Sustainability and Indoor Environmental Quality

Dear Colleagues,

An intervention in the built environment can be sustainable if it has no negative impacts on health and the environment. In today’s era of extensive building construction and renovation, health and well-being criteria are often disregarded or only given secondary importance. Poor indoor air quality, dampness, pathogenic microbes/microbiome dysbiosis, excessive noise and poor room acoustics, lack of daylight, non-ergonomics, and several architectural barriers are problems of indoor environmental quality (IEQ), which occupants face on a daily basis. They are recognized as important risk factors for human health and must be prevented and controlled; otherwise, they may result in adverse health effects, sick building syndrome, or even building-related illness. Moreover, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that unhealthy living and work environments account for almost 23% of all deaths in the WHO European Region.

This Special Issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050) titled “Sustainability and Indoor Environmental Quality” provides an international forum for the dissemination of the latest original research, achievements, and developments in many areas of the built environment, sustainability, and all fields of IEQ. It covers the whole life cycle of residential and non-residential buildings and their operating systems. The Special Issue aims to provide a multidisciplinary forum for researchers, designers, users, and manufacturers involved in the different fields of sustainability and IEQ issues in relation to occupant health and comfort.

The Special Issue will publish articles in the following fields:

- assessment of sustainability aspects and building certification schemes

- indoor air quality; climate; ventilation efficiency concerning measured and/or simulated chemical pollutants; indoor-outdoor correlations

- ionizing and non-ionizing radiation (e.g., radon and progeny); dosimetry

- microbes' impacts on human health; characteristics of the microbiome; microbiome and environmental interactions and interventions (plants, pets, etc.); analysis tools

- noise in the living environment; noise issues related to operation equipment; room acoustics

- thermal comfort concerning sustainable design

- daylight for health and efficiency

- the influence of household activities, user behavior and habits, heating appliances, building materials, cleaning agents/air-fresheners/candles/ on indoor air quality (e.g., nano aerosols)

- mutual analysis of building energy efficiency and IEQ issues; the effect of construction materials (building type, age, etc.) on IEQ

- cost–benefit analyses; decision making in relation to IEQ

- risk assessment; health outcomes

- advanced measuring techniques; multisensory equipment

- efficiency of environmental health and engineering measures; control and prevention of epidemiological risks (COVID, etc.)

A sustainable building presents the work of a multidisciplinary team, where each individual plays an important, responsible, and indispensable role in it. Research helps us with that understanding.

Dr. Mateja Dovjak
Prof. Dr. Janja Vaupotic
Prof. Dr. Fumito Maruyama
Dr. So Fujiyoshi
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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-anonymized 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.