Sustainable Cities and Society最新文献

{"title":"Thermal environment control units for multi-objective urban optimization in territorial spatial planning","authors":"Genyu Xu ,&nbsp;Huihui Zhao ,&nbsp;Jinglei Li ,&nbsp;Chengfang Wang ,&nbsp;Yurong Shi ,&nbsp;Lingye Yao ,&nbsp;Yaoning Yang ,&nbsp;Jian Xu ,&nbsp;Ruiqu Ma","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106119","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106119","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Urban heat island phenomenon significantly impacts urban thermal conditions, human well-being, and energy consumption, necessitating innovative urban thermal environment management approaches. This study introduces thermal environment control units (TECUs) to optimize urban thermal environments in territorial spatial planning, addressing the gap between current assessment tools and actionable, data-driven planning solutions. By leveraging the urban weather generator (UWG) model, we developed an optimization framework, dividing the central urban area of Guangzhou into 234 TECUs. The methodology involves UWG-based simulations and multi-objective parametric optimization. Analysis revealed significant spatial heterogeneity in thermal performance indicators: urban heat island intensity (0.87 °C-2.42 °C), universal thermal climate index (17.1 °C-27.0 °C), and cooling energy demand (5.32–28.76 W/m²). A case study optimization of a representative TECU demonstrated simultaneous improvements in all indicators through parameter tuning, including building height, density, and green coverage. The TECU approach bridges micro-scale thermal phenomena and macro-scale urban planning, providing a quantitative basis for incorporating thermal performance into the planning system. This methodology offers a pathway toward climate-resilient and thermally comfortable urban environments, addressing the challenges of rapid urbanization and climate change. The findings have significant implications for urban policy, design practices, and future research in creating sustainable and livable cities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106119"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Heat exposure assessment and comfort path recommendations for leisure jogging based on street view imagery and GPS trajectories","authors":"Wei Yang,&nbsp;Guangyu Zhang,&nbsp;Yong Liu,&nbsp;Zihao An","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106099","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106099","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Heat exposure significantly affects outdoor leisure activities and health. However, limited research has investigated the dynamic heat exposure assessments and comfort-based route recommendations for leisure jogging. This study addresses this gap by developing a framework that assesses real-time heat exposure and recommends comfortable routes for joggers based on street view images and GPS tracks. Specifically, we utilize Baidu street view images to dynamically estimate the mean radiant temperature (MRT). Individual joggers’ heat exposure is then assessed using real-time MRT measurements and jogging trajectories. To enhance jogger comfort, we developed a dynamic route recommendation method that combines the jogging comfort index with user preferences using a genetic algorithm, offering personalized jogging routes. Empirical analysis using actual data in Chengdu reveals that (1) MRT and heat risk areas exhibit significant spatiotemporal heterogeneity and clustering. (2) About 33.8 % of jogging tracks overlap with thermal risk regions, with 11 % intersecting high-risk areas, indicating substantial heat exposure for joggers in July. (3) The recommended jogging routes reduce heat exposure risk by 10 % compared to actual routes and a baseline model, demonstrating the approach's effectiveness. (4) The recommended routes, tailored to various needs, outperform the benchmark model, particularly in avoiding dynamic heat risk and providing personalized experiences. These insights can help guide leisure joggers to routes that offer a more comfortable and individualized environment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106099"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143144912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"High spatio-temporal and continuous monitoring of outdoor thermal comfort in urban areas: A generic and modular sensor network and outreach platform","authors":"Gregor Feigel ,&nbsp;Marvin Plein ,&nbsp;Matthias Zeeman ,&nbsp;Swen Metzger ,&nbsp;Andreas Matzarakis ,&nbsp;Dirk Schindler ,&nbsp;Andreas Christen","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.105991","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.105991","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study presents an operational citywide monitoring network designed to measure meteorological and human biometeorological variables at a high spatio-temporal resolution. The network is based on an in-house developed, generic data logging and monitoring platform, with 13 stations strategically placed at the pedestrian level on public street lights within the urban canopy layer of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Over