Magdy Alanani , Ahmed Elshaer , Stephen Vasilopoulos , Seymour M.J. Spence , Girma T. Bitsuamlak , Ashraf El Damatty
{"title":"Ten questions concerning wind-focused shape and structural optimization of tall buildings","authors":"Magdy Alanani , Ahmed Elshaer , Stephen Vasilopoulos , Seymour M.J. Spence , Girma T. Bitsuamlak , Ashraf El Damatty","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113716","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113716","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Tall buildings, over 60 m in height, are characteristic of modern urban cities and are expected to form a significant portion of future urban habitats. Given that the construction industry accounts for 38% of worldwide carbon emissions, targeting sustainability in this sector is vital. Due to the multi-dimensional nature of the tall building design process, optimization shows growing promise in developing solutions that increase design efficiency while sufficiently exploring design spaces and limiting computational costs. However, integrating architectural concepts with structural design to ensure that aesthetic goals are met without compromising structural integrity is challenging. Additionally, the critical dependency of lateral load magnitudes on a building’s outer shape and structural details underscores the need for a holistic design approach to meet both serviceability and capacity requirements for highly tall and flexible structures. Characterized as dynamically sensitive structures, tall buildings require thorough consideration of wind and seismic loads, which exert a dominant influence on the structural system. This paper provides a roadmap for the structural optimization of tall buildings, focusing on wind loads, presenting a perspective on design parameters, algorithms, and modelling techniques, in addition to utilizing machine learning in various design stages. It also assesses the impact of different load types on the optimization process, the role of surrogate models in facilitating design frameworks, and innovative methods offering promising solutions surpassing current capabilities. Cumulatively, this paper addresses avenues for future research into optimization and tall building design.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113716"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145156676","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}
Sisi Chen , Huihui Zhao , Haitang Wu , Qi Li , Lihua Zhao
{"title":"Thermal impact zoning of indoor overheating environments on the human body in hot and humid regions","authors":"Sisi Chen , Huihui Zhao , Haitang Wu , Qi Li , Lihua Zhao","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113714","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113714","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With the intensification of climate change, heatwaves causing power outages and indoor overheating have become increasingly frequent. However, how such indoor overheating environments affect the human body over time remains insufficiently understood, and comprehensive evaluation methods are still lacking. This study explores the thermal effects of indoor overheating through a three-zone framework representing thermal comfort, thermal health, and thermal safety. A climate chamber experiment was conducted under typical overheating conditions in hot and humid regions. Objective measurements and subjective questionnaires were combined to track psychological responses, adverse symptoms and physiological parameters over the exposure period. Based on the experimental results, a three-zone system was proposed, comprising the “Unacceptable Without Symptoms Zone” (TUAZ), “Unacceptable With Symptoms Zone” (SZ), and “Multiple Symptoms With Danger Zone” (TDZ), representing progressively increasing thermal stress on the human body. The findings revealed that thermal acceptability declined rapidly in overheating environments, with symptoms such as drowsiness, fatigue, restlessness, and chest tightness emerging over time, and that prolonged exposure increased life-threatening risks. At a heat index (<em>HI</em>) of 47 °C, the time thresholds for TUAZ, SZ, and TDZ are 0 min, 30 min and 120 min, respectively. Skin temperature serves as a key physiological indicator, with thresholds of 34.6 °C and 35.8 °C for zoning TUAZ and SZ. This study highlights the cumulative thermal impacts of indoor overheating and establishes a thermal impact zoning framework to support building resilience design under extreme heat.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"287 ","pages":"Article 113714"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145183771","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":"Mechanism for advancing air distribution: Matching zonal priorities with cascade utilization of air potential","authors":"Sheng Zhang , Jinghua Jiang , Xia Zhang , Zhang Lin","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113715","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113715","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Advancing air distribution is one of the core tasks for developing low-carbon and healthy building environments. However, the mechanism for advancing air distribution is unclear. This study reveals and justifies the mechanism for advancing air distribution, <em>i.e.