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The use of renewable energy has become necessary because of the harmful effects of current energy sources on the environment, limited availability and financial crisis. Transparent solar panels have emerged as a promising technology for integrating renewable energy generation into building structures. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the feasibility of transparent solar panels for high-rise building façades in Sri Lanka.

The research apprehended a qualitative approach, including two expert interview rounds adhering to the Delphi technique with 17 and 15 experts each per round. Manual content analysis was incorporated to analyse the collected data.

Regarding operation and maintenance, the study emphasizes the importance of regular inspection, cleaning and repair of transparent solar panels to ensure optimal performance and longevity. These activities contribute to maximizing energy generation and maintaining the aesthetic appeal of the building. The benefits of implementing transparent solar panels on building façades are manifold. They include renewable energy generation, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improved energy efficiency and enhanced architectural aesthetics. Furthermore, the research findings underscore the potential of transparent solar panels to contribute to Sri Lanka’s sustainable development goals and address the country’s increasing energy demand. However, the study also identifies challenges that need to be addressed for successful implementation.

This study contributes to understanding the feasibility of transparent solar panels for high-rise building façades in Sri Lanka. The research findings offer valuable insights into the operation and maintenance aspects, benefits, challenges and strategies for implementing transparent solar panels effectively. This knowledge can guide policymakers, architects and developers in making informed decisions regarding the integration of transparent solar panels, thereby promoting sustainable and energy-efficient building practices in Sri Lanka.

Compared to low-rise and mid-rise buildings, commercial high-rise buildings have severe maintenance management deficiencies due to the complex nature of the structure and building services incorporated. Previous studies have shown that implementing lean in maintenance is a recognised prominent strategy to enhance maintenance performance. Thus, this study aims to investigate how lean maintenance can be applied to improve maintenance management in commercial high-rise buildings in Sri Lanka.

This study adopted a case study method. Three commercial high-rise buildings were selected to conduct the empirical study. An expert survey is also conducted to validate the findings.

The findings of the study revealed that out of the eight cardinal types of lean maintenance waste, six are rooted in the selected cases: (i) excessive preventive maintenance, (ii) waiting (maintenance resources, tools, procuring of additional supplies and documentation and permits), (iii) transportation due to centralised maintenance, (iv) poor inventory management, (v) poor information handling and (vi) poor utilisation of labour. Then the study revealed strategies to eradicate identified lean maintenance wastes.

The findings of this study can be used to guide maintenance practitioners in implementing lean maintenance in Sri Lankan commercial high-rise buildings. Furthermore, the proposed strategies can be directly applied to mitigate identified maintenance wastes.

This paper provides information on how high-rise commercial buildings in Sri Lanka can enhance their maintenance management by mitigating lean maintenance wastes.

The objective of this study is to investigate the concept of “earthquake resistance” in high-rise buildings and assess the current level of structural strength in the areas where these structures are situated. The study aims to identify and implement necessary measures to enhance resilience in these areas. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to develop a conceptual framework focusing on earthquake resistance's meanings, stages and physical elements to achieve these goals.

This study focuses on Istanbul, a city known for its high earthquake risk, specifically targeting the Atasehir district. The research utilizes the DEMATEL (Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) method to evaluate urban resilience parameters. Additionally, the Fuzzy TOPSIS (Preference Ranking Technique by Similarity) method is employed to analyze the location of five buildings in Atasehir, using criterion weights derived from this methodology.

The findings indicate that resilience varies depending on the distance of the buffers. Moreover, the amount and quality of urban equipment in the study areas have a significant impact on the earthquake resistance level of the surrounding areas where high-rise buildings are situated. Building upon this analysis, the study suggests the implementation of measures aimed at augmenting the quantity and quality of urban facilities in the study areas, consequently enhancing urban resilience.

The originality and value of this study lie in its examination of seismic resilience within the context of high-rise buildings and the identification of necessary measures to increase resilience in areas where these structures are prevalent. By focusing on Istanbul, a city with a high earthquake risk, and specifically selecting the Atasehir district as the study area, this research provides a comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding urban resilience and its physical components. Moreover, the study offers a fresh perspective on urban resilience by highlighting the influence of tall buildings on the surrounding areas. Ultimately, it provides practical recommendations for architects, urban planners and other stakeholders to improve regional earthquake resilience.

Sustainability has been the subject of several scientific investigations. Many researchers in the construction industry have also examined a range of sustainability-related studies. However, few studies have thoroughly reviewed implementing sustainability concepts in high-rise residential buildings (HRRBs).