the first year of deployment (August 2022 to August 2023), the stations continuously collected high-resolution data (30 s intervals) with a minimal data loss rate of 2% for half of the stations which underscores the robustness of the network. The collected data includes Black Globe temperature, used to calculate the Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) and other thermal comfort indices such as Tropical Night. A case study focused on a July 2023 heatwave showed that residential mid- to low-density areas experienced 16.5 to 18.7 h of extreme heat stress, while inner-city sites recorded the highest number of tropical nights (<span><math><msub><mrow><mi>T</mi></mrow><mrow><mi>a</mi><mo>,</mo><mi>m</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>n</mi><mrow><mo>(</mo><mn>1</mn><mi>h</mi><mo>)</mo></mrow></mrow></msub></math></span> <span><math><mo>≥</mo></math></span> 20 °C), with 5 to 6 nights, compared to 3 in outer areas. The findings demonstrate significant spatial variability in thermal stress across urban microclimates, particularly during extreme weather events. To address the gap in real-time data dissemination and science communication, we developed the uniWeather outreach platform and app, providing end-users and the public with free access to real-time data, following FAIR principles. This continuous data set is invaluable for urban climate modelers, offering real-time monitoring and insights into localized thermal stress, and can inform urban heat mitigation strategies and adaptation planning for policymakers and city planners.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 105991"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Potential causal links of long-term PM2.5 components exposure with diabetes incidence and mortality in the United States","authors":"Gonghua Wu ,&nbsp;Shenghao Wang ,&nbsp;Wenjing Wu ,&nbsp;Tarik Benmarhnia ,&nbsp;Shao Lin ,&nbsp;Kai Zhang ,&nbsp;Xiaobo Xue Romeiko ,&nbsp;Haogao Gu ,&nbsp;Yanji Qu ,&nbsp;Jianpeng Xiao ,&nbsp;Xinlei Deng ,&nbsp;Ziqiang Lin ,&nbsp;Zhicheng Du ,&nbsp;Wangjian Zhang ,&nbsp;Yuantao Hao","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106071","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106071","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>There is limited evidence on the relationship of diabetes burden with fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) and its components, which is not conducive to sustainable development in the context of rapid urbanization. To obtain relevant clues in the United States (US), we collected annual county-level diabetes incidence and mortality, concentrations of PM_2.5 and five major components (including elemental carbon, organic carbon, sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium), temperature, and socioeconomic factors during 2008–2017. Through an integrating method of difference-in-differences approach and quantile G-computation, we observed that (i) long-term PM_2.5 components mixture exposure was associated with diabetes mortality, but not incidence, with percent risk increase (IR%) of 3.58 % (95 %CI: 1.84 %, 5.36 %); (ii) among the five components of PM_2.5, sulfate was estimated to have the largest weight (0.519); (iii) the effect of PM_2.5 and its components mixture was higher when the summer mean temperature was 2 or 3° below the 10-year average temperature; (iv) in counties with higher health insurance coverage, nitrate was the most important component (with the greatest weight of 0.829). Our findings suggest that long-term PM_2.5 exposure is associated with increased diabetes mortality, and reducing sulfate and nitrate emission could effectively alleviate the burden of PM_2.5-related diabetes mortality in the US.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106071"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143146085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A high-performance multi-scale modular-based green design studio platform for building and urban environmental quality and energy simulations","authors":"Lu Li ,&nbsp;Shayan Mirzabeigi ,&nbsp;Sameeraa Soltanian-Zadeh ,&nbsp;Bing Dong ,&nbsp;Bess Krietemeyer ,&nbsp;Peng Gao ,&nbsp;Nina Wilson ,&nbsp;Jianshun Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106078","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106078","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Buildings play a significant role in global energy consumption and carbon emissions, representing 40% of energy use and 36% of CO₂ emissions. The indoor environmental quality (IEQ) within these structures is crucial for ensuring occupant health and comfort. However, achieving a healthy and comfortable indoor environment frequently results in increased energy demands. In response to this deficiency, this study builds a modular-based integrated platform called Green Design Studio (GDS) designed for the preliminary phases of multi-scale building design and urban planning. The GDS platform combines Rhino-Grasshopper and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), embedded with various plugins and parallel computing to facilitate rapid assessments and visualizations of IEQ, outdoor air