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Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Reinforced Concrete Infilled Frames
Masonry-Infilled Reinforced Concrete Frames are a very widespread structural typology all over the world for civil, strategic or productive uses. The damages due to these masonry panels can be life threatening to humans and can severely impact economic losses, as shown during past earthquakes. In fact, during a seismic event, most victims are caused by the collapse of buildings or due to nonstructural elements. The damage caused by an earthquake on nonstructural elements, i.e., those not belonging to the actual structural body of the building, is important for the purposes of a more general description of the effects and, of course, for economic estimates. In fact, after an earthquake, albeit of a low entity, it is very frequent to find even widespread damages of nonstructural elements causing major inconveniences even if the primary structure has reported minor damages. In recent years, many territories have been hit worldwide by strong seismic sequences, which caused widespread damages to the nonstructural elements and in particular to the masonry internal partitions and the masonry infill panels of the buildings in reinforced concrete, with damage to the floor and out-of-plane expulsions/collapses of single layers. Unfortunately, these critical issues have arisen not only in historic, but also in recent buildings with reinforced concrete, in many cases exhibiting inadequate seismic behavior, only partly attributable to the intrinsic vulnerability of the masonry panels against seismic actions. Such problems are due to the following aspects: lack of attention to construction details in the realization of the construction, use of poor-quality materials, and above all lack of design tools for the infill masonry walls. In 2018, regarding the design of nonstructural elements, the formulation of floor spectra has been recently introduced in Italy. This entry article wants to focus on all these aspects, describing the state of the art, the literature studies and the design problems to be solved.
  • 2.2K
  • 13 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Implementation of Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies
The fourth industrial revolution (4iR) technologies offer an opportunity for the construction industry to improve health and safety (H&S) compliance. Therefore, implementing the technologies is of top priority to improve the endless H&S incidents in construction projects, which lead to poor quality of work, late project delivery, and increased worker injury claims. Central to improving the nature of work and other industrial processes, the 4iR technologies have emerged. Concurrent with this trend is the importance of 4iR technologies in enhancing health and safety performance on construction sites. 
  • 2.1K
  • 19 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Pavement Surface Types and Distress Assessment Indicators
Pavement or road surfaces can be categorized into four general classes, i.e., asphalt, concrete, gravel, and brick and block. Pavement condition is assessed by measuring several pavement characteristics such as roughness, surface skid resistance, pavement strength, deflection, and visual surface distresses.
  • 2.1K
  • 29 Nov 2022
Topic Review
BRP for Non-Residential Buildings
According to its strategic long-term vision, Europe wants to be a climate-neutral economy by 2050 and buildings represent a sector with low-cost opportunities for high-level CO2 reduction. The main challenge is to increase the renovation rate of the existing building stock, which currently is around 1.2%/year. The ALliance for Deep RENovation (ALDREN) project developed a Holistic and reliable European Voluntary Certification Scheme to trigger deep renovation of non-residential buildings. The ALDREN approach is composed by a sum of protocols and tools with the goal of encouraging property owners to undertake renovation of existing buildings using a clear, robust, and comparable method using coherent and harmonized instruments, the so called ALDREN EPC and ALDREN Building Renovation Passport for non-residential buildings.
  • 2.0K
  • 01 Nov 2020
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Cottage Culture in Finland: Development and Perspectives
This entry provides an understanding of the past, present, and future of the Finnish cottage culture to create an overall picture of its development trajectory and its terminology, e.g., villa, in this context denoting a second home. Convenient, ready-made solutions, easy maintenance, a high level of equipment, year-round use, location, and modern and simple architectural styles are important selection criteria for (summer) cottages that belonged only to the wealthy bourgeois class in the 19th century and have taken their present form with a major transformation in Finland since then. Additionally, municipal regulations and increased attention to ecological concerns are other important issues regarding the cottage today. Cottage inheritance has changed over the generations, and the tightening of building regulations and increased environmental awareness are key drivers of the future transformation of cottage culture. Moreover, the increasing demand for single-family and outdoor spaces created by social changes such as remote working, which has become widespread with the COVID-19 pandemic, will make the summer cottage lifestyle even more popular in Finland. It is thought that this entry will contribute to the continuance of the Finnish cottage culture, which is essential for the vitality of countryside municipalities, local development, national culture, and the well-being of Finnish people. 
  • 1.9K
  • 14 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Fundamental Building Solutions for Expansive Soils
Expansive soils exist in many countries worldwide, and their characteristics make them exceedingly difficult to engineer. Due to its significant swelling and shrinkage characteristics, expansive soil defies many of the stabilization solutions available to engineers. Differential heave or settlement occurs when expansive soil swells or shrinks, causing severe damage to foundations, buildings, roadways, and retaining structures. In such soils, it is necessary to construct a foundation that avoids the adverse effects of settlement.