By adopting scientometrics and systematic review (SR), this study seeks to map out recent sustainability trends and concepts in the design, development and operation of HRRBs worldwide and in Hong Kong. With a focus on bibliographic records from the Web of Science (WoS) database, 1,395 journal articles from 2013 to 2022 were analysed. Furthermore, thirteen studies were systematically reviewed.

The SR indicated that sustainable practices in developing Hong Kong's HRRBs emphasised zero-carbon buildings, reduced energy usage and energy-efficient retrofitting. Likewise, terms such as BIM, urban density, life cycle assessment and system dynamics are strongly connected with clusters that include “residential buildings”, “high-rise buildings” and “high-rise residential buildings”. The study identified significant themes in establishing HRRBs by combining sustainable practices, emphasising urban governance and policy management, building performance and thermal comfort, energy and design optimisation, occupant behaviour and sensitivity analysis. Core sustainability ideas have improved resource management, air quality management and knowledge of user behaviour in HRRBs.

The study allows researchers and practitioners to explore future research directions in the built environment per the application of sustainable concepts in the development of HRRBs from design, construction and post-construction phases.

Most of the 3D printing machines do not comply with the requirements of on-site, large-scale multi-story building construction. This paper aims to propose the conceptualization of a tower crane (TC)-based 3D printing controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) as the first step towards a large 3D printing development for multi-story buildings. It also aims to overcome the most important limitation of additive manufacturing in the construction industry (the build volume) by exploiting the most important machine used in the field: TCs. It assesses the technology feasibility by investigating the accuracy reached in the printing process.

The research is composed of three main steps: firstly, the TC-based 3D printing concept is defined by proposing an aero-pendulum extruder stabilized by propellers to control the trajectory during the extrusion process; secondly, an AI-based system is defined to control both the crane and the extruder toolpath by exploiting deep reinforcement learning (DRL) control approach; thirdly the proposed framework is validated by simulating the dynamical system and analysing its performance.

The TC-based 3D printer can be effectively used for additive manufacturing in the construction industry. Both the TC and its extruder can be properly controlled by an AI-based control system. The paper shows the effectiveness of the aero-pendulum extruder controlled by AI demonstrated by simulations and validation. The AI-based control system allows for reaching an acceptable tolerance with respect to the ideal trajectory compared with the system tolerance without stabilization.

In related literature, scientific investigations concerning the use of crane systems for 3D printing and AI-based systems for control are completely missing. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the proposed research demonstrates for the first time the effectiveness of this technology conceptualized and controlled with an intelligent DRL agent.

The results provide the first step towards the development of a new additive manufacturing system for multi-storey constructions exploiting the TC-based 3D printing. The demonstration of the conceptualization feasibility and the control system opens up new possibilities to activate experimental research for companies and research centres.

The UAE is among the fastest-growing facilities management (FM) markets globally. Nevertheless, conclusive evidence on this market is scarce in the literature. Therefore, this paper aims to provide an in-depth insight into the FM market in the UAE.

Fourteen interviewees were purposively selected to provide insight into FM status through their field experiences. A SWOT analysis of their answers held place.

Interviewees revealed that the main trends of FM in the UAE include interests in sustainability, integration of technology, health and safety, outsourcing FM, switching to total facilities management (TFM), and performance management systems use. Besides, the quality of the service in the FM market is driven by the real-estate boom, services sophistication, the increasing awareness of FM and focus on the quality of services. Furthermore, the interviews found that the recruitment of poorly skilled labors can threaten the FM market to meet the allocated budget, misperception of FM, the value of money, the lack of continuous follow-up with recent advancements in technologies and the lack of performance measurement models.

This paper highlights the major trends, drivers and threats of the FM market in the UAE, and the implications of its findings can direct FM organizations and researchers in their practices.

This article explores the impacts of the changing land-use on urban heat island (UHI) in an urban transformation zone in Ankara (Türkiye). Identifying a characteristic rural landscape until the 1950s, the study area experienced a drastic land-use change by razing the fertile landscape of the city and replacing it with a sealed surface. Development of the squatter houses after the 1960s and, subsequently, the implementation of a new housing morphology have introduced new sceneries, scales and surface conditions that make the study area a noteworthy case to analyze.

