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Building simulation tools can empower architects to evaluate and optimize the performance of their designs. Therefore, it is essential to integrate building performance simulation modeling from an early design stage. A critical part of the simulated environment is the weather file. It is a compilation of 20–30 years of historical weather and hourly data on temperature, solar radiation, wind speed, and wind direction. The accuracy and contextual relevance of said data are of utmost importance to the integrity of the analysis. Current energy modeling weather files are unlikely to include any indication of risk from potential climate change. Hence, there is a need to incorporate climate change projections in energy simulations and prepare architects to understand better the evolution of design strategies echoing such climate change in different climate zones. This paper describes the process of using the CCWorldWeatherGen tool to morph Energy Plus Weather files of 17 North American cities in key climate zones into three simulated scenarios representing 2020, 2050, and 2080, corresponding to a 1.5°C global temperature rise. By simulating the impact of the morphed weather files on five commercial building models, this paper outlines a database echoing the projected climate change impacts within the selected locations and highlights the critical impact of passive design strategies in facilitating indoor thermal comfort while limiting energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing carbon emissions in the construction sector is essential in a period of climate emergency. Disassembly and reuse of structural members are considered to reduce the carbon emissions from the construction and deconstruction of buildings. In this context, it is important to review the current state of the art to provide a framework for the development of future structural systems that can enable the easy disassembly and reuse of steel-framed buildings. This paper (1) presents a review of more than 100 documents to discuss the feasibility of disassembly and reuse of structural members; (2) develops detailed schematic illustrations to explain the design concepts and the underlying mechanics governing the behavior of demountable connections; (3) sheds lights on the technical and design challenges to implement disassembly and reuse of the structural members; and (4) defines future research needs to facilitate the disassembly and reuse of the structural members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage buildings are considered unique assets with a significant value for the country where they are situated that must be conserved or preserved for the coming generations. However, heritage sites, as any other site where a construction is present, experience tremendous risks that impact both the condition and the withstanding of the building or asset they include. Therefore, a risk management framework is essential for these sites and buildings, in particular to be able to decide how to respond and act upon foreseeable risks when they occur or even before experiencing them. This study starts with investigating the most dominant risks in the heritage buildings context with a focus on Yemeni sites, and consequently 38 Yemeni experts in the field of heritage building management were surveyed to examine the identified risks in three case study heritage sites in Yemen. The significance of the risks as well as their impact, likelihood, and detectability levels were measured using an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) basis that reduces the subjectivity of the expert opinions. After risks were analyzed, a suitable response action was therefore suggested to manage and minimize risk impacts as much as possible. In addition to the relative scoring for the priority of each identified risk, an overall risk proneness metric is presented in this paper that can be used to compare the vulnerability of different heritage buildings and/or sites for a strategic efficient budget allocation for the management and preservation of those areas. The preliminary results revealed that armed conflicts, climate change, and flooding are three of the most critical risk factors in Yemeni heritage buildings. This framework is expected to aid heritage building managers in identifying the correct course of actions to prevent or mitigate risks from disturbing the heritage sites and help preserve their value and significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green building trend has increased rapidly worldwide in recent decades as a means of addressing growing concerns over climate change and global warming and to reduce the impact of the building industry on the environment. A significant contribution in Australia has been the use of a series of rating tools by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) for the certification of various types of buildings. This paper reviews the use of the Green Star system in Australian building construction and investigates the potential challenges involved in acquiring such certification for Australian buildings, by critically analyzing a database of the most recently certified GBCA projects. The results show that management-related credits and innovation-related credits are the easiest and most difficult, respectively, to obtain. Additionally, 6 Star green buildings achieve significantly higher points than do other certified buildings in the energy category. In contrast, 4 Star green buildings achieve more points in the material category than do 5 and 6 Star buildings. The study offers a useful reference for both property developers and project teams that can help them obtain a better understanding of the rating scheme and consequently aid in the effective preparation of certification documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have investigated the benefits that can be achieved through the use of the lean production philosophy to meet the challenges of sustainable development. These benefits include reduced waste, lead time, inventory, and improved efficiency. Because of the rising recognition of global climate change, this paper aims to identify the contribution of the lean production philosophy to environmental sustainability in precast-concrete factories, using CO2 emissions as the indicator. This study adopts a weighted-factor model comprising 17 precasters in the Singapore precast-concrete industry. Two stages in the production cycle are investigated using the weighted-factor model: site layout management and delivery management. The results indicate that there are many non-value-adding activities in the precast-concrete production process that contribute to an increase in the level of carbon emissions. Large storage area, large quantity supply base, lack of just-in-time (JIT) sourcing with the suppliers, and a lean workforce appear to be the most important non-value-adding activities in site layout management and delivery management. The analysis provides good-practice guidance and can be used as a checklist for precasters to identify the non-value-adding activities in the precast-concrete production process to achieve low-carbon production. The results will also be useful for regulatory agencies to provide recommendations for the precast-concrete industry to reduce carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hurricane resilience has been identified as an effective metric for the risk assessment of residential communities. The potential effects of a changing climate and environmental impact could severely aggravate the monetary losses of a residential community caused by hurricane events. An existing framework was used to evaluate hurricane resilience of a residential community, which includes hurricane fragility, reliability (e.g., annual probability of failure), loss, and recovery time analyses. However, the existing framework could overestimate hurricane resilience by not considering the potential effects of a changing climate or social disruption and environmental costs. The aim of this paper was to improve the existing framework and investigate the sensitivity of hurricane resilience of communities by including three key components: a changing climate, a social disruption cost, and an environmental cost. Hurricane simulation models in the framework include both stationary and nonstationary wind scenarios. The improved framework can be used by stakeholders to achieve the performance goal of hurricane resilience of a residential community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buildings have time-varying interactions with the local climate condition for the heating or cooling systems; changes of the surrounding climate condition affect building energy consumption. Based on the thermal envelope approach, which considers the heat gain by conduction and radiation through the wall and fenestration, the cooling load simulation study was conducted to see the impact of climate change on the cooling load of public residential buildings in Singapore and propose mitigation methods to bring the predicted increase of the cooling load in the future back to the current level. From the simulation results, climate change is predicted to increase the cooling load of current public residential models for 11.8-55.8% through three different time frames. Based on the parametric study of mitigation methods proposed, changing the material of the wall, material of the glass, and the surface properties show a smaller increase in the predicted cooling load compared with other methods because of the low window to wall ratio. A combination of three methods shows that the increase of the predicted cooling load in Period 3 can be brought back to the current level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]