  • 1.9K
  • 06 May 2023
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Impacts of Prefabrication in the Building Construction Industry
Interest in sustainable construction has been increasing due to recent events. The limitations of natural resources and the scale of global impacts, specifically as a result of the effects of global climate change, have consequences for the construction sector. These changes are giving rise to a need to reassess the way we face the built environment and rethink new solutions for construction systems or methods that contribute to mitigating negative consequences, among which we highlight the prefabrication method. This new scenario, characterised by the need to meet the decarbonisation goals set for 2050, as well as the effects of the spread of the pandemic crisis, emphasizes the importance of understanding the impacts that may occur in the construction industry, which are essentially understood as increases in sustainability, productivity, quality and, consequently, as reductions in deadlines, costs, and dependence on labour. Therefore, this entry seeks to study on the existing literature on prefabrication, seeking to gather relevant information on the new advances, challenges, and opportunities of this construction method whose approach has been mostly focused on partial or specific aspects for case studies, both highlighting the potential and identifying the gaps and opportunities of prefabrication in this new context. The prefabrication method brings benefits compared to the conventional method, and may be an alternative, as it has more positive global impacts on the environment, the economy, and society, and consequently on the sustainable development of construction, despite some limitations that have been reported and that should be looked into in the future.
  • 1.9K
  • 14 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Technologies in Adaptive Dynamic Building Envelopes
Adaptive Dynamic Building Envelope (ADBE) is the term used to describe envelope systems that increase the adaptability of the building skin toward changing ambient conditions, resulting in better energy efficiency and thermal comfort. ADBEs exploit the benefits of passive and active technologies that manage the energy and mass transfer between building and outdoor environment. There is a range of technologies that an ADBE can incorporate to enhance a building’s energy performance. According to their usage, they can be sorted into four categories, i.e., technologies for energy harvesting, technologies affecting heat transfer, technologies for air conditioning, and technologies for storage systems. ADBEs vary from one another based on their level of active-passiveness, and user controllability. The first characteristic is the level of how active or passive the technologies used in the final ADBE product perform. The second characteristic is the level of occupant interaction with the envelope, meaning if the user has the ability to operate some functions on the ADBE manually, or through the usage of building energy management systems.
  • 1.9K
  • 28 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Barriers of Circular Economy in Construction Industry
To facilitate the adoption of the circular economy (CE) in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector, some authors have demonstrated the potential of recent designs that take into account the sustainable management of an asset’s end-of-life (EOL), providing an alternative to the dominant designs that end with demolition. Eighteen approaches related to prefabrication, design for change, design for deconstruction, reverse logistics, waste management and closed-loop systems were found. Researchers has assessed the barriers to those 18 approaches identified in the literature.
  • 1.9K
  • 07 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Circular-economy in the Built Environment
       The circular economy in the building sector is an approach aiming at minimizing waste and emissions, as well as closing water, energy, and material loops. Under a circular built environment, landfilling is no longer an option to handle construction and demolition waste, and design for disassembly has a central role. Design for disassembly is a concept in which buildings and products are designed intentionally for material recovery, value retention, and meaningful next use.
  • 1.9K
  • 12 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Main Cable's Construction Control Technology of Suspension Bridge
The main cable shape control confronts new challenges when a suspension bridge’s span exceeds two kilometers. As a suspension bridge’s primary load-bearing component, it is difficult to alter the alignment once the erection is completed. Hence, the accurate calculation and control of the main cable shape has significant scientific research value from various aspects. The erection error of the free cable shape will have a substantial impact on subsequent construction stages. Therefore, when erecting the main cable, it is essential to guarantee the shape’s precision to the greatest extent possible.
  • 1.8K
  • 06 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Intelligent Buildings in Smart Grids
During the last decade, the smart grid (SG) concept has started to become a reality, mainly thanks to the technical progress achieved in telecommunications, informatics and power electronics, among other domains, leading to an evolution of the traditional electrical grid into an intelligent one. Nowadays, the SG can be seen as a system of smart systems that include cyber and physical parts from different technologies that interact with each other. In this context, intelligent buildings (IBs) constitute a paradigm in which such smart systems are able to guarantee the comfort of residents while ensuring an appropriate tradeoff of energy production and consumption by means of an energy management system (EMS).
  • 1.8K
  • 08 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Building Design for Preventing COVID-19 Pandemic
Sustainable design methods aim to obtain architectural solutions that assure the coexistence and welfare of human beings, inorganic structures, and living things that constitute ecosystems. The novel coronavirus emergence, inadequate vaccines against the present severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-(SARS-CoV-2), and increases in microbial resistance have made it essential to review the preventative approaches used during pre-antibiotic periods. Apart from low carbon emissions and energy, sustainable architecture for facilities, building designs, and digital modeling should incorporate design approaches to confront the impacts of communicable infections. This review aims to determine how architectural design can protect people and employees from harm; it models viewpoints to highlight the architects’ roles in combating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and designing guidelines as a biomedical system for policymakers. The goals include exploring the hospital architecture evolution and the connection between architectural space and communicable infections and recommending design and digital modeling strategies to improve infection prevention and controls. Based on a wide-ranging literature review, it was found that design methods have often played important roles in the prevention and control of infectious diseases and could be a solution for combating the wide spread of the novel coronavirus or coronavirus variants or delta. 
