CBE Clima Tool:A free and open-source web application for climate analysis tailored to sustainable building design

Climate-responsive building design holds immense potential for enhancing comfort,energy efficiency,and environmental sustainability.However,many social,cultural,and economic obstacles might prevent the wide adoption of designing climate-adapted buildings.One of these obstacles can be removed by enabling practitioners to easily access,visualize and analyze local climate data.The CBE Clima Tool(Clima)is a free and open-source web application that offers easy access to publicly available weather files and has been created for building energy simulation and design.It provides a series of interactive visualizations of the variables contained in the EnergyPlus Weather Files and several derived ones like the UTCI or the adaptive comfort indices.It is aimed at students,educators,and practitioners in the architecture and engineering fields.Since its inception,Clima’s user base has exhibited robust growth,attracting over 25,000 unique users annually from across 70 countries.Our tool is poised to revolutionize climate-adaptive building design,transcending geographical boundaries and fostering innovation in the architecture and engineering fields.

Post-war Sustainability-Driven School Buildings: A Review of the Literature

The Safe Schools Declaration of 2015 is an inter-governmental political agreement signed by several countries designed to protect the schooling of the school-aged population during armed conflicts.Yet,in countries where civil war erupted,schools were demolished.Several school-aged children were either forcibly recruited by governments or coerced by rebel groups to serve in armed fights.As a result,several children were deprived of their education and have remained suffering from deep psychological scars.The central question of the study is:What kind of sustainability-driven school buildings can be initiated in countries that are now enduring peace so that the learning environments are more comfortable and improve the well-being of the war-impacted children and school employees?After reviewing the literature,a strategic conceptual framework that incorporated the synergistic relationship between economic,social,and environmental aspects of sustainability was initiated to map out sustainable school buildings.In short,the conceptual framework proposed to construct school buildings in some of the war-affected developing countries includes assembling cost-efficiency and eco-effectiveness inputs,using renewable energy sources powered by natural sunlight,collecting rainwater in mud cisterns,reducing emissions of carbon oxides,and empowering the local community to be the main actors to design sustainable buildings during the preconstruction,construction,and post-construction stages to serve as learning spaces for the war-affected occupants and their neighborhoods.

Promotion of Sustainable Buildings in China- Integration of Bamboo and Renewable Energy Technologies

WWF China and the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INB AR) jointly launched the project "Promotion of Energy Efficient Buildings: Integration of Bamboo and Renewable Energy Technologies" together with the Urban & Rural Planning & Design Institute of Yunnan and BEAR Architecten Gouda (Holland) in March 2002. The objective of the project is to design model houses, hotels and school buildings for rural people in Yuanan Province to provide 'comfortable' living conditions with a minimum and meani...

The Challenges in Providing Affordable Housing in Nigeria and the Adequate Sustainable Approaches for Addressing Them

Despite multiple schemes implemented by various governments around the country, affordable housing remains elusive to the average Nigerian. Because the situation is comparable to that of other developing nations, it remains a key concern in these countries’ socioeconomic development. Over 52% of Nigeria’s population has been claimed to live in shanties, squatter communities, and informal settlements. This article, therefore, reviews the challenges to the provision of affordable housing in Nigeria and the Sustainable approaches to address them. The article’s findings were based on a thorough examination of the literature. The article’s findings indicated that sustainable approaches for addressing Nigeria’s affordable housing barriers may best be examined through the economic, ecological, social, institutional, and technical factors. The paper urges the present regime, investors, lawmakers, and private developers in Nigeria to implement these approaches for affordable housing provision. The findings from this article will add to the current body of knowledge by providing important information on affordable housing provision and re-directing research interest towards affordable housing in Nigeria and other developing countries.

