A data-driven method for feature assessment of historical settlements: A case study of Northeast Hubei, China

Formulating criteria for the assessment system of historic settlements is challenging due to complex geographical conditions and evaluator knowledge limitations, leading to subjective bias in the assessment process. To address this issue, this study proposes a data-driven method for assessing the features of historical settlements to carry out scientific and refined assessment and result analysis. Focusing on Northeast Hubei as the study area, this paper selects 3 historical settlements for validation and analysis. The results of the study show that (1) the data-driven method expands the methodological chain of assessing historical settlement features, and improves the assessment efficiency and scientificity of the assessment results by applying it to the new assessment process;(2) Through comparing the assessment results of the validation cases and data samples, the study establishes a comprehensive quantitative ranking of the assessment of historical settlement features and identifies the main influencing factors, thus enhancing the precision of result analysis;(3) By comparing the resulting assessment framework with the current assessment system, this study confirms the advantages of the proposed framework in identifying nuanced features and aligning with geographical conditions, thereby verifying the effectiveness of the data-driven method.

A Field Assessment on Natural Ventilation and Thermal Comfort of Historical District--A Case of the Wugoushui Settlement in Taiwan

Due to the urban and town development, it is common to see historical buildings and new buildings intermingled with one and another inside historical regions in Taiwan. With the increase of new buildings, natural ventilation becomes harder, which leads to the impact on the preservation of historical building and the reduction of thermal comfort for residents. Besides, problems of new buildings＇ construction and design affect the developments of cities and towns in historical district, which has existed for hundreds of years. The Wugoushui Settlement is located in Pingtung County, the southernmost part of Taiwan, and its hot season of a year is pretty long and belongs to warm and humid tropical climate. In 2008, the Pingtung County Government officially registered and announced Wugoushui as traditional settlement and meanwhile, provided the maintenance and preservation for buildings in this region on government subsidies. This paper is based on one-year-long field experiments of Wugoushui Settlement. Residents in Wugoushui Settlement continue constructing new buildings near by the traditional buildings. With the fact that constructions of new buildings result in huge impact on the circumstances of natural ventilation and thermal comfort, which have been for hundreds of years, the simple weather station is set up to collect the data of local microclimate. In addition, four representative traditional architectures were selected to be measured their indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction and thermal radiation both in winter （December to February） and in summer （May to September）. The measurement time of each building is one week and every data record is kept every minute. Besides, residents were asked to fill out the comfort survey. Based on these data, the distributions of indoor and outdoor thermal environment as well as the thermal comfort of living space under the condition of the natural ventilation are assessed. Finally, focused on the indoor living space of historical districts in southern Taiwan, there are two main suggestions given in the essay： first, a provisional comfort zone in summer is planned and proposed; second, the preliminary suggestions for the design and norms of new buildings in historical district are provided.

Climate Change Adaptation and Historic Settlements: Evidence from the Old Town of Corfu

The Old Town of Corfu is an excellent example of a historic town and a World Heritage Site, distinguished by its authentic and unique character, as reflected in its Venetian-era fortifications and extensive historic building stock. Simultaneously, the Old Town of Corfu is also a vibrant modern city vulnerable to various pressures, including climate change. This paper aims to evaluate the effects of climate change on this modern city monument, assess its vulnerability using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s methodology, and develop a comprehensive set of adaptation proposals. The methodology of this paper is based on the analysis of climate data for the Old Town of Corfu, from which the assessment of the extreme weather events and climate changes that pose the greatest threat to the Old Town and the assessment of its vulnerability to these threats are derived. The dense geometrical characteristics of the city’s structure, the intense pathology observed in the materials and structures of the historic building stock, problems in the existing electromechanical infrastructure, and the poor management of issues such as increased tourism and heavy traffic congestion are the primary factors that make the Old Town of Corfu vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

BIPV in the Refurbishment of Minor Historical Centres： The Project of Integrability between Standard and Customized Technology

The proposed research is aimed to define some BIPV （building integrated photovoltaics） paradigms for the refurbishment of historical contexts, by defining strategic criteria related to linguistic-architectural and technological-constructive aspects of solar systems （including case-studies in specific application contexts）. This research could, once perfected and shared, be used within operative tools （guidelines, case studies, etc.） really applicable to common scale, e.g., in today＇s post-earthquake reconstruction in L＇Aquila, for defining possible solar implementation possibilities in sensitive areas according to an innovative and sustainable method of intervention.

Performance-based firefighting in dense historic settlements: An exploration of a firefighting approach combining value and risk assessment with numerical simulation

In view of the fire problems left in dense historical settlements in China,such as fire hazards that are prone to fires,difficulties in fighting fires,and the incomplete applicability of current fire codes due to the high historical value of buildings,this paper proposes a scientific and systematic performance-based fire protection method that gives priority to value preservation.This method is applied to dense historical settlements,and the effectiveness of this method is verified by evaluating the results of fire protection planning and renovation through multiple rounds of computer numerical simulation.The results show that in a connected cluster of buildings,one of the fire retrofitting requirements in the horizontal or vertical direction needs to be met between two adjacent buildings to ensure that the fire does not spread,and the retrofitting direction has to be selected based on the value and risk assessment results.When dense historical clusters are renovated for fire prevention planning,the optimal renovation path to meet fire safety can be effectively selected based on the method proposed in this paper.