Editorial

Citation

Yang, J. (2016), "Editorial", Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, Vol. 5 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SASBE-05-2016-0007

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, Volume 5, Issue 2.

The Smart and Sustainable Built Environment journal places a high emphasis on holistic problem solving and integrated approaches to sustainable development. This is reflected by the interdisciplinary and encompassing nature of our publications. Coming from a variety of angles and perspectives, the six papers in this issue highlight how people, tools, nature and the built environment influence each other as we pursue sustainability outcomes.

Jukic and Carmichael present a case study on how education makes a difference for people to meet the emission targets. Construction equipment operators were given training before they were assessed on the emission levels and operational costs of the equipment during construction work. Fuel usage, emissions data, travel times and production costs are among a range of assessment criteria. While the results may be not surprising, how operators behave without knowledge of the evaluation presents an interesting story.

Construction activities are often labour intensive. Heat stress is a common problem affecting productivity as well as personal health and operational safety. Cooling vests for site workers have been trialled in many industry sectors. Through a survey study, Yang et al. explored the perceived benefits of cooling vest adoption and feedback by the actual users, linking the issue to the adoption levels. They believe the existing cooling devices do not meet the workers’ real world needs. This may have limited the application of cooling vests in the construction sector.

Zero energy buildings represent an important milestone in our journey towards the sustainable built environment. Many governments and agencies support this goal. For example, the European Union’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive requires all buildings to be “nearly zero energy” by 2020. As part of the challenge, Lundegren et al. analysed the architectural implications of the energy section within the Swedish code. They found that energy system boundaries steered the architectural design. Because of this, energy use in office spaces shows the pattern of using less heat but more electricity. The positive energy aspect of using daylight is often ignored.

It is well-understood that the maintenance interventions for historic buildings must respond to sustainability. However the protection of historic fabric through maintenance is a complex exercise involving appraisals and decisions from many perspectives such as technical, economic, social, cultural and political. In their paper, Kayan et al. give insight on an option appraisal approach of “Green Maintenance” modelling for historic masonry building repair. A calculation procedure of life cycle assessment establishes and tangibly tests the “Green Maintenance” model and supports its adoption for achieving more rigorous analysis of repair strategies. The authors believe this approach can practically determine and ultimately substantiate the decision-making process.

For a technology innovation perspective, Sajjadian explores how transpired solar collectors (TSC) as heat exchangers can employ a storage system to provide substantial energy saving. TSC converts solar radiation to thermal energy by drawing ambient air into buildings through sun-warmed perforated panels and circulates it to internal space by ventilation. Through a case study, the author collects data through monitoring and compares it with simulation results. Good alignments between the results suggest that adding storage systems has the potential to improve the efficiency of solar collectors.

Trees are an important part of our living environment. As urbanisation increases, decision making and governance around trees and urban forests is shifting from the sole responsibility of municipal governments to the greater involvement of other players. Through studying the cases surrounding a number of well-known trees in European cities, Konijnendijk van den Bosch believes non-human agencies of trees and forests have important roles to play towards tree governance. Trees create places that we live in, where human and non-human activities go hand-in-hand. The non-reflexive agency of trees, through their capacity of engendering affective and emotional responses from humans, must not be forgotten in decision making.

Jay Yang