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With future (extreme) change ahead of us, there are many serious problems humankind has to face. The pace of mitigating climate change through an energy transition to renewables is slow, global mean temperature is increasing and sea level seems to rise at an accelerated pace. This puts many livelihoods at risk and communities have to face an uncertain future. Therefore, continuing the way contemporary cities are developing and developed is not an option. The new normal should also be reflected in urbanism. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, the answer to this question is sought in understanding traditional attitudes to living and their relation to the land. How these cultures have been capable of coping with disruptions lies in the way their mental paradigm respects their environment. A more resilient future can be achieved when the traditional values of the relation of societies with the land they live on are considered important and indigenous knowledge and perspectives are used to design cities.

Current society seems to have forgotten what it means and how to put into practice sharing resources and space, giving back more to the environment than used to live. Also, mankind seems to be lacking the ability to move and search for the potentials where to live. Furthermore, choosing to live in safe places, hence being less vulnerable for disruptions, is a principle that has long been neglected. These characteristics of traditional cultures are translated in four principles that are valuable in design processes: first, making use of the energy and power a disaster might bring and turning it into an advantage; second, using imagination to anticipate an unknown future; third, accommodating all paces of urban change; and fourth, designing redundancy for flexibility. The use of these principles is illustrated in three Sydney-based examples.

The link between indigenous knowledge and current urban design practice is new.

The purpose of this paper is to build a bridge between climate change adaptation and spatial planning and design. It aims to develop a spatial planning framework in which the properties of climate adaptation and spatial planning are unified.

Adaptive and dynamical approaches in spatial planning literature are studied and climate adaptation properties are defined in a way they can be used in a spatial planning framework. The climate adaptation properties and spatial planning features are aggregated in coherent groups and used to construct the spatial planning framework, which subsequently has been tested to design a climate adaptive region.

The paper concludes that the majority of spatial planning methods do not include adaptive or dynamic strategies derived from complex adaptive systems theory, such as adaptive capacity or vulnerability. If these complex adaptive systems properties are spatially defined and aggregated in a coherent set of spatial groups, they can form a spatial planning framework for climate adaptation. Each of these groups has a specific time dimension and can be linked to a specific spatial planning “layer”. The set of (five) layers form the spatial planning framework, which can be used as a methodology to design a climate adaptive region.

Previous research did not connect the complex issue of climate change with spatial planning. Many frameworks are developed in climate change research but are generally not aiming to meet the needs of spatial planning. This article forms the first attempt to develop a spatial planning framework, in which non‐linear and dynamical processes, such as climate adaptation, is included.

This purpose of this paper is to introduce the new Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE) journal to readers by discussing the background and underlying principles of its establishment, the editorial visions, and the range of papers selected in this first issue. It will encourage readers and potential authors to consider the need for integrated approaches to sustainability problems, to take on emerging challenges in the built environment and to join the SASBE journal in finding and promoting optimum solutions.

This paper explores the evolving nature of sustainability, the recent trends of sustainability endeavours in built environment and the current knowledge gaps. The need to bridge these gaps is then discussed in the context of suggested remedies and justifications. This leads to the development of a smart and sustainable built environment as a R&D philosophy for world researchers as part of their interactions with professional bodies and agencies such as CIB, UNEP and iiSBE, and the establishment of the SASBE journal.

Sustainable development in the built environment requires holistic thinking and decision making and innovative solutions that enhance sustainability and result in mutually beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders. A dedicated forum, through the journal of SASBE, is much needed for the exploration, discussion, debate, and promotion of these integrated approaches.

Through presenting an overview of the current issues and identifying gaps in the understanding and pursuit of sustainability in the built environment, this paper suggests potential areas for future research and practice as well as possible topics for authors to make new contributions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the seasonal performance, occupants’ comfort and cold stress in cross-laminated timber school buildings located in the USA (Northeast region).

The Fall survey was done from October–November 2017. In the Winter, it was considered from December 2017–February 2018. The study measured environmental parameters in the chosen spaces. The research applied the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) model to determine the indexes in various seasons.

In the Fall, the average inside temperature was 21.2°C, the average RH was 50.7 per cent, and the mean dew-point was 9.3°C. The mean inside temperature was 20.5°C in the Winter while the mean RH was 23.9 per cent and the average dew-point was −1.9°C. The overall mean inside temperatures in both seasons were within the ASHRAE comfort temperature limits for cold seasons. During the surveys, higher average values of temperature, RH and dew-point were measured in the offices than the other spaces.

The research showed people might be subject to lower temperatures in the hall than the other spaces. Some design parameters and occupation hours may contribute to the lower temperatures reported in the hall than the different spaces.

