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Energy studies of buildings are becoming more widespread as stakeholders strive to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. As a result, there is an increased need for novel numerical techniques to automatically calibrate building energy models (BEMs) for these energy studies. In this paper, a new automated building calibration methodology was developed, which uses a surrogate (i.e., meta) multilayer perceptron artificial neural network (ANN) to infer unknown building...

Anthropogenic climate change is a serious global environmental issue that threatens food and water security, energy production, and human health and wellbeing, ultimately jeopardizing the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A good understanding of climate change is essential for societies to adapt to or mitigate it. Yet, studies reveal that most people have limited knowledge, misconceptions and misunderstanding about climate change. Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to...

This paper aims to develop long-term adaptation strategies for the existing Canadian school buildings under extreme current and future climates using a developed methodology based on global and local sensitivity analysis and Multi-Objective Optimization Genetic Algorithm. The calibrated simulation model based on indoor and outdoor measured temperature for a school of interest is used to evaluate the optimization strategies. This paper aims to search for the optimum school building design...

Despite the critical need for urban planners to address climate change, there is a limited understanding of planning professionals’ perceptions of their climate change competency. This paper reports results from a survey of Australian urban planning professionals, identifying their perceived climate change knowledge, skills, competencies, and everyday practice. The urban planning professionals surveyed had high levels of perceived climate change knowledge, but only a small number incorporate...

Despite the critical need for urban planners to address climate change, there is a limited understanding of planning professionals’ perceptions of their climate change competency. This paper reports results from a survey of Australian urban planning professionals, identifying their perceived climate change knowledge, skills, competencies, and everyday practice. The urban planning professionals surveyed had high levels of perceived climate change knowledge, but only a small number incorporate...

This paper investigates the use of dilated causal convolutional neural networks for fine-grained temporal forecasting of building zone states. Specifically, we build and evaluate models using a small set of exogenous features (e.g., external temperature) to autoregressively predict zone airflow setpoints every minute for a 24-h prediction window. We carefully explore the trade-off between generality and specificity in these models, training and evaluating them based on zone, zone type,...

Abstract Aim To assess knowledge, perception, and practices regarding climate change (CC) among university students and to investigate the relationships between knowledge levels and reported practices in response to CC. Subject and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among 768 undergraduate students from the practical and theoretical faculties of Al-Azhar University for Girls in Cairo. Results Most (82.6%) students had heard the term CC and believed it affected their communities....

The revolution of the industry 4.0 presents a new era of digital transformation for the construction industry, advancing towards the concept of digital twins, while on the other hand it faces the global challenge of reducing carbon emissions from operational assets. The current research gap in the application of digital twins for achieving net zero were reviewed in this study, highlighting its potentials for enhancement in the built environment, and emphasizing the need for demonstration of...

Thermal comfort in learning environments influences the student’s focus and learning productivity. This study aims to evaluate and compare the adaptive thermal comfort of schoolchildren and their teachers in naturally ventilated primary schools in some selected cities in Imo State Nigeria. To achieve these objectives, the study analyzed the data collected from 330 pupils and 44 teachers in six surveyed classrooms in two types of classroom buildings. The recorded data in the surveyed...

Indoor light quality is the intensity and amount of illumination of interior spaces. Technological developments have led to the utilisation of artificial natural light. Illumination is crucial in the visibility of tasks. Quality of light can influence the visual comfort and ocular health of the students. Although Kenya lacks lighting standards for schools, ISO and CIE provide international guidelines on optimal illumination for various facilities. This study was conducted on public boarding...

Climate change is an area that is currently in dire need of a wide range of publicity especially among teachers in secondary schools. This is because teachers’ awareness of Climate Change may result to multiplier effects where families and communities benefit when students share what they have learned especially in relation to causes, adaptation and mitigation. The study was therefore carried out to assess the extent of climate change awareness among secondary school teachers in Ebonyi...

Environmental degradation and carbon emissions have become a major global concern. This has forced policymakers to consider strategic and long-term contingencies to increase carbon sequestration capacity and mitigate the effects of climate change. Soil organic carbon (SOC) provides a reliable long-lasting mechanism to ameliorate climate change and regulate carbon fluxes. However, unanticipated rates of climate change coupled with the dynamic nature of land-use transformation threatens...

Environmental degradation and carbon emissions have become a major global concern. This has forced policymakers to consider strategic and long-term contingencies to increase carbon sequestration capacity and mitigate the effects of climate change. Soil organic carbon (SOC) provides a reliable long-lasting mechanism to ameliorate climate change and regulate carbon fluxes. However, unanticipated rates of climate change coupled with the dynamic nature of land-use transformation threatens...

Temperature sensors may produce a measurement error of up to 1 °C because of the influence of solar radiation. In order to obtain a relatively minimal temperature error, a new temperature observation system was proposed in this paper for measuring surface air temperatures. Firstly, a radiation shield was designed with two aluminum plates, eight vents, and a multi-layer structure which is able to resist direct solar radiation, reflected radiation, and upwelling long-ware radiation, as well as...

The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is used to indicate the meteorological drought situation - a negative (or positive) value of SPI would imply a dry (or wet) condition in a region over a period. The climate system is an excellent example of a complex system since there is an interplay and inter-relation of several climate variables. It is not always easy to identify the factors that may influence the SPI, or their inter-relations (including feedback loops). Here, we aim to study the...

The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is used to indicate the meteorological drought situation - a negative (or positive) value of SPI would imply a dry (or wet) condition in a region over a period. The climate system is an excellent example of a complex system since there is an interplay and inter-relation of several climate variables. It is not always easy to identify the factors that may influence the SPI, or their inter-relations (including feedback loops). Here, we aim to study the...

Climate change is high on the science and policy agenda of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), requiring context-specific adaptation. Studies on endogenous cultural institutions (ECIs) in climate adaptation are fragmented, impeding policy orientation. This suggests the need for complementary evidence on ECIs to inform adaptation practice. Through a sample of 158 households in rural Cameroon, we contribute to bridge this gap, by: (1) exploring socio-political factors shaping peasant farmers’ compliance...

Recently, Occupant-Centric Control (OCC) strategies have gained mounting interest. Previous studies made use of OCC strategies for adjusting the operation of heating/cooling systems, improving indoor thermal comfort and governing mechanical ventilation systems. However, a very limited number of studies have applied OCC strategies to natural ventilation systems. Further, the feasibility of establishing OCC strategies for controlling indoor thermal comfort, energy use and specifically air...