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This work investigated future building resilience, regarding thermal comfort, energy, health, and accommodating user behaviours and individual requirements by comparing mixed mode (MM) and fully air conditioned (HVAC) offices. Recently, offices are designed, as a fully HVAC sealed-box, while no particular guidelines or standards cover MM buildings. Although providing adaptive opportunities was demanded by occupants and predicted as an important asset for future offices; recently, centrally-operated systems are replacing them. In this work, MM and HVAC offices were compared using field studies of thermal comfort on 13 office buildings with overall 4,776 datasets in three countries: Japan, Sweden and Norway. Statistical analysis was applied on the Japanese datasets, while visual thermal landscaping (VTL) on the Swedish and Norwegian offices. The MM building had 16% higher overall comfort, 32% satisfaction and health conditions, as compared to the HVAC building. However, extra care is needed in designing MM buildings and user-friendly thermal controls, as they have the potential to be energy efficient by using natural ventilation and a variety of adaptive opportunities to achieve comfort. Overall, MM buildings were found more resilient regarding thermal comfort, energy, health, coping with future pandemics (e.g. COVID), and accommodating individual needs, as compared to HVAC buildings.

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There are now more than four million refugees living in camps around the world. The majority of such camps are within inhospitable environments, often with extreme climates. This paper focuses on the thermal conditions of shelters in the Azraq refugee camp (Jordan), subject to an arid climate with high temperatures during the hot season. Due to political and other sensitivities, whole-, or multi-year monitoring of occupied shelters—and hence the empirical determination of overheating—is difficult. Instead, internal conditions in the shelters were monitored for three weeks in summer and used to validate computer models of the accommodation. These models were then used to generate annual predictions of overheating assessed through overheating criteria based on thermal discomfort and physiological indicators of heat stress. Building on these results, the performance of alternative designs specifications or shelter operation strategies were investigated through parametric analysis. The results show maximum indoor temperatures over 45°C. Overheating thresholds were exceeded for more than 20% of the year and physiological indicators suggest the possibility of health-threatening conditions. The use of alternative designs and strategies reduced overheating to nearly 2% of the year, with a steep reduction of severe heat stress indicators.

Hot arid areas are endowed with an abundance of clear skies. Thus, the solar energy available can significantly raise the temperature of interior spaces and also result in an uncomfortable visual environment. External perforated solar screens have been used to control solar penetration through windows. Such screens can also serve a social function, that of maintaining privacy. This paper focuses on a special case of girls’ schools in Saudi Arabia, where the privacy issue is critical due to socio-cultural and religious beliefs. Windows in girls’ schools facing public spaces are typically covered by dark opaque film to maintain privacy. This window treatment results in overreliance on artificial lighting, and in a corresponding increase in energy use. The performance of screens can be affected by many parameters, namely: perforation rate, depth ratio, shape, reflectivity of colour, aspect ratio of openings. This paper looks at how different Aspect ratios affect the performance of screens by simulating a range of cases of different aspect ratios, using the Daylight Dynamic Performance Metrics approach (DDPM). Results recommend using 1:1 aspect ratio for the south orientation whereas using different aspect ratios for the North and West orientations provide better daylight levels in the studied context.

This paper explores the applicability of the LEED certification system through the case study of Puerto Rico (P.R.), a United States (U.S.) Commonwealth island in the Caribbean, where LEED has become widely recognized as a standard because of the geopolitical relationship with the mainland. Although LEED is used internationally, it was initially developed by the U.S. Green Building Council as a tool to measure building performance in a modern American urban environment with temperate climate, a steady economy and easy access to technology. Furthermore, regionalization strategies such as Regional Priority Credits (RPCs) and Alternate Compliance Paths (ACPs), do not address the sociocultural reality of many regions. Therefore, the focus of this research is to analyse what indicators should be added, modified or substituted to develop a revised LEED model for the specific sociocultural context of P.R.? A mixed methods research will be used to compare LEED criteria with Sustainable Assessment Systems (SAS) such as the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, the Living Building Challenge and SB Tool. Also, SAS in tropical countries such as Singapore (BCA Green Mark), Costa Rica (RESET) and India (TERI-GRIHA) will be examined. Case studies will be analysed with a main focus in Schools.

With growing concerns for enhancing sustainability, much attention has being paid to benchmarking performance in buildings. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of three rating systems that have been widely adopted for over a decade in Australia namely: (i) mandatory compliance under Section J (Energy Efficiency provisions) in the National Construction Code of Australia (NCC), (ii) a voluntary design rating tool - Green Star, and (iii) a voluntary operational rating tool-National Australian Building Environmental Rating Scheme (NABERS). The paper builds on the authors’ experience in building performance simulation, rating tool design, practice consultancy and post occupancy evaluations of buildings. It presents a detailed analysis of the rating tools with respect to the alignment between what is being assessed, how it is assessed and administered and the impact on design process and performance outcomes in buildings. The paper assesses the successes and shortcomings of the rating tools to demonstrate the potential for design and post occupancy rating tools to influence market behaviour and building performance and argues for increasingly stringent approaches to get to net zero emissions.

By the development of the industrial technology, the greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions increased, which contributed to the phenomena of climate change. This research is concerned with using the renewable energy source of wind farms as a tool to reaching zero carbon dioxide gases emissions. This is also part of the new Egyptian vision that aims to increase wind power capacity to 20% by 2020.In line with this vision, the aim of the research is to find the suitable lands in Egypt to accommodate wind farms in Egypt. With the variety of variables affecting wind farms' locations as well as the density of current land uses in Egypt, it is important to find the suitable tool that could conduct these types of analysis. The research used the land suitability analysis conducted by the geographical information systems (GIS), in which multi criteria could be used to identify the appropriate locations. Different variables affecting the presence of wind farms could be added and overlaid in GIS including wind speed maps, wind directions map, and topography maps. The findings of this research help identifying the suitable locations in Suez Governorate in Egypt that could accommodate wind farms.

Daylighting can significantly affect human health & well-being in buildings. This article presents an experiment of the impact of several coloured/neutral glazing systems on visual performance, alertness, mood and wellbeing of occupants in a daylit office in Beijing, China. From 10:00 to 16:50 in four days of spring 2016, a total of 15 participants (age: 28.53±5.07) attended the experiment. Both visual and non-visual performances have been assessed using subjective evaluation measures. In the meantime the daylighting/colour conditions were also recorded. It has been found: the bronze glazing was given the least preference when compared with the blue and clear glazing; the blue glazing can achieve similar visual and non-visual performance as the clear glazing, even though there were big differences of spectral transmittances in between. In addition, this study indicated that further investigations would be required to clarify the preference of glazing colour, taking into account human-beings' biological performances, cultural and ethnic backgrounds.