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Applied Sciences
Special Issues
Building Resilient, Smart and Sustainable Communities: Latest Advances and Prospects
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Building Resilient, Smart and Sustainable Communities: Latest Advances and Prospects

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 May 2022) | Viewed by 7928

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Robert W. Peters

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-4440, USA
Interests: environmental sustainability; energy conservation in building infrastructure; condensate recovery in air handling units; vertical garden systems; vegetative roofs; stormwater management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Rouzbeh Nazari

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
Interests: urban and coastal resiliency; water resources and environment; stormwater management and assessing the impact of extreme weather events on the built environment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In 2050, around 68% of humanity will live in cities, according to the data from the U.N., that may consume 78% of energy and produce 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, in 2016, the U.N. itself improved the New Urban Agenda to advise countries on their urbanization processes. Given the destruction imposed by natural disasters, it is clear that community resiliency and sustainability need to be systematically studied and improved. This approach should consider how the three elements of a community, including its population, built environment (critical infrastructures), and the hazards/disasters, are intertwined. Advanced modeling and simulation paired with complex numerical analysis of the built environment and development of vulnerability indices allow for a comprehensive approach to prepare, adapt, and recover from natural hazards and disasters. This Special Issue aims to focus on connecting new smart methods and tools to communities that can be used to assess their vulnerability and provide recommendations for improving their resilience in order to minimize and manage risk from natural disasters and extreme events.

This Special Issue comprises selected papers focused on these different and multidisciplinary themes concerning materials, methods, resiliency, vulnerability, recovery, evacuation, energy conservation and efficiency, vegetated roof systems, water reuse in building infrastructures, indoor air quality (IAQ), and monitoring for more resilient, smart and sustainable communities.

Dr. Robert W. Peters
Dr. Rouzbeh Nazari
Guest Editors

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. Applied Sciences 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

  • resilient communities
  • smart cities
  • sustainability
  • vulnerability assessment
  • energy conservation and efficiency
  • vegetated gardens and roof structures

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 26358 KiB  
Article
A Hybrid ANN-GA Model for an Automated Rapid Vulnerability Assessment of Existing RC Buildings
by Mehmet Akif Bülbül, Ehsan Harirchian, Mehmet Fatih Işık, Seyed Ehsan Aghakouchaki Hosseini and Ercan Işık
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(10), 5138; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12105138 - 19 May 2022
Cited by 31 | Viewed by 2581
Abstract
Determining the risk priorities for the building stock in highly seismic-prone regions and making the final decisions about the buildings is one of the essential precautionary measures that needs to be taken before the earthquake. This study aims to develop an Artificial Neural [...] Read more.
Determining the risk priorities for the building stock in highly seismic-prone regions and making the final decisions about the buildings is one of the essential precautionary measures that needs to be taken before the earthquake. This study aims to develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-based model to predict risk priorities for reinforced-concrete (RC) buildings that constitute a large part of the existing building stock. For this purpose, the network parameters in the network structure have been optimized by establishing a hybrid structure with the Genetic Algorithm (GA). As a result, the ANN model can make accurate predictions with maximum efficiency. The suggested ANN model is a feedforward back-propagation network model. It aims to predict the risk priorities for 329 RC buildings in the most successful way, for which the performance score was calculated using the Turkey Rapid Evaluation Method (2013). In this paper, a GA-ANN hybrid model was implemented in which the ANN, using the most successful gene revealed by the model, produced successful results in calculating the performance score. In addition, the required input parameters for obtaining more efficient results in solving such a problem and the parameters that need to be used in establishing such an ANN network structure have been optimized. With the help of such a model, the operation process will be eliminated. The created hybrid model was 98% successful in determining the risk priority in RC buildings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Building Resilient, Smart and Sustainable Communities: Latest Advances and Prospects)
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19 pages, 6726 KiB  
Article
Performance of a Mid-Size Net-Zero Energy Solar House
by Hessam Taherian and Robert W. Peters
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(6), 3005; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12063005 - 15 Mar 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1902
Abstract
The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) was one of 16 collegiate teams from around the world that participated in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2017 competition. An interdisciplinary team of students from across the university was engaged in a 2-year [...] Read more.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) was one of 16 collegiate teams from around the world that participated in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2017 competition. An interdisciplinary team of students from across the university was engaged in a 2-year long process to design and build a house that is powered completely by solar power. The house was equipped to run all the typical appliances of an average modern house at similar levels on a conventional power grid. The net-zero house was built and tested on the UAB campus. Considering Birmingham’s weather, a safe room was built to ensure the safety of occupants during events of extreme weather, such as a tornado. A ductless HVAC unit consisting of an inverter-type 3-speed outdoor unit supplied refrigerant to four high-wall indoor units providing the primary source of space conditioning. To achieve a model of efficiency and cost effectiveness, the house incorporated a heavily insulated envelope and precise glazing protection. The roof, floor framing and walls had R-30 batt and foam insulation. With a design informed by southern vernacular language, the building is oriented to maximize solar access and to use roof planes for shading the majority of the year. Peak power generation of the panels was recorded at 9.6 kW. The home has a centralized energy management system that can provide access to energy consumption data and allow control of lighting, appliances, and plug loads remotely. Energy modeling showed that the annual electricity consumption for heating and cooling with variation in wall types were 8470 to 11,661 kWh. For the month of October, it was calculated varying from 683 to 763 kWh, with varying air changes per hour from 0 to 1.5. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Building Resilient, Smart and Sustainable Communities: Latest Advances and Prospects)
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20 pages, 4846 KiB  
Article
Comprehensive Flood Risk Assessment for Wastewater Treatment Plants under Extreme Storm Events: A Case Study for New York City, United States
by Qing Sun, Rouzbeh Nazari, Maryam Karimi, MD Golam Rabbani Fahad and Robert W. Peters
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(15), 6694; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11156694 - 21 Jul 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2639
Abstract
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the City of New York, United States, are particularly vulnerable to frequent extreme weather events, including storm surges, high-intensity rainfall, and sea level rise, and are also affected by the cascade of these events. The complex structural configuration [...] Read more.
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the City of New York, United States, are particularly vulnerable to frequent extreme weather events, including storm surges, high-intensity rainfall, and sea level rise, and are also affected by the cascade of these events. The complex structural configuration of WWTPs requires very fine-scale flood risk assessment, which current research has not pursued. We propose a robust technique to quantify the risk of inundations for the fourteen WWPTs through an automated sub-basin creation tool; 889 sub-basins were generated and merged with high-resolution building footprint data to create a comprehensive database for flood inundation analysis. The inundation depths and extents for the WWTPs and flood-prone regions were identified from hydrodynamic modeling of storm surge and sea level rise. The economic damage due to flooding for the WWTPs was also quantified using the HAZUS-MH model. Results indicated that the storm surges from various categories of hurricanes have the dominant impacts on flood depths around WWTPs, followed by high-intensity rainfall. Sea level rise was shown to have a relatively minor impact on flood depths. Results from economic damage analysis showed that the WWTPs are subjected to damage ranging from USD 60,000 to 720,000, depending on the size of the WWTP and the extremity of storm surge. The method of analyzing the inundation status of the research object through the sub-basin enables more accurate data to be obtained when calculating the runoff. It allows for a clearer view of the inundation status of the WWTPs when combined with the actual buildings. Using this database, predicting flood conditions of any extreme event or a cascade of extreme events can be conducted quickly and accurately. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Building Resilient, Smart and Sustainable Communities: Latest Advances and Prospects)
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