</em>, the air potential should be maximally used, which indicates the air potential is used cascadingly to match the zonal priorities. Regarding thermal comfort, the supply air should be used sequentially to condition the breathing, lower, and upper zones, which is described quantitatively by the Matching of Thermal Potential, a newly proposed index. The larger the Matching of Thermal Potential, the higher the energy efficiency. This is verified by the coefficient of determination (<em>R</em><sup>2</sup>) of greater than 0.95 for the case studies on mixing ventilation, displacement ventilation, stratum ventilation, and interactive cascade ventilation. Moreover, due to the coupled heat and mass transfer, a higher Matching of Thermal Potential leads to a younger mean age of air in the breathing zone. According to the mechanism, a novel air distribution strategy, <em>i.e.</em>, graded ventilation, is proposed as an example. It reduces energy consumption by 8.4% - 53.5% and the mean age of air in the breathing zone by 7.8% - 23.4% under different thermal conditions. The revealed mechanism contributes to advancing air distribution for improved energy efficiency and inhaled air quality while providing thermal comfort.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113715"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145119547","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}
Siddharth Sareen, Per Ove Eikeland, Tor Håkon Jackson Inderberg
{"title":"Ten questions concerning decentralised energy systems governance","authors":"Siddharth Sareen, Per Ove Eikeland, Tor Håkon Jackson Inderberg","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113717","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113717","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Rapid electrification of energy use based on low-carbon energy sources is underway in sectors such as buildings, transport, and industry, with parallel digitalisation of energy system components aimed to facilitate the increasingly complicated challenge of balancing energy demand and supply. This evolving cross-sectoral nature of energy systems requires renewed consideration of governance and regulation across spatial scales due to increased decentralisation in the ontology of energy systems. This decentralisation entails complex spatiotemporal flows, both of energy itself through infrastructure, and of real-time information to balance energy supply and demand. We address ten questions about the governance of decentralised energy systems, to identify the quandaries that regulators and operators must resolve for mainstreaming decentralisation as a strategy towards low-carbon energy systems. Crucially, this implies understanding energy flexibility as a relevant concern down to building and block scale, and developing and deploying transition metrics for cross-sectoral coordination to enable sustainable energy use in decentralised systems. Insights draw primarily on arguably the highest digitalised and low-carbon energy systems worldwide, namely Norway. Many countries are encountering similar challenges that this overview can help pre-empt and resolve.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113717"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145100282","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}
Simeng Xie, Pedro Martinez-Vazquez, Charalampos Baniotopoulos
{"title":"Life cycle assessment of an urban vertical farm benchmark from construction to dismantling and recycling","authors":"Simeng Xie, Pedro Martinez-Vazquez, Charalampos Baniotopoulos","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113729","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113729","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Urban Vertical Farming helps mitigate problems associated with limited crop growth due to unstable land and climate conditions. It is expected that, under suitable control, such as soilless technology, environmental control systems, automated management, and other core working principles, food crops can be grown continuously without being affected by seasonal variations. However, the amount of energy required to create optimum cultivation conditions can lead to high operating costs (especially in Europe) and other environmental impacts. In this study, we discuss those issues in relation to the construction, operation and management of an urban vertical farm, via life cycle analyses. The study is conducted with SimaPro, considering scenarios that combine the supply of building materials, building design life and transportation distance of the products, while exploring ways to reduce carbon emissions through wind energy harvesting. The results obtained indicate that the investigated urban vertical farm yields a GWP of 5.43 kg CO<sub>2</sub> eq per kilogram of lettuce under the current grid structure, which is 9–14 times higher than that of traditional open field farming. However, the main reason for the exponential increase in GWP is the power consumption of artificial lighting and HVAC systems. Among these, 3.61 % of life-cycle carbon emissions can be saved by recycling waste lettuce at the use and production phase. The dismantling and recycling phase can recover 4.06 % of the life-cycle carbon emissions by recycling materials. Furthermore, the study results indicated that the clean energy produced by wind turbines can reduce carbon emissions by up to 2.39 %.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113729"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145119551","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}
Anwar Ibrahim, Hikmat Ali, Ahmad Yasin, Shaden Abusafieh
