Submit to Special Issue Submit Abstract to Special Issue Review for Sustainability Propose a Special Issue

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Special Issue "Resilient Built Environment and Public Health"

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers
Planned Papers

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Pollution Prevention, Mitigation and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 29 February 2024 | Viewed by 3583

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Shamia Hoque

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
Interests: built environment and infection transmission; air pollution control technologies; fate and transport of contaminants in built environments; computational fluid dynamics; environmental fluid mechanics; neural networks for environmental health and health care

Dr. Mark H. Weir

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Division of Environmental Health Sciences, College of Public Health, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Interests: quantitative microbial risk assessment; complex systems modeling and analytics; health effect optimization through environmental and engineering controls; water treatment technology and policy; uncertainty in decision analyses

Dr. Jade M. Mitchell

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Biosystems & Agricultural Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
Interests: risk assessment; decision analysis; Bayesian statistics; dose-response and exposure modeling; risk management and environmental policy

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

COVID-19, more frequent extreme weather events, climate change and increasing energy demands have made the requirements of a resilient built environment multi-faceted and urgent. The built environment needs to adapt to stresses, both intensified current stresses and new ones, all of which are induced from multiple fronts. This will require changes in infrastructure ranging from transportation to homes, offices, utilities and health care facilities, as well as the social infrastructure supporting these systems. Even more significant, a resilient built environment must anticipate, respond and adapt to emerging risks. To do so there is a need to understand the fundamental physics governing the heat and mass transfer of outdoor/indoor environments, and their interaction with the surroundings. It is essential to identify, measure and correlate the associated risks for the different stressors. These will require assessment tools ranging from field measurements to full-scale and reduced-scale laboratory measurements as well as numerical methods. Gaining insight into how the range of factors play a central role in designing and implementing a resilient built environment can help inform public policy, which can shape better decisions and responses for the next adverse event beyond the pandemic.

The Special Issue aims to summarize the latest ideas and visions that will shape a built environment that is resilient and ensures the health and well-being of the occupants and users of the environment.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

Aerosols and built environment;
Indoor air quality and risk assessment;
Natural hazards and their impact on sustainable building design;
Health, wellness and infection transmission in built environments;
Assessment of building design supporting the health of occupants;
Materials for building construction that is adaptive to climate change;
Smart innovations for resilient built environment;
Exposure assessment of occupants in green buildings;
Balance of economic, environmental and health sustainability.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Shamia Hoque
Dr. Mark H. Weir
Dr. Jade M. Mitchell
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. Sustainability 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

Building ventilation; Recuperators; Air filters; Heat Pumps; Building Energy Simulation; System Sizing; System Optimization.

Published Papers (4 papers)

Download All Papers

Order results

Result details

Show export options Show export options

Select all

Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Open AccessArticle

Conceptualising a Model to Assess the Optimum Water Flow of Industrial Symbiosis (IS)

Harshini Mallawaarachchi

Gayani Karunasena

Yasangika Sandanayake

and

Chunlu Liu

Sustainability 2023, 15(11), 8627; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15118627 - 25 May 2023

Viewed by 558

Abstract

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) has obtained worldwide concern as a new initiative for achieving collaborative benefits through the exchange of resources including water among industries. Even though these initiatives became prominent as successful projects in the early stages, many of them have resulted in failures in the long term due to the absence of the prior evaluation and optimisation of identified water synergies in IS planning. Further, the main attention has been given to achieving cost reductions in individual plants rather than analysing the environmental benefits of IS networks that can be achieved through the maximum recovery of wastewater. The existing evaluation emphasises the need to have a standardised way to assess the optimum water flow of IS. Thus, the purpose is to conceptualise a model to assess the optimum water flow of IS based on secondary data analysis. A desk study and a detailed literature review were selected as suitable methods for reviewing the existing literature relating to water exchange in IS networks, water input and output flow, and optimisation methodologies. As the key findings derived through analysis, water inputs and outputs, a boundary for the selection of industrial entities, typical water synergies, and optimisation formulas were established. Finally, a conceptual model was developed to assess the optimum water flow of IS, which was evaluated through expert interviews to identify further improvements. The developed model forms a unique foundation for assessing the optimum water flow of IS, applying in any context subject to context-specific enhancements. Most importantly, the novelty can be highlighted as the consideration given to maximum wastewater recovery in achieving the reduction in the freshwater utilisation of industrial entities within the IS network. Nevertheless, this conceptual model is still at its early development stage, and it is subjected to more empirical testing and research for its practicality and further refinement as a way forward for the research. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resilient Built Environment and Public Health)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Open AccessArticle

Climate Change and Building Renovation: Effects on Energy Consumption and Internal Comfort in a Social Housing Building in Northern Italy

and

Sustainability 2023, 15(7), 5931; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15075931 - 29 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 623

