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Abstract One characteristic of railway stations in China is that the entrance hall, ticket office, integrated waiting hall and auxiliary space are all concentrated in a large span of space, forming a unified whole space. However, the multi-function fusion in such a large space results in a series of acoustic problems, such as long reverberation time, high environmental noise and poor language articulation. Therefore, it is necessary to study the acoustic environment of railway stations in China. In this study, the sound field characteristics of the typical railway station are studied to reveal its law of sound propagation. Next, subjective evaluation and objective experiments are carried out to study the acoustic environment and comfort in the waiting hall. Finally, based on the comparative analysis of various influential factors, such as sound source and sound field, this paper advances some suggestions for the acoustical design of high-speed railway stations.

With the in-depth implementation of the “Belt and Road” initiative (BRI), the investment patterns between Belt and Road countries have also become more complicated. The impact of this complex investment network on regional economic development is also growing. To reveal the complexity of this investment pattern, and to better promote the sustainable development of the region’s economy, this paper used the complex network method to study the foreign direct investment (FDI) network of 50 countries along the Belt and Road from 2003 to 2017, revealing its structural and behavioral characteristics and evolution process. The results showed that the imbalance of the investment network structure is outstanding, and preferential selection behavior is obvious. The Central and Eastern European countries show significant clustering behavior. In addition, the network evolved slowly and followed the “Pareto rule” in the early stages of its evolution. The BRI was a turning point in the evolution process. On this basis, the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) regression analysis method was used to further study the factors affecting the formation process of this investment pattern. It found that economic development level, geographical distance, and bilateral trade were the main influencing factors. Among them, bilateral trade had the greatest impact on the pattern of network.

This article makes the case for addressing pedestrian visual diversity when planning artificial light for public spaces at night, by drawing upon original findings from an exploratory study where twenty-one open-ended interviews were conducted with experts in the fields of artificial lighting, urban planning and health studies. Specifically, this article provides (1) the introduction of the concept of pedestrian visual diversity, defined as the condition, capabilities and needs of visually impaired pedestrians, (2) a systematization of overlooked issues in the planning of artificial light for visual diverse pedestrians in public spaces and (3) the proposition of a participatory framework for the application of lightwalks as an experiential method for involving visual diverse pedestrians in the data collection on and analysis of artificial lighting in public spaces at night. In conclusion, it identifies five strands for further research at the nexus of pedestrian visual diversity, public space and night studies for inclusive light planning.

In about 15 years, there is likely to be urban air mobility (UAM) in larger cities across the globe. Air taxis will provide on-demand transportation for individual needs. They will also connect important transportation nodes, such as airports and city centers, as well as providing quick transfers between train stations or a convenient option for crossing rivers and lakes. It is hoped that UAM will help meet today’s political targets of sustainability and decarbonization. However, there are certain threats that could impede the sustainable and thus successful introduction of UAM to our cities, with noise being a prominent limitation. This paper argues that citizens have to be viewed as stakeholders in urban air transportation, regardless of whether they or not intend to use it, and that a concept of resident participatory noise sensing (PNS) will be beneficial to the implementation of UAM. Web-based services and smartphones facilitate the access and updating of current information about local noise distributions, thus enabling them to be used to foster UAM in smart cities.

Offshore wind farms have developed rapidly in Jiangsu Province, China, over the last decade. The existence of offshore wind turbines will inevitably impact hydrological and sedimentary environments. In this paper, a digital elevation model (DEM) of the intertidal sandbank in southern Jiangsu Province from 2018 to 2020 was constructed based on the improved remote sensing waterline method. On this basis, the stability of the sandbank was analysed, and combined with the hypothetical sandbank surface discrimination method (HSSDM), the erosional/depositional influences of wind turbine construction on topography were quantitatively analysed. The results show that due to the frequent oscillations of the tidal channels, only 35.03% of the study area has a stable topography, and more than 90% of the wind turbines in all years have a balanced impact on the intensity of topographic change, and all see a small reduction in their impact in the following year. The remaining wind turbines with erosional/depositional impacts are mainly located in areas with unstable topography, but the overall impact of all wind turbines is balanced in 2018–2020. The impact of wind turbines on topography is both erosional and depositional, but the overall intensity of the impact is not significant. This study demonstrates the quantitative effects of wind turbine construction on topography and provides some help for wind turbine construction site selection and monitoring after turbine completion.

