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East Lisbon is being exposed to large-scale urban regeneration processes, where luxury residential projects and mixed-use spatial developments are already underway. Thus, it is a living laboratory for “smart”, “creative” and “green” projects, as well as related urban public space interventions. Braço de Prata is an urban space overlooked by developers, being surrounded by obsolete industrial buildings. Concerning the recent interest in international investments in brownfield regeneration and greenfield developments, it represents an attractive urban terrain as a post-industrial working-class neighbourhood, where “smart” and “green” suggest transforming space so that both new and old residents can live and work together and share public space regardless of analysis on their environmental recognitions. The aim of this paper is to present an empirical evaluation model that examines the possible impacts of environmental negligence through the reorganisation of the physical and social fabric. The analyses focus on dwellers’ moral understanding of their changing environment as site-specific domains to address the unique conditions that affect transiently defined presumptions about the collective needs. Taking an evaluative approach in the Braço de Prata case, this paper demonstrates the specific socio-ecological implications of urban inequality in post-industrial neighbourhoods that could be threatened by new decisions, both through urban planning approaches and instruments.

The construction industry is considered as one of the least productive, highest energy consuming, and least digitized industries. The Lean Management (LM) philosophy became a significant way for eliminating non-value-added activities and wastes during a building’s lifecycle. However, studies have shown that philosophies are not efficient by themselves to solve the issues of the construction industry. They need to be supported with the appropriate technologies and tools. Therefore, the integrated use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) with LM or Value Engineering (VE) were proposed in the literature. Nonetheless, it was also seen that BIM can provide more insights and improvements when BIM is integrated with data analysis tools to analyze BIM data. In the literature, the synergies between these concepts are generally addressed pairwise, and there is no comprehensive framework which identifies their relationships. Therefore, this study aims to develop a maturity framework that facilitates the adoption of LM, VE, BIM, and Big Data Analytic (BDA) concepts to address long-standing productivity and digitalization issues in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. Design Science Research (DSR) methodology and its three-cycle view (relevance, rigor, and design cycle) were applied to build the proposed maturity framework. Two interviews were performed to identify and observe research problem in relevance cycle. In the rigor cycle, a comprehensive literature review was performed to create a base for the development of the maturity framework. In addition to the developed base of the framework, lean processes were added to this cycle. In the design cycle, the developed framework was evaluated and validated by five experts through face-to-face interviews. The importance of employer’s requirements to adopt the proposed methodologies, the negative impact of change orders, the importance of pre-construction phases to facilitate value creation and waste elimination, and the usage of common data environment with BIM were identified as the prominent application and adaptation issues.

The optimization of outdoor thermal comfort has become the keystone to guarantee the healthy and comfortable use of outdoor spaces. This study aims to optimize the outdoor thermal comfort through vegetation parameterization in a boulevard located in Guelma city, Algeria during summertime. However, two main parameters were investigated, species and tree layout, through a numerical simulation. We first collected microclimate data of a sunny summer day. Second, we used real microclimate data in different simulations using the Envi-met atmospheric model. The findings reveal that Ficus Nitida is the most significant species to intercept solar radiation and provide shade over the day in Souidani Boudjemaa Boulevard, with a maximum reduction of Ta = 0.3 °C and UTCI = 2.6 °C at 13:00 p.m. Tree layout is a determining parameter in the creation of shaded paths, based on the quality of the shadows cast by the trees, namely, their size. Thereby, planting the washingtonia palm trees along the center of the boulevard is the best option to maximize the shaded area within the boulevard, with maximum reduction of Ta = 1.8 °C and UTCI = 3.5 °C at 16:00 p.m.

