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Climate Change and the Built Environment

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 August 2021) | Viewed by 9856

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Associate Professor, School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZN, UK
Interests: climate change weather data and scenarios for simulation; effects of climate change on energy performance of buildings; urban heat island effects on building energy consumption and urban planning; energy efficiency in buildings and service plants; sustainable energy technologies in buildings; sustainability in building design
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is affecting us all with increasing temperatures and more frequent occurrences of extreme weather events. The last 7 years have all featured in the top 10 warmest years on record, and computational analyses predict that this trend will continue unless we all reduce carbon emissions significantly. Buildings are large consumers of energy, and thus, a high proportion of carbon emissions are related to buildings. Buildings also suffer greatly due to the effects of climate change, with increased occupant dissatisfaction and increased energy consumption. It is ultimately important that buildings are to be built to adapt to future climates, as this would improve occupant comfort and reduce energy consumption, which in turn mitigates the effects of climate change. Hence, the role of building designers provides a potential positive feedback loop and is key to tackling the exacerbation of further climate change. Due to the inertia of excessive greenhouse gases already emitted in the past, even if all greenhouse gas emissions are stopped now, the inertia effect of warming will still continue for decades from now. Thus, as well as designing buildings to mitigate the effects of climate change, buildings will also need to be able to adapt to the inevitable rises in temperature and extreme events. Different climate regions in the world face different challenges as a result of climate change, and it is important that we can learn lessons from one another in this concerted effort to combat climate change. It is the aim of this Special Issue to gather research from experts across the world so we can all learn what can be done to improve our built environment in the face of climate change, how we cope, and also combat this potentially devastating threat to humankind.

We invite you to submit to this Special Issue of Sustainability. This Special Issue will be focused on Climate Change and the Built Environment. Buildings are large consumers of energy and thus also a high emitter of carbon dioxide. Building designers need to produce buildings that will not only mitigate the effects of climate change but also adapt to the changes that will inevitably happen in the next few decades.

This Special Issue hopes to bring together ongoing research from around the world so we can learn the effects of climate change have on buildings and what can be done to improve building performance under climate change. Topics include case-studies, computer-model simulations, generation of climate-change weather files, effects of urban heat islands, and implementation of carbon reduction policies.

Dr. David Hou Chi Chow
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. 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 2400 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

  • climate change
  • urban heat island effects
  • built environment
  • passive design
  • climate change policies, building regulations

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

26 pages, 8432 KiB  
Article
Adaptive Reuse Decisions for Historic Buildings in Relation to Energy Efficiency and Thermal Comfort—Cairo Citadel, a Case Study from Egypt
by Yasmine Sabry Hegazi, Heidi Ahmed Shalaby and Mady A. A. Mohamed
Sustainability 2021, 13(19), 10531; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910531 - 23 Sep 2021
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 6570
Abstract
Historic buildings still perform their role today by being utilized either for their original purpose or a new purpose for which they are adapted. These buildings have specific requirements that inhabitants must follow. These requirements and relating uses and maintenance procedures result from [...] Read more.
Historic buildings still perform their role today by being utilized either for their original purpose or a new purpose for which they are adapted. These buildings have specific requirements that inhabitants must follow. These requirements and relating uses and maintenance procedures result from adaptive reuse decisions, which may not be the most optimal scenario. The imperative is that historic buildings are used in a manner that, on the one hand, does not endanger their value related to heritage and tradition, and on the other hand, guarantees a degree of utility for their inhabitants, such as acceptable performance with regards to either air cooling or heating. The challenge is how to optimize the use of energy for either air cooling or heating, provided that adaptive reuse decisions are grounded in certain very specific and very rigid principles. The latter render is extremely difficult to meet the twin challenges of ensuring energy efficiency and thermal comfort for inhabitants while at the same time complying with the adaptive reuse principles. To address this challenge and gain an insight into ways of navigating it, a Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is conducted in Former Soldier’s Residence in the Cairo Citadel, Cairo, Egypt, which is now used as the National Organization for Urban Harmony’s (NOUH) administrative head office, this research can be considered as a single domain from which many other possible multi-domains can be investigated while studying the case of adaptive reuse. Other aspects such as indoor environmental quality, air quality, acoustics and lighting might act as multiple approaches appear to be widely used according to this review study, and in the future, the authors intend to test this research with the current single approach used in this research, which is the thermal comfort. POE includes both objective and subjective assessment, the POE limitation at this research to those assessment while a multi-perceptional and behavioral factors might be used as physical, contextual, personal, and others. The simulation and the survey methods were employed consecutively to assess the case study. By considering the research results, it was determined that the building consumes unnecessary energy by its current use of air conditioning system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and the Built Environment)
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15 pages, 1702 KiB  
Article
Thermal Condition and Air Quality Investigation in Commercial Airliner Cabins
by Nu Yu, Yao Zhang, Mengya Zhang and Haifeng Li
Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7047; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137047 - 23 Jun 2021
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1994
Abstract
Cabin air quality and thermal conditions have a direct impact on passenger and flight crew’s health and comfort. In this study, in-cabin thermal environment and particulate matter (PM) exposures were investigated in four China domestic flights. The mean and standard deviation of the [...] Read more.
Cabin air quality and thermal conditions have a direct impact on passenger and flight crew’s health and comfort. In this study, in-cabin thermal environment and particulate matter (PM) exposures were investigated in four China domestic flights. The mean and standard deviation of the in-cabin carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in two tested flights are 1440 ± 111 ppm. The measured maximum in-cabin carbon monoxide (CO) concentration is 1.2 ppm, which is under the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) permissible exposure limit of 10 ppm. The tested relative humidity ranges from 13.8% to 67.0% with an average of 31.7%. The cabin pressure change rates at the end of the climbing stages and the beginning of the descending stages are close to 10 hPa·min−1, which might induce the uncomfortable feeling of passengers and crew members. PM mass concentrations were measured on four flights. The results show that PM concentrations decreased after the aircraft cabin door closed and were affected by severe turbulences. The highest in-cabin PM concentrations were observed in the oldest aircraft with an age of 13.2 years, and the waiting phase in this aircraft generated the highest exposures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and the Built Environment)
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