pollution, and energy efficiency. It adopts a modular strategy for analyzing building and urban components across different scales, including site analysis, space planning, occupancy patterns, building enclosures, and service systems. Measurement data derived from complex building scales are employed to calibrate the platform's effectiveness. This calibration is subsequently scaled up to urban extents and integrated with parallel computing to achieve rapid feedback. Such capabilities underscore the efficacy of the GDS platform, marking a significant advancement in high-performance building design tools that effectively combine ease of use with comprehensive and scalable performance analysis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106078"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143144911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Quantitative analysis of differences in cooling effect and efficiency after changes in Green Infrastructure Types (GIT)","authors":"Haojie Cheng,&nbsp;Yuha Han,&nbsp;Chan Park","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106101","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106101","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Green Infrastructure (GI) is heavily used in urban planning as it can provide better thermal comfort conditions in urban spaces and can mitigate the morbidity and mortality associated with urban heat waves. Later, the concept of Green Infrastructure Typology (GIT) was proposed for urban heat wave assessment. However, we are not aware of studies on the wider benefits of GITs, such as the cooling effect and the cooling efficiency considering water requirement. To fill the gap in prior studies, this study quantitatively analyzed the cooling effect, transpiration rate, and cooling efficiency after GIT type conversion using ENVI-met. The results show that even if the green space location and ratio are the same, there are large differences in cooling effect, transpiration rate, and cooling efficiency between GITs. For PET, the cooling effects of the low, medium, and high vegetation GITs with 60 % green space ratio are 1.2 °C, 1.3 °C, and 2.0 °C, respectively. In the high vegetation GITs with 10 % shrubs and 30 % trees (PV6,8,10), the continued addition of 60 % shrubs and 50 % trees (PV11) resulted in an average reduction of 0.6 °C in Ta and 1.8 °C in PET. The low vegetation GITs have the lowest cooling effect but the highest cooling efficiency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106101"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143144914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Real-time energy flexibility optimization of grid-connected smart building communities with deep reinforcement learning","authors":"Safoura Faghri ,&nbsp;Hamed Tahami ,&nbsp;Reza Amini ,&nbsp;Haniyeh Katiraee ,&nbsp;Amir Saman Godazi Langeroudi ,&nbsp;Mahyar Alinejad ,&nbsp;Mobin Ghasempour Nejati","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106077","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106077","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Nowadays, the presence of electric vehicles (EVs) in power distribution networks (DNs) is increasing significantly, where these facilities' smart charging and discharging are mandatory. In response to this challenge, strategic control of EV charging/discharging power can improve power system flexibility and reduce the underlying operation costs. Real-time charging and discharging of EVs is a time-consuming and complicated problem that might suffer from uncertainties in the behavior of EV owners. Respecting the potential to provide fast responses in complex environments, state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods can be an appropriate solution for EVs' real-time charging and discharging. This paper studies the application of DRL to real-time energy scheduling of autonomous smart building communities (SBCs) integrated with EV parking lots (EVPLs). A model-free DRL approach based on a twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) algorithm is adopted to reach a near-optimal solution for autonomous SBCs’ real-time energy scheduling problem. In addition, a convex mathematical optimal power flow (OPF) is developed to guarantee DN's reliable operation. The findings reflect that real-time strategic charging and discharging of EVs can enhance the flexibility of DN in order to provide energy flexibility in the real-time electricity market.