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Over the years, the significance of retrofitting has gained much attention with the unveiling of its different applications, such as energy retrofit and deep retrofit, to enhance the climate-resilience of buildings. However, no single study comprehensively assesses the climate-resilience of retrofitting. The purpose of this study is to address this gap via a systematic literature review.

Quality journal studies were selected using the PRISMA method and analysed manually and using scientometrics. Three dimensions of climate-resilience, such as robustness, withstanding and recovery, were used to evaluate the contribution of retrofit measures for achieving climate-resilient houses across four climate zones: tropical, arid, temperate and cold.

Most passive measures can enhance the robustness of residential buildings but cannot verify for withstanding against immediate shocks and timely recovery. However, some passive measures, such as night-time ventilation, show excellent performance over all four climate zones. Active measures such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, can ensure climate-resilience in all three dimensions in the short-term but contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, further exacerbating the long-term climate. Integrating renewable energy sources can defeat this issue. Thus, all three retrofit strategies should appropriately be adopted together to achieve climate-resilient houses.

Since the research is limited to secondary data, retrofit measures recommended in this research should be further investigated before application.

This review contributes to the knowledge domain of retrofitting by assessing the contribution of different retrofit measures to climate-resilience.

This study aims to examine the challenges for green retrofitting implementation in existing residential buildings to lower the running cost and achieve a better energy-efficient system.

This study adopted a qualitative approach by interviewing conveniently selected 16 construction professionals, made up of architects, quantity surveyors and engineers. Data received were analysed using the content analysis method.

The findings revealed that the main barriers to incorporating green retrofitting in the existing residential buildings as the nature of the existing structures, limited knowledge, not being a priority and high costs involved in the process. Moreover, other factors influencing property developers’ decision to apply energy-efficient principles in a residential home include cost (initial capital and maintenance), level of knowledge, nature of the climate in the area, local legislation, more independence and increasing the property’s market value and environmental aspect.

This study is limited to South Africa; thus, the literature available was limited.

People’s perceptions, either wrong or correct, affect their ability to make an informed decision to adopt green retrofitting principles, thereby denying them the opportunity to reap the associated benefits. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the construction industry stakeholders and government to increase educational opportunities for property owners on the importance of green retrofitting.

This study provides the occupants with the possible barriers and problem areas with implementing these principles. They will thus make an informed decision when implementing sustainable design methods.

The aim of the work is to investigate structural behaviour of reinforced concrete (RF) beam retrofitted with basalt fibre (BF) fabric. The incorporation of BF showed enhancement in bending strength, to increase confinement and to repair damages caused by cracking. In the early decades, using BF for composite materials shaped BF as an excellent physical substance with necessary mechanical properties, highlighting the significant procedures ability.

Specimens were casted with U-wrapped BF and then evaluated based on flexural tests. In the test carried over for flexural fortifying assessment, BF reinforcements demonstrated a definitive quality improvement in the case of the subjected control sample; ultimately, the end impacts depend upon the applied test parameters. From the outcomes introduced in this comparison, for the double-wrapped sample, the modifications improved by 12% than that of the single-wrapped beam, which is identified to subsist for a better strengthening of new-age retrofitting designs.

The current research deals with the retrofitting of RC beam by conducting a comparative experiment on wrapping of BF (single or double BF wrapping) in improving the mechanical behavior of concrete.

It can be shown from the experimental results that increasing the number of layers has significant effect on basalt strengthened beams.

The organizational digital transformation (ODT) in companies presents small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – who remain at the beginning of this transformation – with the challenge of offering digital services based on sensor technologies. Against this backdrop, the present paper identifies ways SMEs can enable digital servitization through sensor technology and defines the possible scope of the organizational transformation process.

Around 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts from different hierarchical levels across the German manufacturing SME ecosystem. Using the Gioia methodology, fields of action were identified by focusing on influencing factors and opportunities for developing these digital services to offer them successfully in the future.

