Emerging Topics in the Sustainable Built Environment: Climate Change Adaptation, Energy Poverty and Well-Being

Dear Colleagues,

A resilient built environment is considered essential for sustainable development. Researchers and designers have been constantly responding to the opportunities and limitations posed by climate, occupant needs, societal expectations, and construction technology. With each day, living environments are more associated with comfort, health, and high energy efficiency. On the other hand, the last century has exhibited an extremely rapid increase in CO₂ emissions and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, accelerating global warming. The latter brings challenges on how to adapt to ever-increasing temperatures to which the built environment is exposed. Global temperatures are exceeding their highest ever measured values, extreme weather events, and the built environment adapted to past, colder climates—all of these facts present a very high risk for overheating, a deteriorated living environment, and a threat to human health and energy security.

Therefore, a timely adaptation to climate change is essential to ensure a sustainable built environment and provide human indoor and outdoor comfort, achieving high energy efficiency and fighting energy poverty. This Special Issue focuses on the approaches, tools, methods, and materials that support sustainable and affordable climate change adaptation, energy poverty mitigation, and a comfortable and healthy built environment. In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Climate change adaptation in the built environment;
• Sustainability, vulnerability, and resilience of high-performance and low-income buildings;
• Energy security, affordable housing, and the related evolution of energy and climate adaptation policies;
• Climate change-related indoor and outdoor environmental quality;
• Outdoor comfort conditions in urban areas and urban heat island mitigation and adaptation;
• Strategies and methods for the design and development of resilient buildings and urban resilience;
• Data collection and data management approaches and technologies for investigating indoor and outdoor conditions;
• Occupant–building interaction and crowdsensing as tools for achieving higher climate adaptation;
• Case studies in the built environment on energy efficiency, energy poverty, climate adaptation, environmental quality, and environmental monitoring.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Luka Pajek
Dr. Ilaria Pigliautile
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.

• climate change adaptation
• building performance evaluation
• building indoor comfort
• outdoor comfort
• urban heat island
• thermal comfort
• building sustainability and resilience
• energy security
• data collection and data management
• green building

Title: Estimation of Non-Image-Forming Effects of Daylight in the Built Environment Using Deep Learning Techniques
Authors: Jaka Potočnik 1, Mitja Košir
Affiliation: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, Jamova 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract: The presented research proposes several deep learning-based Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models designed to predict light's non-image-forming (NIF) effects of light in indoor environments, which is crucial for understanding light's impact on human circadian rhythms. The executed ap-proach uses extensive datasets and advanced ANN architectures to provide a method for pre-dicting and evaluating NIF metrics without extensive simulation time, supporting quicker prelim-inary NIF analysis in the built environment. The developed models are capable of accurately es-timating physical units that are crucial for the NIF. Particularly the ANN models can estimate the following: Circadian Stimulus (CS), Circadian Light (CLA), Equivalent Melanopic Lux (EML), Equivalent Daylight Illuminance (EDI), and illuminance. The highest model accuracy was achieved for the CS model, resulting in a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.0096 CS on test data and 0.0095 CS on unseen data, which represents an absolute relative error (ARE) of 5.7 and 5.6 %. The study's findings promise significant contributions to the field of NIF estimation in the indoor built envi-ronment.

Title: Lean sensing-network proofing for deducting the environmen- 2 tal triggers of user behavior within an Office Living lab
Authors: Juan D. Blanco Cadena, Matteo Cavaglia, Alberto Speroni, Tiziana Poli and Andrea G. Mainini
Affiliation: Politecnico di Milano;
Abstract: Recent advancements in research have emphasized the extent to which a building's ability 7 to maintain optimal performances across multiple domains is closely tied to its operational model, 8 which in turn is significantly influenced by how users utilize the building space. Hence, just as for 9 building maintenance, it is equally important to understand the dynamics of the collective behaviors 10 of building's occupants by micro-managing the building status. Especially as the occupants inter- 11 act everyday with the space in ways that can affect both short-term and long-term building opera- 12 tion strategy. To address this, various approaches have been suggested to frame and guide user 13 behaviors in ways that yield positive effects, such as behavioural and people-centred features, yet 14 these systems require high economical and computational resources (e.g., facilities, monitoring net- 15 works, and a structure for data processing). Furthermore, user feedback and communication are 16 critical aspects to consider in this context. This study investigates, with a bottom-up approach, the 17 potential causes of occupant driven window opening and closing behaviors in an office environ- 18 ment. Indoor environmental and window operational data is collected in a selected case study 19 through a smart window system. While the behavioural triggers are inferred using a network-based 20 relational model designed to connect user actions to potential causes . The analysis examined di- 21 verse scenarios to estimate the extent to which occupants engage and/or stay idle despite being ex- 22 posed to disadvantageous environmental settings (i.e., poor air quality, and warm or cold air tem- 23 peratures). These findings prompt further examination of cost-efficient indoor environmental 24 monitoring methods and occupant engagement strategies that mitigate user passivity or redirect 25 active behaviors that lead to unfavorable outcomes.