Regarding the drastic spatio-temporal change of the study area, this research assesses the impacts of the changing land-use on UHI based on three periods. Using 1957, 1991 and 2021 aerial imaginaries and maps, it analyzes the temperature alteration caused by the changing land-use. To do so, different surface types, green patterns and built-up areas have been modeled using Ankara climatic data and transferred to ENVI-Met to calculate the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) values.

The calculation has been developed over a transect covering an area of 40 m × 170 m, which includes diversity in terms of architecture, landscape and open space elements. To encourage future design strategies, the research findings deliberate into three extents that discuss the lacking climate knowledge in the ongoing urban transformation projects: impervious surface ratio and regional albedo variation, changing aspect ratio and temperature variation at the pedestrian level.

Urban transformation projects, being countrywide operations in Türkiye, need to cover climate-informed design strategies. Herein, the article underlines the critical position of design decisions in forming a climate-informed urban environment. Dwelling on a typical model of housing transformation in Türkiye, the research could trigger climate-informed urban development strategies in the country.

The Mongol invasion caused widespread destruction in many cities; this research studies the destruction course of cities after the Mongol invasion and their reconstruction during the reform period, the change that it brought to the cityscapes of Iranian cities and the difference between the urbanscape of the cities that flourished or were re-established after these destructions with the cities prior to them.

The method of research used is historical interpretation/analysis. The historical texts of pre-Mongolian Persia and texts from the Ilkhanid era are studied, references to the shapes and appearances of Iranian cityscapes are classified, and with the help of contemporary interpretations and existing physical evidence, the urbanscape of these two periods are redrawn and compared to each other.

The selection of scenic meadows to build the city, the presence of many gardens in the urban patterns and the construction of satellite towns around large cities have been the effects of the Mongol tradition of (Yurt) tent-dwelling on Iranian cities during the reforms. The declining population and the massive migration of artists together with the rethinking of the rulers made the existence of dense cities with multi-storey houses less likely. The tradition of pre-designing the city and buildings and designing open and right-angled pathways continued after the Mongol invasion.

The prevailing belief is that during the Mongol era, only the destruction of cities took place and the Mongols did not create any cities and had no influence on urban development. This research aims to challenge that.

The transcript is of one from a number of interviews with disaster risk reduction (DRR) “pioneers” carried out in 2022 as a part of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) project to record the history of the field. It aims to enable one of the “pioneers” to explain his role in the emergence of disaster studies and provide critical commentary on what he considers is wrong with current DRR approaches.

Terry Cannon was interviewed to explain the beginnings of his involvement in disasters research and to comment on his views on progress in the field of disaster risk reduction since his early work in the 1980s. The transcript and video were developed in the context of the UNDRR project on the history of DRR.

The interview provides an account of the origins of the book “At Risk” and why it was considered necessary. This is put into the context of how the field of DRR has emerged since the 1980s. It elicits opinions on what he considers the gaps in both his early work (especially in the book “At Risk” of which he was a co-author) and in the field of DRR recently.

It provides historical context on how early disaster research developed the alternative framework of “social construction” of disasters, in opposition to the idea that they are “natural”. It challenges some of the approaches that have emerged as DRR and has been institutionalised, including its increasing difficulty in supporting the ideas of social construction.

Studies showed that construction digitalisation could prevent or mitigate accidents rate on sites. Digitalisation applications may prevent or mitigate building project collapse (BPC) but with some encumbrances, especially in developing countries. There is a paucity of research on digital technologies application to prevent or mitigate BPC in Nigeria. Thus, the research aims to explore the perceived barriers that may hinder digital technologies from preventing or mitigating building collapse and recommend measures to improve technology applications during development.

The study is exploratory because of the unexplored approach. The researchers collected data from knowledgeable participants in digitalisation and building collapse in Nigeria. The research employed a phenomenology approach and analysed collected data via a thematic approach. The study achieved saturation at the 29th interviewee.

Findings show that lax construction digitalisation implementation, absence of regulatory framework, lax policy, unsafe fieldworkers' behaviours, absence of basic infrastructure, government attitude, hesitation to implement and high technology budget, especially in developing countries, are threats to curbing building collapse menace via digitalisation. The study identified technologies relevant to preventing or mitigating building collapse. Also, it proffered measures to prevent or mitigate building collapse via improved digital technology applications during development.

This research contributes to the construction digitalisation literature, especially in developing countries, and investigates the perceived barriers that may hinder digital technologies usage in preventing or mitigating building collapse in Nigeria.