The complexity of existing sensor offerings must be mastered, and employees' (data) understanding of the technology has increased. Knowledge gaps, which mainly relate to technical and organizational capabilities, must be overcome. The potential of sensor technology was considered on an individual, technical and organizational level. To enable the successful implementation of service offerings based on sensor technology, all relevant stakeholders in the ecosystem must network to facilitate shared value creation. This requires standardized technical and procedural adaptations and is an essential prerequisite for data mining.

Based on this study, current problem areas were analyzed, and potentials that create opportunities for offering digital sensor services to manufacturing SMEs were identified. The identified influencing factors form a conceptual framework that supports SMEs' future development of such services in a structured manner.

Damage to reinforced concrete (RC) structural elements is inevitable. Such damage can be the result of several factors, including aggressive environmental conditions, overloading, inadequate design, poor work execution, fire, storm, earthquakes etc. Therefore, repairing and strengthening is one way to improve damaged structures, so that they can be reutilized. In this research, the use of an ultra high-performance fibre-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) layer is proposed as a strengthening material to rehabilitate damaged-RC beams. Different strengthening schemes pertaining to the structural performance of the retrofitted RC beams due to the flexural load were investigated.

A total of 13 normal RC beams were prepared. All the beams were subjected to a four-point flexural test. One beam was selected as the control beam and tested to failure, whereas the remaining beams were tested under a load of up to 50% of the ultimate load capacity of the control beam. The damaged beams were then strengthened using a UHPFRC layer with two different schemes; strip-shape and U-shape schemes, before all the beams were tested to failure.

Based on the test results, the control beam and all strengthened beams failed in the flexural mode. Compared to the control beam, the damaged-RC beams strengthened using the strip-shape scheme provided an increase in the ultimate load capacity ranging from 14.50% to 43.48% (or an increase of 1.1450 to 1.4348 times), whereas for the U-shape scheme beams ranged from 48.70% to 149.37% (or an increase of 1.4870–2.4937 times). The U-shape scheme was more effective in rehabilitating the damaged-RC beams. The UHPFRC mixtures are workable, as well easy to place and cast into the formworks. Furthermore, the damaged-RC beams strengthened using strip-shape scheme and U-shape scheme generated ductility factors of greater than 4 and 3, respectively. According to Eurocode8, these values are suitable for seismically active regions. Therefore, the strengthened damaged-RC beams under this study can quite feasibly be used in such regions.

Observations of crack patterns were not accompanied by measurements of crack widths due to the unavailability of a microcrack meter in the laboratory. The cost of the strengthening system application were not evaluated in this study, so the users should consider wisely related to the application of this method on the constructions.

Rehabilitation of the damaged-RC beams exhibited an adequate structural performance, where all strengthened RC beams fail in the flexural mode, as well as having increment in the failure load capacity and ductility. So, the used strengthening system in this study can be applied for the building construction in the seismic regions.

Aside from equipment, application of this strengthening system need also the labours.

The use of sand blasting on the surfaces of the damaged-RC beams, as well as the application of UHPFRC layers of different thicknesses and shapes to strengthen the damaged-RC beams, provides a novel innovation in the strengthening of damaged-RC beams, which can be applicable to either bridge or building constructions.

This paper extends the authors’ previous research work investigating resilience for municipal infrastructure from an asset management perspective. Therefore, this paper aims to formulate a pavement resilience index while incorporating asset management and the associated resilience indicators from the authors’ previous research work.

This paper introduces a set of holistic-based key indicators that reflect municipal infrastructure resiliency. Thenceforth, the indicators were integrated using the weighted sum mean method to form the proposed resilience index. Resilience indicators weights were determined using principal components analysis (PCA) via IBM SPSS®. The developed framework for the PCA was built based on an optimization model output to generate the required weights for the desired resilience index. The output optimization data were adjusted using the standardization method before performing PCA.

This paper offers a mathematical approach to generating a resilience index for municipal infrastructure. The statistical tests conducted throughout the study showed a high significance level. Therefore, using PCA was proper for the resilience indicators data. The proposed framework is beneficial for asset management experts, where introducing the proposed index will provide ease of use to decision-makers regarding pavement network maintenance planning.

