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Topic Review
Status and Challenges of Low Carbon Building Design
Excessive carbon emissions are causing the problems of global warming and the greenhouse effect, which urgently need to be controlled worldwide. It is crucial to reduce the carbon emissions of the construction industry as it is one of the main sources. Carbon is generated at all phases of the building life cycle, including in material production, building design, and building operation and maintenance. Notably, building design has various extents of influence on carbon emissions at each phase, for which a low carbon method urgently needs to be explored. The challenges of building design are as follows: lack of (1) a comprehensive standard system considering different factors, (2) lack of a carbon emission calculation method for the design phase, and a (3) no real-time optimization model aiming at carbon reduction. The path of “standard-calculation-prediction-optimization”(SCPO) for future building design is proposed to address these challenges. It takes standard system as the framework, the carbon calculation method as the foundation, the prediction model as the theory, and the low carbon building as the objective.
  • 2.0K
  • 28 Feb 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.
  • 2.0K
  • 18 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Characteristics and Hazards of Lead–Zinc Tailings
Lead–zinc tailings are the typical solid wastes in mines with high yield and low utilization rates in some countries. They are mainly stockpiled in tailings reservoirs, occupying massive land resources and threatening the health of the environment. 
  • 2.0K
  • 17 Jan 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.
  • 2.0K
  • 26 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Earthquake Consideration in Architectural Design: Guidelines for Architects
The need for architects and engineers to take earthquake resilience into account in their designs is becoming increasingly critical as urbanization keeps growing and more people move into earthquake-prone areas. Architectural earthquake-resistant designs are necessary to protect building integrity and occupant safety during seismic disasters.
  • 1.9K
  • 21 Sep 2023
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. 
  • 1.9K
  • 24 May 2022
Topic Review
Recycled Concrete Aggregates Applications in Asphalt Paving
The sustainability of road pavements is highly influenced by the proper selection of the materials used in the production and construction. The material circularity principle aims to completely or partially replace traditional aggregates and fillers with wastes or by-products. Adapting asphalt mixtures to incorporate waste materials reduces the consumption of naturally mined materials, minimizing the carbon footprint and pavement industry’s impact on the environment. Furthermore, the use of waste materials minimizes landfill volumes and limits the disposal of waste produced from various sources. Thus, this document discusses the use of recycled concrete aggregates (RCA) from construction and demolition waste (CDW) as alternative aggregates for application in asphalt paving.
  • 1.9K
  • 06 May 2022
Topic Review
Façade Defects and Inspection Practices
The increasing number of accidents arising from falling objects from the façade of tall buildings has attracted much attention globally. To regulators, a preventive approach based on a mandatory periodic façade inspection has been deemed as a necessary measure to maintain the functionality and integrity of the façade of tall buildings.
  • 1.9K
  • 30 Aug 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
From Bioinspiration to Biomimicry in Architecture: Opportunities and Challenges
The term “bioinspiration” defines a creative approach based on the observation of biological principles and transfer to design. Biomimicry is the recent approach, which describes a large field of scientific and technical activities dealing with an interdisciplinary cooperation between biology and other fields with the goal of solving practical problems addressing innovation or sustainable development. Architecture has been influenced by many aspects of natural and social sciences, among these, biology is currently blending into design activities. Bioinspiration has evolved and shifted architectural practices towards numerous innovative approaches through different bioarchitectural movements from the past until the present. However, there is a blur of biomimicry within bioinspiration in architecture between the direct copy of mere natural forms and the true understanding of biological principles, which is the pivot of sustainable development. The main challenge remains in the gap between the profound knowledge of biology, its related scientific fields and the creative process of architectural design, including cross-disciplinary collaboration between architects and biologists. This entry presents main bioarchitectural movements and how it leads to today’s biomimicry. It proposes to define biomimicry methodologies and how this approach applies to architectural design contexts through the study of existing case studies. The opportunities, challenges and the future outlook of the field will also be discussed.
  • 1.9K
  • 03 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Digital Preservation for UNESCO Architectural Heritage
Architectural heritage includes built structures that are of outstanding value of natural and cultural identity and require conservation, preservation, presentation and transmission to the future generations. In this regard, UNESCO has enlisted six World Heritage Sites in Pakistan that need to be preserved. Moreover, the heritage sites are undergoing theft, vandalism, natural decay and other socio-cultural harms. One of the state-of-the-art methodologies is the digital preservation of the historic sites. Amongst the various available computer technologies, photogrammetry is the quickest and most cost-effective method that can be used for digital preservation. The research will focus on the digital preservation of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which is an emerging trend in an architectural context. Developing countries have limited funds and resources and most historic sites are being neglected by the lack of financial resources. This research suggests digital preservation as an emerging solution, identifies its challenges and suggests photogrammetry as a cost-effective solution to six UNESCO enlisted historic sites of Pakistan. It also suggests that once digitally recorded, information of historic sites can also be used in diverse applications to generate further finances. 
  • 1.9K
  • 19 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Fabrication Techniques Using Myco-Materials
Within Euro-centric traditions of architecture, the significance of a building is often tied to its permanence. The Pantheon in Rome, for example, is a nearly 2000-year-old cementitious dome structure, whose resilience to time elevates it to a monumental status. Notwithstanding the significance of cultural and economic factors associated with the need for permanent buildings and structures, there is a doubt on whether all buildings should be assembled with the goal of being permanent. Globally, the lifespans of buildings are rapidly decreasing. The average lifespan of buildings in China was reported to be 34 years, and 25 years for residential buildings in Japan. To great detriment, buildings are more than ever being demolished prematurely and yet, use materials that are manufactured with energy-intensive processes and are expensive or impractical to recycle. In the United States alone, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported there was 600 million tons of construction and demolition waste generated in 2018. Structural materials, including wood, and architectural metals, such as steel, copper, and brass, are valuable commodities that can be reused and recycled. However, in present-day architectural assemblies, these materials nearly ubiquitously inter-face with expanded foams, plastics, and resins, sometimes in irreversible composites. For example, wood is widely treated with synthetic resins and glues to increase its resistance to decay or structural performance.