Energy Consumption Analysis and Characterization of Aerospace Manufacturing Facilities in the United States–A Step towards Sustainable Development

In this study,information on energy usage in the United States(U.S.)aerospace manufacturing sector has been analyzed and then represented as energy intensities(kWh/m2)to establish benchmark data and to compare facilities of varying sizes.First,public sources were identified and the data from these previously published sources were aggregated to determine the energy usage of aerospace manufacturing facilities within the U.S.From this dataset,a sample of 28 buildings were selected and the energy intensity for each building was estimated from the data.Next,as a part of this study the energy data for three additional aerospace manufacturing facilities in the U.S.were collected firsthand.That data was analyzed and the energy intensity(kWh/m2)for each facility was calculated and then compared with the energy intensities of the 28 buildings from the sample.Three different indicators of energy consumption in aerospace manufacturing facilities were used as comparators to assist facility managers with determining potential energy savings and help in the decision-making process.On average,aerospace manufacturing facilities in the United States spent 4 cents for each dollar of sale on energy.The energy intensity(kWh/m2)and the power intensity(W/m2)for each facility were calculated based on the actual facility energy bills.The power intensity for these facilities ranges from 34 to 134 W/m2.The energy intensity ranged from 232 to 949 kWh/m2.We found that the power intensity could be used to estimate energy consumption when the annual operating hours of the facility are considered.and to estimate the energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.

Building a Sustainable Environment for Human Rights Development; Earnestly Respecting and Ensuring Human Rights

Constructing an environ- ment for human rights development is a large, comprehensive project as well asa long and arduous mission. Although constructing an environment for human rights development was not mentioned much in the past, in actuality it began early and achieved sustained progress. It is a gradual process that is also a prerequisite for earnestly respecting and ensuring human rights. There are five dimensions to building a sustainable environment for human rights development.

Building a Beautiful China:A Definitive Exploration on Sustainable Economy

FINALLY,the world is witnessing what may well turn out to be the definitive how-to guide on building a sustainable economy that works in complete harmony with the environment:China’s transformation under the banner of an"ecological civilization."It’s been a long time coming.For well over a century,

Zero Energy Hotels and Sustainable Mobility in the Islands of Aegean Sea (Greece)

The goal of this work is to evaluate and to give evidence to innovative and sustainable technologies applied in the construction industry to carry out self-sufficient energy and to use the surplus energy for the production of hydrogen vector. An architectural integration design along with high technological systems is performed. The intermittency of renewable energy sources along with climatic conditions dependency imposes to store the energy produced, since it is clean and having a big calorific value: the hydrogen vector is currently the better energy carrier. The energy to obtain hydrogen by dissociation of water is supplied by a photovoltaic (PV) system. Through the computations of the annual energy balance between building’s demand and supply energy, it is shown that the extra energy produced by the solar generation system is used also for the hydrogen sustainable mobility. The renewable systems, model’s design and case study are tackled for the bigger one of the Dodecanese islands in the South Aegean Sea: Rhodes (Rodos). The Zero energy building’s integrative design-based approach, applied to the Hotel Buildings type industry is targeted to have new hotels buildings, in the Mediterranean typical warm climate, with zero energy consumption. The designers, authors of this work, have studied a real case or pilot project of an hotel, in the resort formula, suitable to the Greek landscape, showcasing technologies and innovations supporting environmental sustainability, energy efficiency, use of renewable energy, electricity storage by fuel cells that are tools particularly applicable to hotel facility [1]. The feasibility of this case study or pilot project is aligned jointly to the target of Zero Emission and Energy Efficiency EU Policy, as imposed by EU Directives. The strategic position of Rhodes in a geographical point full of sun and wind renewable energy power, enables to ensure the clean energy production, the current interesting development of the hydrogen as energy vector in the buildings [2] and also to satisfy the demand of tourists’ accommodation by having at the same time zero energy costs. Moreover, the presence in the island of the best example worldwide of ancient and sustainable built environment (UNESCO World Heritage site), represents also the best motivation to give witness there of a zero impact environmental urban development through the adoption of these achieved scientific results for a major success of Zero Energy Buildings.