  • 1.7K
  • 24 May 2022
Topic Review
Photovoltaics on Landmark Buildings
This study, framed in the Work group 4 “Photovoltaic in built environment” within the COST Action PEARL PV, CA16235, aims to examine applications of integrated and applied photovoltaic technologies on ten landmark buildings characterised by distinctive geometries, highlighting the aesthetics of their architecture and quality of PV integration based on a proposed set of seven criteria.
  • 1.7K
  • 24 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Skywell Shape in Huizhou Traditional Architecture
The skywell is a typical feature of Huizhou architecture and an important space; thus, there is the saying that “all halls are wells” . In traditional Huizhou architecture, the skywell, as a transition space between the interior and exterior, not only has positive significance for the lighting and ventilation of the building interior but also contains a lot of traditional Huizhou culture. Huizhou is famous for Huizhou merchants, who do not lack money and pay more attention to the construction of their own houses and the comfort and beauty of their houses; they set up skywells in their houses to acquire the aura of the “unity of heaven and man” and the pride of “standing on top of the sky”. On sunny days, the sun shines through the skywell to the front of the hall and the rooms, which means “sprinkling gold”; in rainy and snowy weather, rainwater flows down from the eaves around the skywell and sinks into the tank below the skywell, which means “flowing silver” and is a metaphor for wealth, also known as the “four waters to the hall”. In the skywell, combined with the through corridors and open halls, when the outdoor wind speed is high, wind pressure ventilation makes up the majority of the wind entering into the room from the skywell out, reducing the amount of indoor ventilation. When the outdoor wind is still, the skywell-shaped thermal pressure, which promotes indoor and outdoor ventilation, thus forms a complete ventilation system and plays the role of “hiding wind and gathering air”.
  • 1.7K
  • 30 May 2023
Topic Review
Sustainable development of infrastructure projects
This entry responds to the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In 2015, the international community responded to the sustainable development challenge with their report Transforming Our World: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development . The SDGs are the United Nations’ blueprint, with 193 nations signatories, to address the global challenges, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace and justice. The concept of sustainable development acquired its most cohesive definition in the United Nations’ 1987 Brundtland Commission report, which described it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” . Using the “triple bottom line” , Ochieng, Price and Moore took the definition further by placing it in the context of global construction projects and describing it as the balance of economic, social and environmental aspects. In their book, they identify a number of systemic issues, “hard and soft” in nature, that provide new challenges for global construction projects in relation to sustainable development.
  • 1.7K
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Alternative Clinker Technologies for Reducing Carbon Emissions
The production of one ton of Ordinary Portland Cement releases considerable amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. As the need and demand for this material grows exponentially, it has become a challenge to increase its production at a time when climate-related problems represent a major global concern. The two main CO2 contributors in this process are fossil fuel combustion to heat the rotary kiln and the chemical reaction associated with the calcination process, in the production of the clinker, the main component of OPC. The current entry presents a critical review of the existent alternative clinker technologies (ACTs) that are under an investigation trial phase or under restricted use for niche applications and that lead to reduced emissions of CO2.
  • 1.7K
  • 24 Jan 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Opportunities for Catalytic Reactions and Materials in Buildings
Residential and commercial buildings are responsible for over 30% of global final energy consumption and accounts for ~40% of annual direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. Energy efficient and sustainable technologies are necessary to not only lower the energy footprint but also lower the environmental burden. Many proven and emerging technologies are being pursued to meet the ever-increasing energy demand. Catalytic science has a significant new role to play in helping address sustainable energy challenges, particularly in buildings, compared to transportation and industrial sectors. Thermally driven heat pumps, dehumidification, cogeneration, thermal energy storage, carbon capture and utilization, emissions suppression, waste-to-energy conversion, and corrosion prevention technologies can tap into the advantages of catalytic science in realizing the full potential of such approaches, quickly, efficiently, and reliably. Catalysts can help increase energy conversion efficiency in building related technologies but must utilize low cost, easily available and easy-to-manufacture materials for large scale deployment. This entry presents a comprehensive overview of the impact of each building technology area on energy demand and environmental burden, state-of-the-art of catalytic solutions, research, and development opportunities for catalysis in building technologies, while identifying requirements, opportunities, and challenges.
  • 1.6K
  • 18 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Microwave Irradiation and Wastewater
Every year, the human impact on the world’s water sources becomes more pronounced. One of the triggers to this increase is the use of ineffective wastewater and sludge treatment systems. Recently, the number of studies of microwave processing in handling liquid municipal and industrial waste has increased. This paper discusses heat treatment, change in properties, decomposition of substances, removal of metals, demulsification, pyrolysis, biogas processing, disinfection, and other topics. 
  • 1.6K
  • 04 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Solid Waste Management
Disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) is one of the significant global issues that is more evident in developing nations. One of the key methods for disposing of the MSW is locating, assessing, and planning for landfill sites.  Due to rapidly expanding global urbanization, associated lack of resources, and inadequate urban waste management, MSW issues and management concerns are on the rise. Over a third of total municipal waste out of two billion tons generated remains uncollected worldwide. MSW is collected and disposed of at certain locations or burnt down in most developing nations. Landfill sites for solid waste must be inspected in terms of all requirements to reduce economic and environmental expenses.
  • 1.6K
  • 17 Jun 2022
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