Dear colleagues,

Nowadays, our research community is aware that the improvement of building energy efficiency is a must for achieving sustainable development at a large scale. The built environment, indeed, accounts for a large amount of global energy consumption. Accordingly, cities make allowance for a large sustainability potential. In this view, it has become increasingly evident that humans play a major role in building energy efficiency and urban sustainability. On the one hand, in light of growing efficiency and complexity of building technologies and systems, users’ energy awareness and behaviour have a significant impact on building energy performance. On the other hand, occupants expect increasingly higher standards for well-being and environmental comfort at home and in their workspace. Therefore, the human perspective needs to be carefully taken into account in building design and operation practice, and users should be educated and given the chance to keep up with sustainable building technologies.

This Special Issue of Sustainability is aimed at collecting scientific contributions designed to keep humans in the loop of up-to-date solutions for achieving building energy efficiency in view of urban sustainable development. To this aim, energy and environmental benefits of human-centric building design and operation should be assessed, including occupants’ well-being. Moreover, the analysis and leverage of users’ energy awareness for more sustainable cities and communities are critical aspects to be addressed.

Dr. Cristina Piselli
Dr. Verena M. Barthelmes
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.

• building energy efficiency
• sustainable development
• sustainable cities and communities
• urban sustainability
• social sustainability
• occupant behaviour
• human-centric design
• human-centric operation
• human-building interaction
• human-based energy efficiency
• energy awareness
• well-being

Title: The Information Gap in Occupant Centered Building Operation: Lessons Learned from Interviews with Building Operators in Germany
Authors: Jakob Hahn; Sarah Heiler; Werner Jensch; Sumee Park; Michael Kane
Affiliation: (1) Research Institute CENERGIE – Center for Energy-Efficient Buildings and Districts, Department Munich University of Applied Sciences, Munich, Germany; (2) Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP, Holzkirchen, Germany; (3) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
Abstract: Building operation strategies significantly affect the energy and comfort performance of buildings. Occupant centric control (OCC) strategies considering occupant presence and individual occupant preferences is a growing area of research. However, the daily work of building operators and facility managers is still largely based on heuristics and subjective experiences. For example, operators often override standard operating procedures (SOPs), if such SOPs even exist, to set supply temperatures and setbacks in the heating cycle to account for unbalanced zones, sensitive occupants, or strong solar loading. Furthermore, operators restrict how occupants can themselves make their space more comfortable by locking windows and thermostats and limiting personal devices such as fans or comfort heaters. These examples illustrate the interdependent role of operators, occupants, buildings, and building automation systems. This paper reports the preliminary results from an international questionnaire conducted by a team from the IEA-EBC Annex 79 that aims to assess current building operation practice. The presented outcomes of the interviews provide insights into the still limited accessibility and use of data, as well as the hurdles for consideration of occupant comfort, energy efficiency, and sustainability in daily building operation. The findings illuminate a white space for bringing breakthroughs in data science to the practice of building operation.

Title: Buildings don't use energy, people do: Integrating anthropology into energy efficiency research, development and innovation projects
Authors: Sara Arko; Gregor Cerinšek; Dan Podjed; Domen Bančič; Jure Vetršek
Affiliation: 1 Institute for Innovation and Development of University of Ljubljana 2 Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute of Slovenian Ethnology
Abstract: Energy and anthropology have a long-standing relationship – anthropologists study how energy is understood, produced, distributed, used and managed, and how different perceptions and conceptualisations shape energy practices at individual, household and societal levels. The paper introduces the people-centred development approach that integrates anthropological theory, qualitative research methods, knowledge and ways of thinking into building energy efficiency projects. It illustrates the applicability of the methodology and builds on the experiences of five energy efficiency and buildings-oriented Horizon 2020 projects (Mobistyle, TripleA-Reno, U-CERT, BUSLeague and NRG2peers) that incorporated specific social and cultural contexts into research, development and innovation efforts. The analysis shows that a broader integration of anthropology and SSH in general is crucial to achieve meaningful impact – to provide solutions that start from and respond to the needs of their stakeholders, take into account their values, existing practices and potential or capacity for change, while emphasising responsibility for ethical conduct. As we find ourselves in the midst of an energy transition, anthropology proves valuable not only as a tool to document how existing and emerging technologies are socially embedded, but also as a means to explore and co-create pathways to sustainable futures.