Hybrid Chiller Plant Optimization Strategies for Hotel Building on Nile River of Egypt

Hybrid chiller plants (HCPs) using multiple chillers and different energy sources are highly recommended in several energy applications in non-residential buildings such as hospitals and hotels. Time of use and cooling load profiles are significant factors that should be carefully considered either in chiller plant design or in chiller sequencing operation. This article aims to present an operation planning of HCP which consists of both electric and non-electric chillers. Four operational strategies are proposed and solved to compare their coefficients of performance and economics of running costs. A typical hotel building located on the Nile river in Egypt is selected to perform the current thermal and economic case study. The total cooling load profile of this hotel building is 4000 refrigeration tonnage (TR), which is simulated to optimize chiller sequence of operation and to select optimal design conditions of both numbers for electric and non-electric chillers used in HCP. The results of this comparative study for running cost are defined using various design configurations with different several chiller sequences available for each configuration. Then, the results of COPs, and operational running cost and initial cost are presented in this article also. The comparison aims to find the optimal design and operational sequencing for HCPs on thermal basis and economic analysis which were attached in this article. Recommendations and suggestions for future work are attached at the end of this article.

Adoption of, the Palestine Green Building Design Approach, with the Help of Checklist Tools

Nowadays our world is faced with various environmental problems. These environmental problems are caused by the increasing pollution in the world, increasing production and consumption of material goods. These problems have serious consequences for human health and also have a major impact on natural ecosystems. This paper discussed sustainable green building in terms of key principles for sustainable building, strategies and guidelines for sustainable green building, and steps for an integrated approach to green design. The study also looked at the status of green building and sustainability, as well as green building materials in Palestine. The study suggested a checklist to help assess the condition of buildings in Palestine and the extent to which they respond to the principles of sustainable green buildings, thus, contributing to help new and existing buildings to adopt a sustainable green building approach, in order to achieve the goals of sustainable green construction in terms of saving energy and resources and reducing waste, therefore, participating in preserving the environment and improving the quality of life.

Self-Power Consumption Research with the Thermal Effects and Optical Properties of the HCRI-BIPV Window System

The building integrated photovoltaics （BIPV） application is one of the main study topics in the sustainable building field. In this paper, the high color rendering index （HCRI）-BIPV window system is developed to be used in the indoor environmental control, whose module material has appeared to be effective in improving the visible transmittance and reducing the absorption. This paper describes the performance of grid-connected HCRI-BIPV window system with 0.75 kWp capacity installed in an office building for a natural ventilation solution. The experimental results indicate that accumulative power generation of the HCRI-BIPV window system is 157.60 WKh during the 7-month experiment period. For consideration of each evaluated factors, the HCRI-BIPV window system not only offers the passive energy situation for its power loading but also improves the indoor thermal environment by natural ventilation.

Metamodeling and multicriteria analysis for sustainable and passive residential building refurbishment: A case study of French housing stock

For the energy-related issues that the world is facing nowadays,the renovation of the building stock is one of the major challenges.The objective of this study is to present an approach that helps to develop a multi-criteria decision support tool dedicated to the rehabilitation of sustainable and passive energy housing by integrating heating energy needs,economic,social and environmental criteria throughout the life cycle stages of the building.The methodology consists of developing metamodels to predict heating energy needs from polynomial regression,design of experiments method and thermo-aeraulic simulations of building behavior.This metamodel is used to carry out a combinatorial study of real technical solutions.The methodology was applied to a real-life existing building located in La Rochelle city(France)based on an in-situ energy diagnosis.Three multicriteria analysis methods were studied and compared:weighted sum,Min-Max and Pareto concept.Furthermore,technical constraints as well as owner preferences and performance constraints have been studied.Optimal technical solutions have been obtained in order to meet the various criteria studied.In addition,window shading and natural ventilation have been proposed to reduce the thermal discomfort rate in summer.This study was extended to all French regions.Finally,this method can be transformed into a decision support tool which will be useful for architects,engineers and stockholders.