{"title":"The role of fractal patterns in modulating stress response and recovery in virtual indoor environments","authors":"Anwar Ibrahim, Hikmat Ali, Ahmad Yasin, Shaden Abusafieh","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113705","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113705","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>People spend most of their time in indoor spaces, where environmental factors can significantly influence well-being. Stress, a complex phenomenon involving both physiological and psychological responses to perceived threats or challenges, can impact health in both the short and long term. Therefore, identifying design strategies that mitigate stress in interior environments is essential. This study investigated the impact of incorporating fractal patterns with varying fractal dimensions into interior environments on occupants’ physiological stress. Using immersive virtual environments, fractals with three levels of fractal dimension were implemented as wall finishes in full-scale interior simulations. Participants’ skin conductance levels and heart rates were measured as they experienced mild stressors and subsequently recovered in these environments. Results indicated that exposure to mid-range fractals (FD = 1.3–1.5) had a positive influence on heart rate during recovery, suggesting their potential to support stress reduction. Additionally, a significant difference in skin conductance increase was observed among groups, with the lowest increase recorded in the low-FD (1.2) condition. The largest physiological contrast was found between the 1.2 and 1.5 FD groups. These findings suggest that specific fractal patterns can tangibly modulate physiological stress responses in interior environments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113705"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145100281","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":"Evaluating deep learning data imputation for subway indoor air quality: Accuracy, efficiency, and implications for downstream tasks","authors":"Vahid Ghorbani , Amir Ghorbani , ChangKyoo Yoo","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113713","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113713","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Missing data is a pervasive issue in environmental and building systems and poses significant challenges for indoor air quality (IAQ) management in subway stations, where sensor readings directly guide ventilation control, exposure assessment, and risk modeling. This paper evaluates a range of imputation techniques for subway IAQ time-series, comparing their reconstruction accuracy, computational efficiency, and impact on downstream tasks. Twelve models are assessed across twelve distinct missing data scenarios that vary in pattern and severity. The methods include nine advanced deep learning approaches covering sequence and attention models, probabilistic generative frameworks, graph aware techniques and spectral or convolutional architectures and three naive statistical methods. Experiments use a newly collected dataset from Yeongtong station in the Seoul metro system giving real data insights into IAQ imputation challenges. To our knowledge this is the first comprehensive evaluation linking algorithmic performance to both ventilation control implications and forecasting outcomes in a multi-zone IAQ monitoring context. This study demonstrates the importance of aligning imputation strategies with specific missingness characteristics and forecasting requirements by means of reconstruction accuracy, which improved downstream IAQ task performances of forecasting and ventilation control. All implementation details are publicly accessible.<span><span><sup>1</sup></span></span></div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113713"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145119552","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}
Pengju Liu , Ping Chang , Bowen Fan , Lele Wang , Apurna Ghosh , George Barakos
{"title":"Numerical study on dust distribution in an ultra-large-scale computational domain based on an optimised dust injection condition","authors":"Pengju Liu , Ping Chang , Bowen Fan , Lele Wang , Apurna Ghosh , George Barakos","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113704","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113704","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Globally, numerous residential communities have been developed close to mining operations, resulting in air quality levels that often fall below the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards due to Fine particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), which poses significant health risks, particularly to vulnerable populations such as children and pregnant individuals. Therefore, it is important to investigate dust dispersion within realistic urban building layouts. In this field Discrete Phase Model (DPM), widely used in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), has limited applicability in large-scale studies due to its high computational cost. Alternatively, the Species Transport Model (STM) offers a more efficient approach but suffers from unclear dust emission, often compromising accuracy. This study introduces a novel dust emission function developed using Python and Hermite Interpolation, integrated into an STM-based simulation. Findings reveal that high dust concentrations tend to accumulate in low-wind-speed zones dominated by vortex effects. Furthermore, the effects of varying