  • 1.9K
  • 28 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Shelter Self-Recovery
The term “self-recovery” is used in the humanitarian shelter and settlements sector to mean the process whereby disaster-affected households repair, build, or rebuild their homes using their own resources supplemented with assistance from humanitarian organizations. 
  • 1.8K
  • 01 Jul 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. 
  • 1.8K
  • 04 Aug 2021
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Sustainable Architecture–What’s Next?
Sustainable architecture encompasses more than energy efficiency, zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emission or renewable energy use in the built environment. It also needs to alleviate overall impacts on the natural environment or ecosystem that surrounds it. It may be argued that primitive vernacular architecture (architecture without architects) built and operated using local techniques and resources alone can be considered to be sustainable. Yet later, after the 1992 Rio Conference and its declarations, more specific definitions emerged putting weight on the rational use of land area, materials and energy, preferably local, as well as area efficient planning, economy and recyclability. The advantage of this is to reduce the ecological footprint of buildings and the climate gas emissions from a sector that represents 35–50 percent of global climate gas emissions, depending on how one counts. This paper clarifies concepts, questions cemented truths and points a way forward by asking; what’s next?
  • 1.8K
  • 13 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Sustainability Requirements of Residential Buildings
The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing about changes, and alongside these, we can alter the way we design our living spaces. The need for a healthy and comfortable living space is essential to mental, physical well-being, and personal comfort. This entry shows how is COVID-19 Experience Transforming Sustainability Requirements of Residential Buildings.
  • 1.8K
  • 27 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Visualization Techniques in Building Energy Simulation and Monitoring
Data visualization has become relevant in the framework of the evolution of big data analysis. Being able to understand data collected in a dynamic, interactive, and personalized way allows for better decisions to be made when optimizing and improving performance. Although its importance is known, there is a gap in the research regarding its design, choice criteria, and uses in the field of building energy consumption. Therefore, the state-of-the-art of visualization techniques used in the field of energy performance, in particular by considering two types of building analysis: simulation and monitoring are discussed. Likewise, data visualizations are categorized according to goals, level of detail and target users. Visualization tools published in the scientific literature, as well as those currently used in the IoT platforms and visualization software, were analyzed. The overview can be used as a starting point when choosing the most efficient data visualization for a specific type of building energy analysis.
  • 1.7K
  • 09 Mar 2023
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Japanese Prefabricated Housing Manufacturers
Japanese prefabricated housing manufacturers have gained international recognition for their innovative approaches to the whole design process, ranging from initial design to innovative cutting-edge technologies, state-of-the-art automated production lines, meticulous workmanship, and mass customisation. In this entry, three manufacturers (Daiwa House, Sekisui House, and Misawa Homes) were selected as case studies for close examination. By studying these leading companies, researchers and industry professionals can gain valuable insights into best practices, challenges, and innovations within the Japanese prefabricated housing sector. The research methods involved a desktop study of available information on websites, articles, and reports, as well as undertaking two study tours on residential sustainable design in Japan in 2022 and 2023. These three manufacturers were discussed and compared with respect to their development trajectories, design customisation, research capabilities and technological advancements, sustainable initiatives and procurement, as well as their after-sale services. They have demonstrated their adaptability and flexibility in response to natural disasters and the transformation of the needs in society. They are all keen on reducing the environmental impacts of their work towards zero carbon emissions and a sustainable future.
  • 1.7K
  • 12 Jul 2024
Topic Review
Robots in Building Inspection and Monitoring
Regular inspection and monitoring of buildings and infrastructure, that is collectively called the built environment herein, is critical. The built environment includes commercial and residential buildings, roads, bridges, tunnels, and pipelines. Automation and robotics can aid in reducing errors and increasing the efficiency of inspection tasks. As a result, robotic inspection and monitoring of the built environment has become a significant research topic in recent years.
  • 1.7K
  • 21 Apr 2023
Topic Review
External Horizontal Fixed Shading Devices
Solar protection is a passive strategy that directly influences thermal and visual comfort as well as heating, cooling, and lighting energy consumption of buildings. Using shading devices can produce some conflicts, such as the contradiction between winter requirements, summer comfort, and luminous comfort. This is why the shading device choice is a necessary issue for building design, especially in a hot and dry climate. Optimal solar protection must provide a maximum protection during the overheating period while permitting solar radiation penetration during the winter.
  • 1.7K
  • 21 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Molybdenum Tailings in Concrete Manufacturing
Dealingwithmineral tailings is one of themost important topics for solving the environmental problems in the mining industry. Among the techniques converting stacked molybdenum tailings to reusable cleaner products, one of the most effective ones is to use molybdenum tailings in concrete productions. The physical properties including density, microscopic structure and finesse module, and chemical composition of molybdenum tailings are similar with those of natural sand. The radionuclide assessment of molybdenum tailing meets the requirements for using as structural materials. Therefore, Molybdenum tailing is suitable to be used as the replacement of cement and fine aggregates in mortarand concrete. Based on the results of strength and duration performance comparison, the usage of molybdenum tailing as a replacement of natural sand is a more feasible way than that of ground super-fine molybdenum tailings in cement binder. It is feasible to use molybdenum tailings as fine aggregate in the preparation of structural concrete. When the amount of ground super-finemolybdenum tailings replacing cement is less than 10%, it is beneficial to improve the freeze-thaw and carbonization resistance of the concrete.
  • 1.7K
  • 30 Oct 2020
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