Case Study:Topography Integrated Urban Center Concept Project on Coastal Line of Kartal/İstanbul

The concept of creating a Topography integrated urban center is to create an urban center that integrated with the city.The first step of the Concept is to settle by using the natural elevation in the land and to create volumes compatible with land by raising together with the elevation.While the passenger circulation at starting elevation is moved into a project with the cavestyle volume settled in land elevation.The new area of the square to be defined in the center of the building is intended to form an area combining the neighboring squares Kartal Square and Freedom Square,as well as contributing to the silhouette of Kartal from the sea with the location of the square and building.The project is a central complex design that deals with various urban problems thanks to professionals,local people of Kartal,and clubs which established with the municipality in a comprehensive way to search for solutions to be organized urban workshops and conferences.

Passive Heating Systems:A Case Study in a Brazilian Mountainous Region

The study of thermal comfort in the built environment is of great relevance since it stimulates the development of more sustainable buildings suited to the local climate and able to meet the human need for well-being.The objective of this research was to develop,construct and test a passive heating system adaptable to existing buildings,reducing the need for major interventions and increasing thermal comfort in the indoor environment.The adopted methodological approach was a case study in a single-family residence located in the Brazilian city of Petrópolis,a mountainous region with a humid subtropical climate and a rigorous winter.The proposed passive heating system is totally isolated,thus mitigating air infiltration and promoting increase of temperature in the internal environment through the absorption of solar energy and greenhouse effect.This kind of solution is especially interesting for residents of this region,since most of the city buildings are not adequately prepared to handle low temperatures.Thus,given local climatic conditions,residents need to spend a lot of money on the acquisition and operation of electric or gas heating systems.The results indicated that the developed system,in fact,increased the temperature of the studied room when compared to an adjacent room,which did not receive the device.The findings of this paper,therefore,provide a valuable reference for experts and practitioners in the selection of heating systems to be used in cold regions,and proved that passive systems can provide thermal comfort at the same time that optimize the interaction of the building with the local ecosystem.

Systems Thinking and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: Examples from Kenya’s <i>Afya Jijini</i>Program

The Afya Jijini program targeted improved access to and quality of health services in Nairobi City County through the strengthening of local health systems. The program took a systems thinking approach recognizing that strong, coordinated commitments and contributions from various levels of multiple sectors such as health, public works, and education would be essential to the program’s success. Consistent with the World Health Organization’s proclamation that the provision of safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are prerequisites for all public health endeavors, WASH-related efforts were woven into nearly all facets of the Afya Jijini program. IRC is a nonprofit located in the Netherlands focused on systems thinking approaches for sustainable WASH improvements. IRC’s 9 building blocks are tools to assist in breaking down the complexities of systems, identifying key actors and factors that contribute to sustainable improvements, and setting clear program indicators and targets for success. This conceptual manuscript seeks to explore the Afya Jijini program through the lens of the IRC’s building block approach to systems thinking. Examples of Afya Jijini programming aligned with each building block are presented to assist program planners and guide future interventions. Afya Jijini could have benefited from increased attention to several key building blocks, including institutions, finance, and learning and adaptation.

Critical review of recent development in fiber reinforced adobe bricks for sustainable construction

This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of research on the utilization of fibers(predominantly derived from waste materials)as reinforcement in adobe brick production.Recycling of these wastes provides sustainable construction materials and helps to protect the environment.Specimen preparation and test procedures are outlined.The effects of addition of these wastes on the physical and mechanical properties of adobe bricks as presented in the literature,are investigated.The main results for each additive are presented and discussed.It is concluded that improved adobe brick properties can be expected with the addition of combination of waste additives.The use of waste materials in the construction industry is generally of interest and useful for engineers and designers seeking sustainable solutions in construction.It is also of interest to researchers actively seeking to develop methodical approaches to quantifying,optimising and testing the performance in use of such waste material additives.

Architectural quality of the productive facades integrating photovoltaic and vertical farming systems: Survey among experts in Singapore

Buildings could play a critical role in energy and food production while making highdensity cities more resilient.Productive facades(PFs),as flexible and multi-functional systems integrating photovoltaic(PV)and vertical farming(VF)systems,could contribute to transforming buildings and communities from consumers to producers.This study analyses the architectural quality of the developed PF concept drawing on the findings of a web-survey conducted among experts e building professionals in Singapore.The developed design variants are compared with regards to key design aspects such as facade aesthetics,view from the inside,materialisation,ease of operation,functionality and overall architectural quality.The study also compares and discusses the results of the web-survey with the results of a previously conducted door-to-door survey among the potential users-residents of the Housing&Development Board(HDB)blocks.The findings confirm an overall acceptance of the PF concept and reveal a need for synergetic collaboration between architects/designers and other building professionals.Based on the defined PF design framework and the results of the two surveys,a series of recommendations and improved PF prototypes are proposed for further assessment and implementation in order to foster their scalability from buildings into communities and cities.