wind speeds and directions on dust dispersion were systematically analysed. The results indicate that high wind velocities cause dust accumulation on the windward side. Based on fractal dimension analysis, an evaluation framework for dust distribution was established. The findings demonstrate that the complexity of dust dispersion boundaries is governed by wind direction and that more irregular transport boundaries lead to a broader spatial extent of dust distribution. Overall, the new dust injection method combined with STM enables efficient large-scale urban dust dispersion simulation. This approach provides a practical reference for researchers and policymakers aiming to design dust mitigation strategies in mining-affected communities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113704"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108394","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":"Integrating life cycle sustainability assessment into building renovation strategies","authors":"Goessel Thibault , Ligier Simon , Girard Robin","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113694","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113694","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study presents a multi-objective optimization methodology for building renovation, integrating a holistic and prospective approach. The methodology incorporates thermal discomfort into the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, addressing a critical gap in existing approaches that undermine the effects of climate change.</div><div>The methodology involves using Building Dynamic Energy Simulation to quantify energy consumption and thermal discomfort, Life Cycle Assessment for environmental impacts, and Life Cycle Cost analysis for economic evaluation. The study integrates Pareto-optimal strategies and multi-criteria clustering to identify archetypes of optimal renovation strategies which represent a trade-off between environmental (carbon footprint), economic (direct global cost) and comfort (thermal discomfort) objectives.</div><div>A case study on a French residential building explores over 11,000 renovation strategies under varying climate zones and initial energy systems. In all configurations, carbon footprint and direct global cost values for optimal renovation strategies are not widely dispersed around median values, with relative dispersions inferior to 0.32. However, thermal discomfort following optimal renovations is strongly dependent on climate zone, with a relative dispersion of 1.15 in the context of a warm French climate (H3). 4 to 5 clusters of optimal renovation strategies have been identified for every configuration, highlighting the possible trade-offs between the 3 objectives. Gas-based systems are consistently replaced by thermodynamic solutions, whereas the type and performance of envelope insulation differ across clusters. In all configurations, the majority of optimal renovation strategies include solar protections (56–62%), while cooling systems are implemented less frequently, appearing in only 20–38% of cases.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113694"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145156672","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":"EEG-based evaluation of illuminance and correlated color temperature adjusted to fatigue levels in a VR residential environment","authors":"Younjoo Cho, Dabin Lee, Anseop Choi, Minki Sung","doi":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113702","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113702","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Fatigue directly affects quality of life, but its causes and treatments remain unclear, and managing it with sufficient rest is essential. This study evaluates fatigue-based lighting (FBL), a system that adjusts illuminance and correlated color temperature (CCT) to alleviate fatigue. In a virtual reality (VR) one-room apartment, electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were measured from 24 healthy adults (11 men, 13 women; aged 24–43 years), yielding 28 valid datasets. Participants were first exposed to a standard lighting condition (300 lx, 6000 K). After a short rest, they were exposed to one of three FBL conditions based on their fatigue level: level A (“a little tired”: 400 lx, 5000 K), level B (“tired”: 500 lx, 4000 K), or level C (“very tired”: 150 lx, 3000 K). EEG changes before and after exposure were analyzed using the Alpha/Beta Ratio (ABR), an indicator of relaxation. The mean ABR increased at 17 of 19 electrodes, suggesting a positive effect on fatigue relief. Significant increases were found at five electrodes (FP1, FP2, F7, T4, O1), corresponding to the frontopolar, frontal, temporal, and occipital regions. Further analysis showed that ABR values at FP1, F7, and T4 increased significantly (<em>p</em> < 0.05) under fatigue level B, implying that lighting at 500 lx and 4000 K may have the potential to alleviate fatigue at this level. These findings provide neurophysiological evidence that lighting tailored to fatigue level can promote recovery and highlight the potential of personalized, adaptive lighting systems for human-centric design in residential and occupational environments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":9273,"journal":{"name":"Building and Environment","volume":"286 ","pages":"Article 113702"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145099995","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}