areas, and to showcase good practices in dealing with cultural heritage in the field of disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. The paper provides a methodology to investigate cultural heritage resilience in historical areas through the codification and analysis of good practices collected from EU-funded projects. It aims to undertake a comprehensive review of existing good practices to identify research trends and gaps for future studies. The results cover more than 90 good practices reviewed and analysed according to a set of criteria. The research findings have been organized according to the main trends identified among the practices. Two approaches have been identified, according to the key role assigned within the practices to stakeholders, education, data and technology. This research has been conducted as part of the H2020 Shelter project, which aims to establish a cross-scale, multidimensional, data-driven and community-based operational knowledge framework for heritage-led and conservation-friendly resilience enhancement in historical areas. The paper is organized into five sections. Following the introduction, Section 2. Materials and Methods provides an explanation of the databases and the selection criteria for the literature used in this paper. Section 3 presents the results obtained by the collection and analysis of the good practices investigated. It is divided into three sub-sections to present the results according to major trends identified among the practices. Section 4 includes the discussion on how the collection of good practice operationalises and takes advantage of existing knowledge to support communities in increasing the resilience of cultural heritage in historical areas. Section 5 draws some conclusions and suggests potential new threads for future applications and discussions.

Title: Using Organigraphs to Map Disaster Risk Management Governance Systems with a Focus on Cultural Heritage
Abstract: Global cultural heritage is threatened by the frequency and severity of natural disasters caused by climate change. UNESCO emphasises the importance of cultural heritage as the fourth pillar of sustainability alongside society, economy and environment, resulting in a paradigm shift in the perception, understanding and management of cultural heritage within the wider sustainability frameworks. This paradigm shift has stimulated the integration of cultural heritage into pre-existing disaster risk management governance. Governance broadly encapsulates the structures, processes, norms, values and laws which drive decision making. There is currently a lack of robust approaches capable of mapping the complexities of disaster risk management governance. We propose the co-creation of governance maps as a fundamental tool to aid integration of cultural heritage into current disaster risk management. This article reviews the main components of the Organigraph approach and its value as a tool within disaster risk management governance for practitioners and academics. Our findings suggest Organigraphs provide a basis for cross-national, cross-issue and cross-scale peer learning between heritage sites. They are also useful as a self-diagnostic tool within existing governance structures and could potentially be used as an evolving and interactive platform to facilitate the integration of governance mechanisms and data driven approaches.

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