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106077"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143144926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bringing MacKay up to date using geographic information systems: A case study for the city of Glasgow","authors":"Nicola Tait,&nbsp;Gioia Falcone","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106075","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106075","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Like many cities worldwide, Glasgow is striving to reduce carbon emissions and create a just transition to net zero. Work is underway to develop a route map for the city, setting out the potential pathways to net zero. To do this, a thorough understanding of the current and future energy demands of the city, the availability of low-carbon energy resources, and long-term sustainability indicators is crucial. This paper considers all of these and sets out a novel approach using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to overcome the difficulties of working with several disparate datasets to draw a coherent portrait at both city and sub-city levels and provide spatial visualization of the results, addressing a common limitation in broader energy studies. Energy demand is projected forward to the year 2045 assuming a full and just energy transition takes place and compared to low-carbon energy supply opportunities throughout the city, thereby helping to identify strategic decarbonization priorities and challenges in local neighborhoods. The relevance of the output to current policy and planning is highlighted, and gaps in current plans revealed. The analysis conducted can be replicated for other cities in Scotland using the same data sources, and other cities worldwide where the relevant data exists.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106075"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143144929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lifestyle changes for climate mitigation in cities and their relationship to urban health and well-being: A literature review","authors":"Deniz Sirin ,&nbsp;Peter Hoffmann ,&nbsp;Jürgen Scheffran","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106069","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106069","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recently, an increasing number of studies are showing that lifestyle changes can effectively contribute to climate change mitigation and potentially provide health and well-being co-benefits. Despite this growing body of literature, a detailed overview of the lifestyle changes that encompass these two-fold benefits and are explicitly designed for urban dwellers is missing. With the aim of closing this knowledge gap, we reviewed the literature to: (i) identify which urban system variables, sectors, and interconnections are covered by the proposed lifestyle changes, and (ii) explore to what degree health and well-being outcomes of these lifestyle changes were analyzed by the studies. We extracted 181 lifestyle change options from the literature and mapped them onto a conceptual model of health-related urban well-being (UrbWellth). Our mapping revealed that mobility, buildings, households, and nutrition were the most frequently targeted urban system variables. However, interconnections between these and other urban system variables that potentially affect the implementation of lifestyle changes were underexplored. Furthermore, only a few studies analyzed health and well-being outcomes of lifestyle changes. Developing lifestyle change scenarios for a transition to healthy and sustainable cities requires a holistic approach where interconnections within the urban system and health and well-being outcomes are extensively analyzed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106069"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143144931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Potential of phase change materials to mitigate overheating in residential blocks in severe cold regions of China","authors":"Yuhan Zhao ,&nbsp;Jiahui Yu ,&nbsp;Bolun Zhao ,&nbsp;Yitong Xu ,&nbsp;Wen-Shao Chang ,&nbsp;Haibo Guo","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106114","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106114","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Due to global warming, cities in severe cold regions of China are experiencing rising temperatures in summer. In response to climate change trends, this study reports on a study exploring the effectiveness of incorporating phase change materials (PCMs) into building envelopes to mitigate indoor and outdoor overheating risks. The study selected typical residential blocks and buildings in three cities and monitored indoor and outdoor temperatures to determine the overheating conditions during the summer months. Based on the actual measurements, simulations were conducted using the EnergyPlus and ENVI-met platforms to explore the changes in indoor and outdoor temperatures before and after the installation of PCMs. In the monitored residences in Yichun, Harbin, and Shenyang, the percentage of overheating duration in bedrooms was 25.82 %, 40.39 %, and 56.01 % respectively. The simulation results suggested that using PCMs can significantly reduce indoor overheating duration and lower summer outdoor temperatures. The overheating duration in south-facing bedrooms decreased by 66.07 %, 26.58 %, and 39.10 %, respectively. The average outdoor environmental temperature in residential blocks decreased by as much as 0.21 °C, 0.27 °C, and 0.34 °C, respectively. This study results demonstrated the potential of PCMs to enhance thermal comfort in residential and urban environments in severe cold regions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106114"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143145421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}