The study proposes the WBGT of 16.0°C and 13.7°C as the stress indexes in the Fall and Winter seasons correspondingly. Last, the research suggests a WBGT of 14.9°C as the overall mean stress index within the spaces considered in this study.

Decarbonising the housing stock is one of the largest challenges in the built environment today, which is getting the attention not only from policymakers but also from social housing corporations, financial organisations and users. In line with the international Paris-Climate-Change-Conference 2015, Dutch cities and housing associations have embraced this challenge with the ambitions to become carbon neutral in 2050. To reach such goals, both the rate and depth of renovation need to increase. Several technical solutions to eliminate the energy demand in dwelling have been developed and tested. Nevertheless, the intake rate of deep retrofitting is low. Despite recent developments, there are still significant barriers related to financing, lack of information and user acceptance. To address those barriers, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between energy efficiency upgrades and the cost of living.

Focusing on walk-up apartments in the Netherlands, a framework of refurbishment measures that affect the energy efficiency was identified, and their performance was calculated. Furthermore, the rental price adjustment was estimated, taking into account the refurbishment investment and the exploitation cost of the renovated dwellings.

The comparison of the energy use and rental price for the different options demonstrated how the different renovation measures affect the energy cost, the energy use, rent and cost of living. The tenants are more likely to accept the solutions that take into account the total cost of living and sustainability benefits. The study gives a holistic standpoint to the issue of energy upgrades, by quantifying the effect of the potential measures for the whole exploitation period. It has shown the potential of the different interventions to improve the performance and living conditions, without necessarily increasing the total cost of living.

Such results aim at supporting the decision making between the stakeholders, primarily housing associations and tenants.

The importance of the study is that it gives a holistic standpoint to the issue of energy upgrades, by quantifying the effect of the potential measures for the whole exploitation period. The cost, as a key, if not the more most decisive, issue, is put into perspective in relation to the benefit, in order to give a direction to the renovation design and arguments for the stakeholders’ dialogue. The approach of the study goes beyond cost-optimality of measures and investigated the relation between energy upgrades and cost, as a way to evaluate design variation and address the lack of information barrier in renovations. Moreover, it also proves that deep renovation is feasible without increasing in the total cost of living, which is a principal argument to promote renovations.

The transition to a circular economy in the built environment is key to achieving a resource-effective society. The built environment can be made more circular by applying circular building components. The purpose of this paper is to present a design tool that can support industry in developing circular building components.

The tool was developed and tested in five steps. In Step 1, the authors analysed existing circular design frameworks to identify gaps and develop requirements for the design tool (Step 2). In Step 3, the authors derived circular design parameters and options from existing frameworks. In Step 4, the authors combined and specified these to develop the “circular building components generator” (CBC-generator). In Step 5, the CBC-generator was applied in the development of an exemplary component: the circular kitchen and tested in a student workshop.

The CBC-generator is a three-tiered design tool, consisting of a technical, industrial and business model generator. These generators are “parameter based”; they consist of a parameter-option matrix and design canvasses. Different variants for circular components can be synthesised by filling the canvasses through systematically “mixing and matching” design options.

The developed tool does not yet support establishing causal links between “parameter-options” and identification of the most circular design variant.

The CBC-generator provides an important step to support the building industry in developing and implementing circular building components in the built environment.

Whilst existing tools and frameworks are not comprehensive, nor specifically developed for designing circular building components, the CBC-generator successfully supports the integral design of circular building components. First, it provides all the design parameters which should be considered; second, it provides extensive design options per parameter; and third, it supports systematic synthesis of design options to a cohesive and comprehensive circular design.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are in use to determine how and the extent to which the business objectives of an organization are achieved. This paper aims to evaluate the contribution of a research institute in terms of KPIs to support its process of decision-making towards, etc., innovation, sustainability and improvement.

In light of this, a systemic review was conducted on a set of relevant scholarly studies to identify the trends which shed light on the possible critical success factors to be effectively used in research institutes in association with the development of commercial agriculture. It examines whether, and if so how KPIs that are highly associated with those critical success factors are disruptive in research culture in an institute with certain organization design to promote research on innovative commercial agriculture.

The study highlighted some important aspects of commercial agriculture that showed strong links with possible critical success factors that could be used to develop a possible KPI set for a research institute. The salient features in a model performance management system with such KPIs of a research institute having strategical contribution for commercial agriculture are further elaborated.

This manuscript is a conceptual piece that advocates research institutes geared towards commercial agriculture development to begin using KPIs as part of research culture to evaluate their success. The paper suggests that commercial agriculture – perhaps, especially in developing countries – faces many challenges and using KPIs could help diagnose when and why essential processes break down. This study shows possible avenues of KPI use in research institutes that have not been very well discussed or discussed meagerly that have high potential to be integrated into successful KPIs towards innovative commercial agriculture.