Abstract

Climate change is becoming a crucial factor to consider within human activities and the building sector is particularly influenced by aspects of internal comfort and energy. In Italy, great attention has been paid to the energy refurbishment of buildings. However, such interventions are mostly focused on reducing heating energy consumption, thus neglecting summer season performance. Moreover, climate change is barely considered during the design phase. This issue is addressed in this work which analyzes some of the most common refurbishment interventions applied to a social housing building in Trieste, while also considering internal comfort during the summer season. A dynamic analysis of the building-plant system is carried out using EnergyPlus. Fanger, UTCI and the adaptive comfort models were used to represent internal health, while three TRY data sets were generated using two GCM–RCM projections to evaluate the influence of climate change. The results show that both building insulation and climatic change affect heating consumption reaching a 70% reduction. However, building insulation does not greatly affect internal comfort, although different models show different behavior to protect against external temperatures. On the contrary, climatic change influences the percentage of hours of discomfort, with a 20% increase for all of the models. The final consideration is that people’s internal health should always be considered when carrying out refurbishment activities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resilient Built Environment and Public Health)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Open AccessArticle

Energy Cost Assessment and Optimization of Post-COVID-19 Building Ventilation Strategies

Antiopi-Malvina Stamatellou

Olympia Zogou

and

Anastassios Stamatelos

Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 3422; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043422 - 13 Feb 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 829

Abstract

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic puts stress on the requirements of indoor air quality. Significant improvements in the design of building ventilation systems have become necessary, as this allows for the supply of higher quantities of outdoor air in buildings. Additional capital investment is necessary for increases in the size of ventilation fans and ducts, as well as for the installation of efficient air-to-air recuperators, to recover the enthalpy of the rejected air. To address the increased operation costs, smart strategies are necessary to make rational use of the ventilation system. The required modifications are studied in the example of an 18-zone office building located in Volos, Greece. The building’s energy performance is studied by means of transient simulation. Operation of the ground-coupled heat pump, the upgraded ventilation system and the high-performance recuperators and filters’ interactions is presented in detail at various time scales. The results show the effect of increased ventilation requirements of new and renovated office and commercial buildings in the post-COVID era. The added capital equipment and operation costs must be met with a strong and sustained engineering effort. Especially in the case of nZEB buildings, the protection of public health must be attained, with reduction of the added electricity consumption penalties, in order to keep the nZEB character of the building. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resilient Built Environment and Public Health)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Open AccessArticle

The Rising Damp in Venetian Masonry: Preliminary Results Comparing Laboratory Tests and Dynamic Simulations

and

Sustainability 2023, 15(1), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010076 - 21 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 889

Abstract

The control of moisture in the building sector represents a widespread issue and research topic, in terms of improving the quality of indoor space healthiness and energy performance. In Venice, rising damp and moisture phenomena are very diffused and difficult to solve, due to building structures and specific environmental conditions. All of the buildings and artefacts in the city are presently wall structures filled with bricks, which lean on relatively permeable soil, are exposed to an environment rich in saline aerosols, and are continuously lapped by floods and brackish water. The aim of this research was to analyze typical Venetian masonry walls affected by rising damp through the application of non-destructive methods, in order to understand and assess the behavior of construction materials in specific boundary conditions. The data given by non-destructive monitoring in mock-up masonries were compared with dynamic simulations to estimate the hygrothermal behavior and analyze the effect on different parameters, such as the physical properties of new and historical materials (i.e., density, thermal conductivity, etc.), the presence and type of plasters, and the kinds of traditional treatment applications. The evaluation of experimental data, supported by simulations provides to the literature an empirical comprehension of rising damp phenomena in real masonry toward careful heritage conservation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resilient Built Environment and Public Health)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options Show export options

Select all

Export citation of selected articles as:

Displaying articles 1-4

Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: Using Geographic Algorithms with Spatial Cluster Analysis to Improve Health Facility Interoperability in Epidemic Vaccination in Taoyuan, Taiwan
Authors: Loknath Chen
Affiliation: Biotechnology Department, Mingchuan University, Taiwan
Abstract: Since the end of 2019, the COVID-19 epidemic has spread around the world, causing serious impacts on global public health, lifestyle, economic and industrial development. Governments around the world have adopted unusual and different prevention and control measures for sudden infectious disease storms. It is mainly limited by the inequality of population, geographical environment, public health conditions, medical level, economic resources, and living habits, resulting in significant differences in the COVID-19 disaster situation. Scientists predict distance and intimacy are the main keys through many models of the spread of infectious diseases. The spatial cluster analysis and GIS technology were applied to identify high-risk infection areas with limited computer resources, and accurately distinguish areas where vaccines were allocated. Spatial-risk classification and priority order, for the continuous, discrete and cluster distributions of the population associated infective risk, were adopted with a time compatibility strategy. The algorithms support the risk communication of epidemiology for the allocating scarce medical resources to obstruct the infectious disease. The computation models of vaccine allocation strategy, which according to medical institutions, transportation sites, and international airport, point out the risk areas in Taoyuan city. Our goal is to minimize medical costs and effective management and use public health policies to maintain the operability of facilities and programs for the resilience of public health systems. The vaccine allocation strategy provided the distribution and vaccination of the vaccine can be completed quickly and effectively. Our computing implementation could assist the administration to manage the medical resource for quarantine and vaccination, also help people return to normal life as soon as possible for social development after the pandemic.

Title: A robust optimum water flow assessment model for industrial symbiosis: A systematic approach
Authors: Ms Harshini Mallawarachchi, Dr. Gayani Karunasena and Professor Chunlu Liu
Affiliation: Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Special Issue "Resilient Built Environment and Public Health"

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Published Papers (4 papers)

Research

Planned Papers

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI