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This paper aims to investigate green buildings and individual productivity, specifically within the context of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) within green certified office buildings. The purpose of the research was to determine how self-assessed productivity levels were influenced by the indoor environment of the office building.

Qualitative data analysis was conducted via semi-structured interviews in two financial services companies (FSCs), both based in green certified office buildings in South Africa. Thematic analysis was conducted to extract common themes from the data. Furthermore, the data were compared to previous research to identify new potential pathways or provide support for existing pathways.

The main findings were that physical components, such as temperature, lighting, ventilation and noise, contribute depending on the respondent to individual productivity, engagement, organisational commitment and psychological wellbeing. Safety, underpinned by location and amenities, was a new component not previously considered that subtly contributed to individual productivity.

The research provides valuable insight into the contributing factors that impact individual productivity within a green certified office building, as previous researchers have yet to reach a consensus on the relationship between individual productivity and IEQ in green certified office buildings.

This paper aims to explore the intellectual structure shaping the circular economy (CE) discourse within the built environment in Africa.

The study adopted a bibliometric analysis approach to explore the intellectual structure of CE in the built environment in Africa. The authors collected 31 papers published between 2005 and 2021 from the Scopus database and used VOSviewer for data analysis.

The findings show that there are six clusters shaping the intellectual structure: demolition, material recovery and reuse; waste as a resource; cellulose and agro-based materials; resilience and low-carbon footprint; recycling materials; and the fourth industrial revolution. The two most cited scholars had three publications each, while the top journal was Resources, Conservation and Recycling. The dominant concepts included CE, sustainability, alternative materials, waste management, lifecycle, demolition and climate change. The study concludes that there is low CE research output in Africa, which implies that the concept is either novel or facing resistance.

The data were drawn from one database, Scopus; hence, adoption of alternative databases such as Web of Science, Google Scholar and Dimensions could potentially have yielded a higher number of articles for analysis which potentially would result in different conclusions on the subject understudy.

This study made a significant contribution by articulating the CE intellectual structure in the built environment, identified prominent scholars and academic platforms responsible for promoting circularity in Africa.

This paper aims to explore how the scientific literature and company reports have addressed inclusive workplace design and strategies to date.

This paper adopts a scoping review to answer the following question: To what extent is inclusion present in workplace design and related strategies? An analysis of 27 scientific papers and 25 corporate social responsibility reports of the highest-ranked companies in the Great Place to Work global ranking disentangles the main aspects related to workplace design and strategies for promoting inclusion.

This paper opens avenues for four macro-categories of diversity (psycho-physical aspects; cultural aspects; socio-economic conditions; and ability, experience and strengths) to support the development of inclusive workplace design and strategy. Besides, multiple spatial scales emerged as material and immaterial elements of the workplace encountering inclusion and diversity.

Nowadays, the workforce is becoming more diverse. Although diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) has become key to many organizations, it remains unclear how DE&I principles are applied in workspace design and strategies. This scoping review provides a novel perspective on the topic by integrating scientific knowledge and practice-based approaches which still address this matter independently.

This paper highlights a crucial public safety issue due to falling objects from tall residential buildings in Singapore. A systematic façade inspection regime and a system of evaluation of severity for the detection and assessment of potential falling objects from tall buildings are presented.

The research uses qualitative case study approach with 450 tall residential buildings sampled for the study. The common materials, elements, components with high risk of falling objects, the nature and type of the falling, the critical factors affecting the falling, the respective level of severity, and the effectiveness of various diagnostic techniques and protocols, are summarised.

Façade for tall residential buildings in Singapore comprises mainly cementitious materials cast in situ or precast, with fixtures and architectural features, all of which have potential of falling. The common anomalies arising from each material and fixture/features are identified, the causes evaluated and their implications to future design, construction and maintenance analysed.

This study provides original and significant information to a crucial public safety issue, setting design and construction criteria that will serve as a benchmark for new and existing facades, applicable to all cities dominated by tall buildings. The paper presents original figures, checklists and guides as a basis for readers' consideration to use according to their respective unique conditions.

The main goal of this study was to determine how students at Ho Technical University (HTU) viewed green construction approaches and the benefits green buildings may provide to Ghana's tertiary institutions to enhance quality of life.

The institution's 350 participants were chosen using a random selection method. A standardised questionnaire was used to gather data, which was analysed using SPSS v.20 and presented in tables using descriptive statistics such as Likert scale analysis, weighted mean and relative importance index (RII).

The study revealed that awareness of the green building principle is comparatively low amongst the survey participants. Participants agree that the University's green building adoption is high. Students cited decreased utility expenses, improved occupant productivity and cheaper operational costs as important benefits of green construction. Students' thoughts on hurdles to implementing green construction ideas at the University were the enormous price tag of green building technology (RII = 0.89), ignorance of demonstration projects and ignorance of information on green building principles (RII = 0.81).

This is one of the first papers to study Ghanaian students' views on green buildings. This study adds to our understanding of students' thoughts on green building ideas. In addition, it sheds insight into their present awareness, which can help the university administration in Ghana design new paths for green building implementation.

Purpose: Urban centres have been argued to be crucial in the battle for sustainability. With more than half of the global population presently living in cities, the sustainability challenges of global warming, environmental degradation, social inequality, and economic recessions have continued to thrive. To this end, there have been efforts to revive and improve the existing physical and social structure of cities in a process known as urban regeneration. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of sustainability assessment frameworks in urban regeneration.

Approach: Aligning with the positivism philosophical position, and using document analysis as a data collection method, the study discusses the state of the art of urban regeneration and its application in recent times. The study also reviewed selected neighbourhood sustainability assessment frameworks as a tool for decision-making towards sustainability to know the extent in which they capture the goals of urban regeneration.

Findings: Findings showed that the uptake of the sustainability assessment frameworks could play a role in enhancing integration of local context, social wellbeing and economic prosperity, environmental quality, and stakeholder engagement at the neighbourhood level which are the main aspects of urban regeneration.

Theoretical and practical implications: In theory, this paper establishes the assumption that with some revisions, sustainability assessment frameworks could serve as a tool for decision-making in urban regeneration process. Practise-wise, urban regeneration at the neighbourhood level can now be measured against sustainability benchmarks and indicators.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework of green strategies as a combination of energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction for improving environmental sustainability at logistics sites. Such measures are examined by discussing the related impacts, motivations and barriers that could influence the measures' adoption. Starting from the framework, directions for future research in this field are outlined.

The proposed framework was developed starting from a systematic literature review (SLR) approach on 60 papers published from 2008 to 2022 in international peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings.

The framework identifies six main areas of intervention (“green strategies”) towards green warehousing, namely Building, Utilities, Lighting, Material Handling and Automation, Materials and Operational Practices. For each strategy, specific energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction are further pinpointed. In most cases, “green-gold” measures emerge as the most appealing, entailing environmental and economic benefits at the same time. Finally, for each measure the relationship with the measures' primary impacts is discussed.

From an academic viewpoint, the framework fills a major gap in the scientific literature since, for the first time, this study elaborates the concept of green warehousing as a result of energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction. A classification of the main areas of intervention (“green strategies”) is proposed by adopting a holistic approach. From a managerial perspective, the paper addresses a compelling need of practitioners – e.g. logistics service providers (LSPs), manufacturers and retailers – for practices and solutions towards greener warehousing processes to increase energy efficiency and decrease the environmental impact of the practitioners' logistics facilities. In this sense, the proposed framework can provide valuable support for logistics managers that are about to approach the challenge of turning the managers' warehouses into greener nodes of the managers' supply chains.

While most efforts to combat climate change are focussed on energy efficiency and substitution of fossil fuels, growth in the built environment remains largely unquestioned. Given the current climate emergency and increasing scarcity of global resources, it is imperative that we address this “blind spot” by finding ways to support required services with less resource consumption.

There is now long overdue recognition to greenhouse gas emissions “embodied” in the production of building materials and construction, and its importance in reaching targets of net zero carbon by 2050. However, there is a widespread belief that we can continue to “build big”, provided we incorporate energy saving measures and select “low carbon materials” – ignoring the fact that excessive volume and area of buildings may outweigh any carbon savings. This is especially the case with commercial real estate.

As the inception and planning phases of projects offer most potential for reduction in both operational and embodied carbon, we must turn our attention to previously overlooked options such as “build nothing” or “build less”. This involves challenging the root cause of the need, exploring alternative approaches to meet desired outcomes, and maximising the use of existing assets. If new build is required, this should be designed for adaptability, with increased stewardship, so the building stock of the future will be a more valuable and useable resource.

This points to the need for increased understanding and application of the principles of strategic asset management, hitherto largely ignored in sustainability circles, which emphasize a close alignment of assets with the services they support.

Arguably, as the built environment consumes more material resources and energy than any other sector, its future configuration may be critical to the future of people and the planet. In this regard, this paper seeks to break new ground for deeper exploration.

Risks in implementing green building (GB) projects have emerged as a significant obstacle for GB development, especially in developing countries. In recent years, both academics and construction practitioners have paid considerable attention to the risks associated with GB. In this study, the authors aimed to create a comprehensive risk assessment model that considers three crucial risk features: impact level, probability of occurrence and risk manageability.

In the research, authors adopted the mean scoring and fuzzy synthetic evaluation method to assess GB risks. Based on expert assessments, this model can determine the significance of risk factors, risk groups and overall risk. Notably, this research applied the proposed model to assess GB risks in Vietnam by surveying 58 GB experienced professionals.

The findings revealed that GB risks are relatively high in Vietnam, implying that risk management is essential for GB projects to succeed. The results also showed that “lack of experience of GB designers” is the most critical factor, and “human resources risk in the design phase” is the top crucial risk group.

This study contributes a novel and practical model to help practitioners assess risks in GB projects. In addition, this research offers detailed GB risk evaluations in Vietnam and thus could be a valuable reference for construction practitioners and future studies.

This research aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable hospitality and tourism by applying social network analysis to identify sustainable tourism business networks and untangle the role of cognitive and geographical proximity in their formation.

Data mining and machine learning techniques were applied to data collected from the websites of tourism companies located in northeastern Italy, namely, the Veneto region. Specifically, the authors used Web scraping to extract relevant information from the internet.

The results support the existence of geographical clusters of tourist accommodation providers that are linked by strong cognitive proximity based on sustainability principles that are well communicated via their websites. This does not appear to be greenwashing because companies that have agreed on sustainability principles have also implemented concrete actions and tend to signal these actions through a variety of sustainability certifications.

The results may guide tourism managers and policymakers in developing tourism initiatives directed at the creation of fruitful collaborations between similarly oriented organizations and methods to support clusters of sustainable tourism accommodation. Identifying sustainable tourism networks may assist in the identification of potential actors of change, fueling a widespread transition toward sustainability.

In this study, the authors adopted an innovative methodology to detect sustainability-oriented tourism business networks. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to simultaneously explore the cognitive and geographical connections between tourism businesses.