A Grid-friendly Neighborhood Energy Trading Mechanism

More customers are tending to install batteries with photovoltaic(PV), so they can better control their electricity bills. In this context, customers may be tempted to go offgrid at a substantial up-front cost, leading electricity companies into a death spiral, thereby raising electricity price further on those remaining on grid. Neighborhood energy markets can promote the sharing of locally generated renewable energy and encourage prosumers to stay on grid with financial incentives. A novel neighborhood energy trading(NET) mechanism is developed using the topology of existing radial distribution network to encourage sustainable energy sharing in neighborhood and encourage prosumers to stay on grid. This mechanism considers loss, congestion management, and voltage regulation, and it is scalable with low computation and communication overhead.An IEEE test system is used to validate the NET mechanism.The simulation shows that the price and flow results are obtained with fast computation speed(within 10 iterations) and with loss reflected, flow limit reinforced, and voltage regulated.This study proves that the economic demand-supply-based pricing mechanism can be applied effectively in distribution networks to help encourage more renewable energy sharing in sustainable neighborhood and avoid energy network death spiral.

Earthen-wooden hybrid houses built by the Dai in Dehong Prefecture,South China

The Dai(or Tai)are an indigenous ethnic group distributed across the upper part of Southeast Asia and South China.Whereas the majority of the Dai living on the Southeast Asian mainland build wooden houses on stilts,Dai populations in South China,especially in Dehong Prefecture,are known for the distinctive architectural style of their hybrid earthen–wooden houses,which stems from their enduring social contact and cultural assimilation with Chinese settlers.This paper,which draws on comprehensive feldwork conducted in Dai villages in Dehong Prefecture,explores the Dai’s hybrid earthen–wooden architecture.Specifcally,it examines the development of forms,the relationship between settlement layouts and house plans,as well as building materials,structures and constructions characterising this architecture using data from qualitative surveys,architectural measurements and interviews.The hybrid architecture of the Dehong Dai demonstrates the fusion of two building cultures—earthen and wooden—that has shaped a vernacular architectural identity that is unique to this area.This paper also presents illustrative examples of earthen–wooden houses,thereby contributing to advancing knowledge about this eclectic,hybrid architecture that remains a gap in the academic literature.

Evaluation of indoor environmental quality conditions in elementary schools＇ classrooms in the United Arab Emirates

This study presents findings of indoor environmental quality （IEQ） investigations conducted in elementary schools＇ classrooms in the United Arab Emirates （UAE）. Average TVOC, CO2, O3, CO, and particle concentrations measured in the classrooms were 815 pg / m^3, 1605 ppm, 0.05 ppm, 1.16 ppm, and 1730 μg/m^3, respectively. Whereas, local authority known as Dubai Municipality recommended 300 pg/m^3, 800 ppm, 0.06 ppm, 9 ppm, and 150-300 μg/m^3 for TVOC, CO2, O3, CO, and particle, respectively. Dubai Municipality recommended temperature and retative humidity （RH） levels of 22.5 ℃ to 25.5 ℃ and 30%-60%, respectively. Average temperature and RH levels measured in the classrooms were 24.5 ℃ and 40.4%, respectively. Average sound level in the classrooms was 24 dB greater than recommended sound level limit of 35 dB. Six （6） classrooms had average lux levels in the range of 400-800 lux. Two （2） classrooms had average lux levels in the range of 100 200 lux. The remaining classrooms had lux levels around the recommended 300 lux. High occupancy density was observed in majority of the studied classrooms. Observations during walkthroush investigations could