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Buildings
Special Issues
Nature-Based Solutions to Mitigate the Effects of Climatic Changes
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Nature-Based Solutions to Mitigate the Effects of Climatic Changes

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Architectural Design, Urban Science, and Real Estate".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (21 March 2024) | Viewed by 5732

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Zahra Jandaghian

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6, Canada
Interests: climate resiliency of built environment; nature-based solutions; buildings’ decarbonization; climate change; urban heat islanding; urban flooding
Prof. Dr. Umberto Berardi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Canada Research Chair in Building Science, BeTOP Lab, Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
Interests: energy-efficient buildings; nearly zero-energy buildings; energy storage; advanced materials; nanotechnologies; phase change materials; climate change; resilient buildings
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The growing frequency and cost of climatic disasters demonstrate the vulnerability of built infrastructure. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are being recommended to mitigate climatic impacts, such as extreme heat, causing urban heat islanding (UHI), and extreme precipitation, causing urban flooding (UF). NBS can manage and restore nature in order to enhance the resiliency of communities and built infrastructure. NBS tend to perform well across a wide range of conditions and can generate many co-benefits for adapting to a changing climate, such as carbon sequestration, water purification, green growth, the increased biodiversity of habitats, new or improved recreational facilities, mental well-being benefits, and job creation during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the Guest Editors for this Special Issue, entitled “Nature-Based Solutions to Mitigate the Effects of Climatic Changes”, we cordially invite you to submit your up-to-date articles related to this topic including, but not limited to, the following aspects:

  • The climate resiliency of built environments;
  • Nature-based solutions in built environments;
  • Sustainability assessment at the building, community and city levels;
  • Green technologies and smart cities;
  • The decarbonization of buildings and communities;
  • Net-zero energy and energy-efficient infrastructures;
  • Mitigation strategies to lessen urban heat islanding (UHI) and urban flooding (UF) impacts;
  • Adaptation techniques to decrease the UHI and UF in built environment.

Dr. Zahra Jandaghian
Prof. Dr. Umberto Berardi
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. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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

  • climate resiliency of built environment
  • nature-based solutions
  • buildings’ decarbonization
  • climate change
  • urban heat islanding
  • urban flooding
  • mitigation strategies
  • adaptation techniques
  • energy efficiency
  • net-zero energy buildings

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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29 pages, 8508 KiB  
Article
The Development of Health-Based Overheating Limit Criteria for School Buildings
by Abdelaziz Laouadi, Lili Ji, Zahra Jandaghian, Michael A. Lacasse and Liangzhu Wang
Buildings 2024, 14(1), 165; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14010165 - 09 Jan 2024
Viewed by 852
Abstract
Overheating in school buildings can negatively affect the cognitive learning performance of particularly young students whose thermoregulation systems are still developing. However, currently, in schools, issues related to overheating have been addressed by limiting the exposure time to thermal discomfort. In this paper, [...] Read more.
Overheating in school buildings can negatively affect the cognitive learning performance of particularly young students whose thermoregulation systems are still developing. However, currently, in schools, issues related to overheating have been addressed by limiting the exposure time to thermal discomfort. In this paper, the development of a general procedure that combines building and bioheat simulations to evaluate overheating risk in schools and generate health-based overheating limit criteria that may be applied in Canadian schools is described. General school building models, having either old or new constructions, were created based on a primary school building and successfully calibrated using field measurements of indoor temperature and humidity and published building energy use intensity data. Three sets of two limit criteria (exposure duration and severity of overheating) that account for the personal exposure conditions of students in primary, middle, and secondary schools were developed by limiting the body dehydration of students during extreme overheating events. Comparing the proposed limit criteria with the hour of exceedance criterion revealed interesting relationships between them, suggesting the proposed limit criteria as a benchmark for the comfort-based criteria, particularly for the more vulnerable primary and middle schools. The proposed procedure with the obtained overheating limit criteria is intended to be applied in any field or simulation study to assess the risk of overheating in similar school buildings under any local prevailing climate. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nature-Based Solutions to Mitigate the Effects of Climatic Changes)
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Review

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26 pages, 2409 KiB  
Review
Increasing Solar Reflectivity of Building Envelope Materials to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands: State-of-the-Art Review
by Bahador Ziaeemehr, Zahra Jandaghian, Hua Ge, Michael Lacasse and Travis Moore
Buildings 2023, 13(11), 2868; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings13112868 - 16 Nov 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1996
Abstract
The Urban Heat Island (UHI), a consequence of urban development, leads to elevated temperatures within cities compared to their rural counterparts. This phenomenon results from factors such as urban designs, anthropogenic heat emissions, and materials that absorb and retain solar radiation in the [...] Read more.
The Urban Heat Island (UHI), a consequence of urban development, leads to elevated temperatures within cities compared to their rural counterparts. This phenomenon results from factors such as urban designs, anthropogenic heat emissions, and materials that absorb and retain solar radiation in the built environment. Materials commonly used in cities, like concrete, asphalt, and stone, capture solar energy and subsequently emit it as heat into the surroundings. Consequently, this phenomenon amplifies summertime cooling energy demands in buildings. To mitigate the UHI impacts, various mitigation strategies have emerged that include but are not limited to using higher solar reflectivity materials, known as “cool materials”, and increasing vegetation and greenery in urban areas. Cool materials have high reflectivity and emissivity, effectively reflecting solar radiation while emitting absorbed heat through radiative cooling. Increasing the solar reflectivity of building envelope materials is a promising sustainable solution to lessen the UHI effects. This state-of-the-art review summarizes the UHI causes and effects, states the mitigation strategies, describes the cool building envelope materials, explains the solar reflectivity index measurements, indicates the building and micro-climate simulations, highlights the performance evaluation of using cool building envelope materials, points out the research gaps, and proposes future research opportunities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nature-Based Solutions to Mitigate the Effects of Climatic Changes)
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18 pages, 2795 KiB  
Review
Low-Sloped Rooftop Storm-Water Detention Assembly to Mitigate Urban Flooding
by Zahra Jandaghian, Yingxin Zhu, James Saragosa, Hitesh Doshi and Bas Baskaran
Buildings 2023, 13(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings13010008 - 21 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1805
Abstract
Low-sloped roofs such as commercial and high-rise buildings in a dense urban area provide vast “unused” surfaces that can be used to manage storm-water and mitigate urban flooding. Storm-water Detention Assembly (SDA) known as “blue roof” exerts advanced drainage technologies and operational strategies [...] Read more.
Low-sloped roofs such as commercial and high-rise buildings in a dense urban area provide vast “unused” surfaces that can be used to manage storm-water and mitigate urban flooding. Storm-water Detention Assembly (SDA) known as “blue roof” exerts advanced drainage technologies and operational strategies to store-and-release storm-water during and after heavy rainfall events. SDA can reduce peak flow and decrease storm-water run-off volume. However, the SDA application is limited due to the lack of science-based regulatory requirements. This paper introduces SDA, summarizes the benefits and challenges of this system, reviews the existing code specifications on roofing drain systems, and documents the criteria to design and construct SDA. With this systematic approach, the missing links are identified that shall form code change request for possible inclusion in the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) and National Plumping Code of Canada (NPC). In addition, a road map is stated to calculate and benchmark the drain requirements on low-sloped roofs for a given design climatic load. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nature-Based Solutions to Mitigate the Effects of Climatic Changes)
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