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Abstract The ecological and economic benefits of mycelium composites offer a promising opportunity for supporting sustainable development in Africa. This study focuses on assessing the environmental impact of mycelium composites for building and construction (MCBs) by conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) in the context of Africa. It is demonstrated that the potential environmental impact of MCBs is substantially influenced by the use and source of electrical power for autoclaves, incubators, and ovens, making the culturing and post-processing phases the major environmental hotspots. The impact of MCB production is also relative to the energy mix of specific countries, being higher in countries that rely on fossil fuel energy (e.g., South Africa) and lower in those that rely more on renewable sources (e.g., Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC). Furthermore, the impact of MCB production is found to be sensitive to travel distance, suggesting that situating production facilities closer to agricultural, agro-industrial, and/or forestry waste sources could be more beneficial than interregional sourcing, for example. It is also demonstrated that MCBs have the potential to be a more ecologically sustainable alternative to some conventional construction materials (e.g., concrete) over an entire life cycle. Based on the insights obtained from this LCA, some recommendations have been proposed to address potential environmental repercussions pre-emptively and proactively: this is particularly important for nations, mainly in the Global South, that exhibit low resilience to climate change due to limited economic resources. Furthermore, with the rapid expansion of mycelium composite technology, there is a need to increase awareness about its potential environmental impact and, ultimately, to mitigate its potential contribution to pressing environmental concerns (e.g., global warming and climate change). Consequently, this study also adds to the existing body of literature on LCA studies, delineating key factors for consideration in future LCA studies and providing guidance for the sustainable establishment and expansion of this technology.

The construction industry is among the most prominent contributors to global resource consumption, waste production, and greenhouse gas emissions. A pivotal step toward mitigating these sectoral impacts lies in the adoption of a circular production and consumption system. The use of alternative waste materials can mitigate landfill accumulation and the associated detrimental environmental effects. To highlight unconventional materials, this study began with a bibliometric assessment via a bibliography analyzis software called “Bibliometrix” (version 4.1.3). The outputs from the analyzis can assist in identifying research trends, gaps in literature and benchmark research performance. The search engine used for sourcing publications was Scopus, using the main criteria as “Waste materials used in building and construction”. The time-period analysed was from 2013 to 2023. The results included publications obtained in journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings. The assessment reviewed 6238 documents from 1482 sources. The results revealed an array of waste materials; however, rubber, textiles, and ceramics had a significant reduction in research attention. Rubber waste presents promising opportunities in civil concrete construction methods. The preparatory steps of textile fibres in composite materials are frequently disregarded, resulting in structural issues for the end-product. Obstacles persist in ceramic technology due to the absence of transparency, primarily because industry entities closely safeguard proprietary information. While sustainability research often emphasizes emissions, practical trials commonly revolve around integrating materials into current systems. A more comprehensive approach, contemplating the complete lifecycle of materials, could provide deeper insights into fostering sustainable construction practices. Researchers can use these findings when determining trends, research gaps, and future research directions.

Inspection of the technical condition of load-bearing structural elements of buildings and structures in the process of their construction and operation is an important issue at the present time. A fiber-optic monitoring system is proposed as a solution to the problem of early diagnosis of defects and damage to load-bearing building structures. A scheme has been developed for testing fiber-optic sensors, which make it possible to control the stress-strain state of monolithic reinforced concrete structures. For testing, a series of monolithic concrete beams of rectangular cross section has been made reinforced with fiber optics during their manufacturing. The values of mechanical stresses and deformations arising in beams under loading have been determined. Using the tested samples as an example, it has been established that the proposed fiber-optic monitoring system (FOMS) makes it possible to control stresses and deformations (and to predict the appearance and growth of cracks) in various building structures. The main element of the system is a hardware-software complex capable of estimating the parameters of a light wave at the output of the optical fiber. The distance from the installation site of the data processing unit to the measurement point can cover the area of 30 km. At this, fiber-optic sensors operate without additional power supply from a laser with the power of up to 30 mW. The proposed monitoring system has a low cost of one measurement point, it is easy to install, which is a good alternative to the electronic beacon-recorder device and the development of optical digital technologies in construction.