Positive Energy Districts (PED) are areas within cities that generate more renewable energy than they consume, contributing to cities’ energy system transformation toward carbon neutrality. Since PED is a novel concept, the implementation is very challenging. Within the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action, which offers an open space for collaboration among scientists across Europe (and beyond), this paper asks what the needs for supporting the implementation of PEDs are. To answer this, it draws on Delphi process (expert reviews) as the main method alongside the literature review and also uses surveys as supplementary methods to identify the main challenges for developing PEDs. Initial findings reveal seven interacting topics that later were ranked as highest to the lowest as the following: governance, incentive, social, process, market, technology and context. These are interrelated and interdependent, implying that none can be considered in isolation of the others and cannot be left out in order to ensure the successful development of PEDs. The resources that are needed to address these challenges are a common need for systematic understanding of the processes behind them, as well as cross-disciplinary models and protocols to manage the complexity of developing PEDs. The results can be the basis for devising the conceptual framework on the development of new PED guides and tools.

The paper analyzes the reaction of residential property prices to sustainability attributes and the extent to which they capitalize the effects of sustainability on real estate markets in EU-28 countries in the period 2000–2018. Given that the sustainable real estate market is mainly driven by demand, the sustainability attributes included in the study reflect both buyers’ expectations and their investment potential in sustainable residential properties, and developers’ efforts to become more “sustainable” through responsible property investment. In order to correspond to the current meaning of sustainable development, the variables capture the four dimensions that give content to the concept of the quadruple bottom line: economic, social, environmental and institutional. Using panel data and the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method, the research reveals a pronounced sensitivity of residential property prices to all sustainability dimensions in countries considered leaders in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), characterized by a strong institutional environment, and efficient and transparent real estate markets. In countries less committed to SGD implementation, weak governance and higher corruption negatively affect the transparency of real estate markets, and the dynamics of the price of residential transactions are determined only by the economic and social dimensions of sustainability.

(1) Background: Presently, sustainability is a crucial issue for human beings due to many disasters owing to climate change. Information Technology (IT) is now part of everyday life in society due to the proliferation of gadgets such as mobile phones, apps, computers, information systems, web-based systems, etc. (2) Methods: The analysis is based on recent ACM/IEEE curriculum guidelines for IT, a rigorous literature review as well as various viewpoints and their relevance for sustainability-oriented curriculum development; it also includes an assessment of key competencies in sustainability for proposed units in the IT curriculum. (3) Results: Sustainability is a critical subject for prospective IT professionals. Therefore, it is imperative to motivate and raise awareness among students and the faculty community regarding sustainability through its inclusion in the Informatics curriculum. This paper focuses on how sustainability can be included in various courses of the Informatics curriculum. It also considers recent ACM/IEEE curriculum guidelines for IT professionals, which assert that IT students should explore IT strategies required for developing a culture of green and sustainable IT. (4) Conclusions: This paper provides guidelines for IT curriculum development by incorporating sustainable elements in courses, so that future IT professionals can learn and practice sustainability in order to develop a sustainable society.

Sometimes civil engineering infrastructures have been constructed in hot and cold weathering regions such as desert areas. In such situations, the concrete is not only smashed by hot and cold processes but also spoiled by shrinkage cracking. Therefore, this study intends to examine the influence of heat–cool cycles on high-strength concrete comprising various fibers, such as natural date palm, polypropylene, and steel fibers, and their different volume percentages. The most popular technique for improving the structural behavior of concrete is fiber insertion. Fibers decrease cracking occurrences, enhance early strength under impact loads, and increase a structure’s ability to absorb additional energy. The main goal is to examine the effects of three different types of fibers on regular concrete exposed to heat–cool cycles. For each type of fiber, three dosages of 0.2%, 0.6%, and 1% were used to create high-strength concrete. After 28 days of regular water curing and six months of exposure to heat-and-cold cycles, all specimens were tested. The heat–cool cycles entailed heating for two days at 60 °C in the oven and cooling for another two days at room temperature. The results of the experiment showed that fiber reinforcement in concrete improves its strength and durability. The flexural strength was substantially improved by increasing the date palm, polypropylene, and steel fibers into the high-strength concrete with and without heat–cool cycles. Adding increments of date palm, polypropylene, and steel fibers into high-strength concrete revealed a significant improvement in energy absorption capacity in both cases, i.e., with or without the implementation of heat–cool cycles. Therefore, the natural date palm fibers might be utilized to produce sustainable fibrous high-strength concrete and be applicable in severe weathering conditions.