The resilience indicators used need to be updated beyond what is mentioned in this paper to include asset redundancy and structural asset capacity. Using clustering as a validation tool is an excellent opportunity for other researchers to examine the resilience index for each pavement corridor individually pertaining to the resulting clusters.

This paper provides a unique example of integrating resilience and asset management concepts and serves as a vital step toward a comprehensive integration approach between the two concepts. The used PCA framework offers dynamic resilience indicators weights and, therefore, a dynamic resilience index. Resiliency is a dynamic feature for infrastructure systems. It differs during their life cycle with the change in maintenance and rehabilitation plans, systems retrofit and the occurring disruptive events throughout their life cycle. Therefore, the PCA technique was the preferred method used where it is data-based oriented and eliminates the subjectivity while driving indicators weights.

This paper aims to establish a reliable scale measuring occupants’ levels of environmental trust in their work settings’ indoor air quality and explore the relationship between occupants’ levels of environmental trust and their perceived control over the air quality in their workspace.

The authors conducted occupant surveys concerning indoor air quality in an office building, and collected corresponding indoor air quality measurements. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis results are reported to reveal occupants’ levels of environmental trust and perceived control.

Results reveal that psychological perceptions of indoor air quality can be quite neutral, even shortly after an extreme wildfire event resulting in very poor air quality in an urban area. Occupants’ sense of trust that their office building could protect them from harmful air outside, and their belief that the building could protect them from seasonal smoky conditions, each correlated positively with employees’ sense of control over the indoor air quality in their personal workspace.

This case study adds to an interdisciplinary understanding for facility managers and organizational leaders concerning a way to measure occupants’ sense of control over the indoor air quality in their building, as well as their environmental trust in terms of how protected they feel from harmful air quality conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the significant stimulating measures/enablers relating to the existing building regulations for promoting the adoption and overcoming the barriers to the uptake and implementation of the green building concept (GBC) in developing countries using Ghana as a case.

The quantitative research approach was used to attain the study’s goal. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were found to be suitable for collecting data from 292 relevant stakeholders in Ghana’s construction industry. The mean score ranking technique, in conjunction with the relative importance index, was used to establish the relative ranking of, among other things, the stimulus measures for increasing green building uptake in Ghana. An exploratory factor analysis was also used to classify the most significant stimulation strategies for improving green building uptake.

“Educational programmes relevant to GBTs for developers, contractors, and policymakers,” “sufficient information on the cost and benefits of GBTs” and “mandated green building codes and regulations” were the top three listed stimulating measures to promote increasing use of green building technologies (GBTs). The enablers were classified as follows: government regulations and policies; commitment and GB research; education and publicity; and incentives and support.

The study was conducted in Ghana, a developing nation, and thus the findings and implications are peculiar to Ghana. However, the study’s findings have important practical implications for the adoption and marketing of GBCs and GBTs in other developing nations.

Prioritizing major stimulation initiatives may be beneficial in terms of overcoming the constraints to the adoption of GBCs and GBTs in developing countries.

This study aims to introduce the design and the design process for an innovative sanitary fixture to be used in public facilities for the purpose of ablution. This purpose-made fixture is needed to support the hygienic, safe and comfortable performance of this essential function in public facilities in many parts of the world. The study also clarifies the need for this function and critically reviews current designs to address it.

The study started by critically reviewing the standard built-in models for ablution. It also identified and analyzed new approaches to designing standalone ablution fixtures. The study then specified the characteristics of a better ablution fixture and involved drafting a design based on these characteristics, making a wooden prototype to test the design and receiving users’ feedback. The design was adjusted and tested again for more feedback. Finally, the study resulted in the development of a final design. It used digital fabrication to create the design prototype with improved aesthetics, tested it again and received user feedback.

A survey of users showed that they found the innovative fixture more comfortable and safer than the commonly used built-in models. The main concern was the potential for water to splash on clothes from the high faucet.

In addition to showing an innovative design for a purpose-made sanitary fixture for ablution, the study makes the reader aware of the various challenges of providing a hygienic, safe and comfortable facility for users to perform this function. This is very useful for the many designers and facility managers who deal with the issue.