Preface of the 1st International Online Conference on Buildings (IOCBD 2023) ^†

The first International Online Conference on Buildings with a focus on advances in building structures, materials, repair/renovation, energy, environment, systems, architecture, urban planning, and construction management was held on 24–26 October 2023. The main purpose of the conference was to promote the use of recent advances in all building-related issues, address challenging problems, share the latest scientific innovations, and shape the future of building-related technologies and processes.

This conference was an excellent opportunity for building researchers and scientists to interact with each other, communicate with colleagues, learn from each other, share ideas and experiences, jointly solve problems, and suggest alternative solutions for a better future in the building industry. A distinct advantage of this virtual international conference was that the participants were not required to travel and could simply attend the conference regardless of their location. Participants did not need to seek financial support for travel, nor did they need to leave the comfort of their home, office, and/or family to book a trip and, consequently, adjust to the corresponding time zone.

In the virtual conference setting, while the presenters could deliver live and pre-recorded presentations simultaneously, the participants could contribute to the discussion and provide feedback orally by using the “Chat” and “Reaction” functions.

The main topics of this conference covered the following:

• Building structures;
• Building materials;
• Building repair and renovation;
• Energy consumption in building construction and operation;
• The environmental impacts of buildings;
• Buildings’ physics and building systems;
• Architecture and building design;
• Tall and super-tall buildings;
• Urban planning;
• Building construction management;
• Computer applications and digitization in building processes.

This conference contained the following five sessions, corresponding to the five sections of the journal Buildings:

S1.

Building Structures;

S2.

Architectural Design, Urban Science, and Real Estate;

S3.

Building Materials, and Repair & Renovation;

S4.

Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems;

S5.

Construction Management, and Computers & Digitization.

In these sessions, the following invited speakers made keynote presentations at the beginning of each session about the topics directly relevant to each session:

• Prof. Dr. Maria Teresa De Risi, University of Naples Federico II, Italy, “Seismic retrofit of Italian pre-‘70 RC buildings by solving shear failures”.
• Prof. Dr. Derek Clements-Croome, University of Reading, UK, and Dr. Yangang Xing, Nottingham Trent University, UK, “Biophilic Design for health and wellbeing”.
• Dr. Antonio Formisano, University of Naples Federico II, Italy, “Hemp-based systems as new building products and seismic retrofit interventions of existing buildings”.
• Prof. Dr. Francesco Clementi, Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy, “Exploiting artificial intelligence to build realistic numerical models: a digital twin application in structural health monitoring”.
• Prof. Dr. Benedetto Nastasi, University of Rome, Italy, “Hydrogen in building energy transition”.
• Dr. Alessandro Cannavale, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy, “Novel chromogenic devices for energy efficiency and visual comfort”.
• Dr. Juneseok Yang, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA, “Factors that affect delay analysis in construction projects”.

All session chairs are recognized for leading the efforts to organize the sessions and facilitating discussion and the exchange of ideas during the sessions. The expert referees who reviewed all the papers submitted to the conference are gratefully acknowledged for making sure the professional and scientific standards of Buildings were thoroughly met by the researchers who made presentations at the conference. All participants are acknowledged for attending the conference and for their valuable contributions to the conference. Last but not least, thanks are due to the Buildings staff for their effective and methodical administrative and support efforts.