The construction industry is a key player in total energy consumption. The design and construction of buildings shall be executed to minimize their negative environmental impacts. Many research studies have focused on reducing operational energy in the past decades. As a result, the proportion of embodied energy in the life cycle energy use of buildings has increased. This research adopts a holistic review method to provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the literature related to embodied energy in the construction industry. A bibliometric analysis is applied to obtain 269 papers from the Web of Science database during 1996–2020. A scientometric analysis is adopted for 175 publications to identify the publication year and geographical distribution, journals, scholars, citations, and keywords of publications. Results showed that the publications originated from 47 countries, and they were published in 73 journals. The United States, China, and England dominate the research publications. This indicates a strong research collaboration between developing and developed countries. The embodied energy is the top keyword in the frequency of occurrence and relationships with other keywords. The primary research areas for this topic are sustainable construction materials, information technology, sensitivity analysis of environmental impact, building type and composition, life cycle energy use of buildings, estimation methods, and life cycle analysis. An in-depth qualitative discussion is conducted to discuss research topics, identify research gaps, and propose future research directions.

Modifications to improve the physical, thermal, and mechanical properties of gypsum ceiling composites can be made by adding bio-fillers. Adding 1 and 3 wt% of Typha angustifolia fiber in 1D, 2D, or 3D fiber orientations, and adding 20 or 50 wt% natural rubber-latex compound were embedded into gypsum ceiling composites using a casting process. The gypsum ceiling composites added 1 wt% Typha angustifolia fiber 3D orientation (Formula 6, G-3D-1 F) resulted in optimum conditions with high compressive stress, high nail tensile resistance, high thermal shock resistance, low thermal conductivity, and a light weight with values of 315.17 ± 27.40 N, 92.10 ± 3.78 N. The received samples (G-3D-1 F) were no cracking and fracturing after autoclave testing, and 0.0796 ± 0.0005 W/m.K, respectively, better than those of the reference sample (Formula1, G-ref). Furthermore, the received samples were compared to commercial insulation materials such as concrete block, earthenware brick, light concrete brick, and cement brick with thermal conductivity values of approximately 0.546, 0.473, 0.180, and 0.126 W/m.K, respectively. The tested gypsum ceiling composites can be applied for thermal insulation and as decorative materials for construction and building to reduce energy consumption. In addition, the developed gypsum ceiling composites are easy fabrication and operation, non-toxic, inexpensive, and light weight.

The purpose of this paper is determination the critical geometric dimensions of a three-dimensional vertical heated cavern. In this rate the convection's contribution to heat transfer will be limited due to thermal conductivity at a fixture temperature drop. The model validated and verified by comparison with the experimental results. А stable non-stationary flow regime is observed for Rayleigh number Ra = 15,000, because the temperature fields in different cross-sections of the flow coincide. For the flow with Rayleigh number Ra = 15,000, the nonstationary formulation without the turbulence model did not give the required convergence on residuals. So it was calculated by using the three-dimensional RANS approach closed with the k-w SST turbulence model. In this case the flow is unstable in the third direction, therefore it is impossible to consider the cavern as a heat insulator at numbers Ra = 10,000 and above.

The United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda, borne from the most inclusive policy dialogue ever, emphasized partnerships built upon collaboration to achieve sustainable goals, as documented in SDG17. However, the building and construction sector has been experiencing sustainability issues, leading to several traditional government-led initiatives in the built environment. The private sector is critical to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda by interacting with societies, governments, and other actors for a circular built environment. The circular economy (CE) is a paradigm that is becoming increasingly popular to drive the movement to sustainability, requiring the partnership of the private sector to be implemented successfully. However, the application of CE initiatives in the private sector engagement has received less attention. Recognizing the interaction of multiple parties’ influence on the uptake of a CE, this study thus seeks to examine the participation of the private sector in the CE in the built environment using a mixed review approach (scientometric and content analysis). The findings reveal that the private sector faces barriers in terms of financial and economic, institutional and technological, and political and regulatory factors. This research also identified areas for greater private sector involvement in CE initiatives in the built environment, such as resource reduction, sharing, and the adaptive reuse of existing buildings.