The terminal area is a convergence point for inbound and outbound traffic, and it is characterized by a complex airspace structure and high traffic density. It is an area that frequently experiences flight congestion and ground delays. A system capable of the intelligent, reliable, timely, and accurate identification of air traffic congestion for air–ground coupled flight flow constitutes a key technology with respect to unlocking the potential capacity of the terminal area, mitigating traffic congestion, and assisting air-traffic-control-related decision making. Therefore, this article aims to extract and analyze the multi-scale and multi-dimensional evaluation indicators of air–ground coupled flight flow congestion, use the TSNE-FCM algorithm to classify congestion levels, and, based on this work, construct a real-time and fast congestion identification model using the LightGBM algorithm. The case study analyzed China Baiyun Airport (CAN), and the experimental results indicate the following: (1) The congestion level classification achieved using the TSNE-FCM algorithm is superior to that achieved using the FCM algorithm. Furthermore, flight delays predominantly occur in slightly congested and congested states. (2) The congestion identification model based on LightGBM outperforms the XGBoost, RandomForest, and ExtraTree models. The macro-average and micro-average AUC curve areas for the LightGBM model were 0.96 and 0.96, respectively. The LightGBM model demonstrates excellent performance and is suitable for identifying congestion levels in practical engineering applications.

When it comes to pollution, we do not usually think about the clothes we wear, but the clothing industry is really endangering our planet. The market economy has transferred the decision-making power of the garment industry from enterprises to consumers. To make the fashion industry sustainable, in addition to technological innovation, it is also necessary to conduct research on the service objects of the industry. Consumer clothing preference research is an important part of the sustainable development of the clothing industry, and it will also have an impact on environmental and design sustainability. Hence, a psychophysical experiment based on solid color shirts is carried out to analyze people’s perceptions and preferences concerning fashion colors, including the aesthetic differences and similarities between males and females, and establish a hierarchical feed-forward model of color preferences relating to solid color shirts. Firstly, 480 colors of solid shirts from different clothing brands were collected, and the mean shift clustering algorithm was used to classify them into 19 clusters in the CIELAB color space. Secondly, another 22 solid colors, combined with the 19 colors of the cluster centers, formed a solid color scheme. Thirdly, 41 solid male and female shirts and fabrics were simulated as stimuli in three dimensions, and they were presented on a calibrated computer display. The simulations were assessed by 34 observers (consisting of 17 males and 17 females) in terms of 11 semantic scales, including cold/warm, heavy/light, passive/active, dirty/clean, tense/relaxed, plain/gaudy, traditional/modern, masculine/feminine, slim-look/fat-look, hard-to-match/easy-to-match, and dislike/tike. The experimental results demonstrated that the hard-to-match/easy-to-match response was found to be highly correlated with dislike/like. Furthermore, the response of the females concerning hard-to-match/easy-to-match had a strong correlation with two adjective pairs (plain/gaudy and slim-look/fat-look), while that of the males also had a strong correlation with two adjective pairs (plain/ gaudy and masculine/feminine). Finally, a hierarchical feed-forward model of aesthetic perception for solid color shirts was established to predict the shirt preference degree. These findings could be used to develop a more robust and comprehensive theory of fashion color preferences and provide a reference for the design of solid color shirts. A more comprehensive color preference theory is not only an effective tool to solve the problem of pollution in the clothing industry, but also an important theoretical basis for the “sustainable design” of clothing, which is of great significance to the sustainable development of the clothing industry.

Abstract With the development of China’s economy, the total area of public buildings is continuously increasing, and higher energy consumption in this field is gradually becoming prominent. In order to improve this situation, China has been working on energy savings in public buildings since 2007. Energy-saving models and energy policies have become the lifeline of sustainable energy development. Furthermore, the energy-saving renovation of public buildings, as a key project, has attracted the attention of governments and scholars. In the report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, energy conservation and emission reduction were given a prominent place. The 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) aims to further promote China’s energy conservation work. On the one hand, administrative and legal measures should be taken to strengthen energy conservation. On the other hand, it is necessary to speed up the establishment of a long-term market-based energy-saving mechanism and to rely on market forces to remove various obstacles to energy conservation. Energy performance contracting (EPC) is a practical and effective method applied in energy conservation. Therefore, this research aims to put forward a relatively perfect energy-saving risk management system for EPC public building projects based on analysis of the factors influencing investment risks of energy-saving projects and the use of quantifiable risk management models, thus providing some theoretical support for the risk decision-making of energy service companies.