We study the natural oscillations of a rectangular plate, two adjacent edges of which are clamped, and the other two are free (CCFF-plate), as an element of many building structures. The deflection function is chosen as a sum of two hyperbolic trigonometric series. Both series obey the main equation of free vibration. Meeting all boundary conditions of a problem leads to an infinite system of homogeneous linear algebraic equations with respect to eight series coefficients. This system is transformed in two subsystems due to four basic coefficients, for which the iterative solution process is organized. Initial values of a pair of basic coefficient series are chosen randomly. Frequency values are chosen so that iterations coincide starting with a certain number. This provides non-trivial solutions of the reduced system. For the first eight obtained natural frequencies there have been presented relevant 3D mode shapes. The paper provides accuracy analysis and its comparison with other familiar results.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) regularly releases statistical information, for the whole of Australia, for public access. Building- and construction-related statistics are important to reflect the status of this pillar industry of Australia and help researchers, practitioners, and investors with decision-making. Due to complex retrieval hierarchy of ABS’s website and irregular update frequency, it is usually time-consuming to find relevant information. Moreover, browsing the raw data from ABS’s webpages could not provide the insights to the future. In this work, we applied techniques from computer science to help users in the building and construction domain to better explore the ABS statistics and forecast the future trends. Specifically, we built an integrated Web application that could help collect, sort, and visualize the ABS statistics in a user-friendly and customized way. Our Web application is publicly accessible. We further injected our insights into the Web application, based on the existing data by providing online forecasting on user’s interested information. To achieve this, we identified a series of related economic factors as features and adjusted a multi-variant, LSTM-based time series forecasting model by considering the most informative factors. We also compared our approach with the most widely used SARIMA-based forecasting model to show the effectiveness of the deep learning-based models. The forecast values are depicted at the end of the time series plots, selected by the users.

Over the years, China has contributed immensely to the development process of Ghana through foreign direct investments; providing financial aids’ improved management training skills, and the transfer of innovation and technological techniques. This research examines the relationship between China’s foreign direct investment and Ghana’s building and construction sector performance. By using a robust regression model, the results show that China’s FDI in Ghana’s building and construction sector has significant positive effect on the economic growth of Ghana due to strong increase in investors’ confidence in the Ghanaian economy. Thus, FDI contributes to economic growth when there is an improvement of the infrastructure and operational skills of the local building and construction companies. This will lead to the increase of revenue for citizens who are employed in this sector and thus leading to the overall economic development of the country.

In this article, we survey various non-contact, non-destructive testing methods by way of terahertz (THz) spectroscopy and imaging designed for use in various industrial sectors. A brief overview of the working principles of THz spectroscopy and imaging is provided, followed by a survey of selected applications from three industries—the building and construction industry, the energy and power industry, and the manufacturing industry. Material characterization, thickness measurement, and defect/corrosion assessment are demonstrated through the examples presented. The article concludes with a discussion of novel spectroscopy and imaging devices and techniques that are expected to accelerate industry adoption of THz systems.

Many definitions define Knowledge Management as capturing, organizing and storing knowledge by different methods from various sources and transforming it into enduring value. The knowledge management is one of the most important principles that companies must explore and use to gain the competitive advantage, even in buildings and construction industry. There are various projects of knowledge management for the BC industry. One such project is e-COGNOS. Its key issues are knowledge management in the construction domain and documents interdependencies and consistency across projects and between enterprises. At the Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia we are using very crude methods of knowledge management or we even can not call it a knowledge management. It is more or less information services or document management. With new technologies like Microsoft SharePoint services, we are hoping that we will be able to advance these old methods and use accumulated knowledge in a more sophisticated way.

This paper presents the SYDOX/MATCOMP/Xi project, funded by the French Ministry of Industry. The goal of the project was to provide the construction professionals with an on-line aid for component specification and selection at different levels of the construction life cycle. This two years project started in 1997 and involved several partners. This paper describes the main features of the information system: databases, query and communication systems. SYDOX(SYstème de DOnnées compleXes) is aimed at defining and demonstrating a prototype to access information about MATerials and COMPonents used in construction, implemented on a WWW server. Though the objective is general, the work was focused on a restricted sub-section of the construction domain. We describe the domain and the scope of the project, the starting point and the lessons learnt from the development of the prototype. We also propose some important ideas on which this research is based.