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The Greenery system on buildings is an interesting approach to address the urban, and environmental issues yet provide economic and social benefits. The educational campus in Higher Learning Institution (HLI) has been regarded as a small city that can implement the greenery system area. Green roofs have rapidly become a key in sustainable building development and design features for urban cities and have started being applied in a campus building. However, the built environment in the campus is mostly covered with the existing buildings. Several studies also conducted green roof aspects but with a vast focus on the new building design. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify retrofitting criteria on green roof implementation for existing buildings to achieve optimal solutions. This chapter aims to identify the influential criteria for implementing green roof initiatives in the educational building of HLI. A list of 12 green roof criteria has been identified based on design and economics. A questionnaire has been designed and distributed to architects as important stakeholders in green roof development. The results obtained were analysed with factor analysis based on principal component analysis with Varimax Rotation and Factor Score to categorise and rank according to the importance of criteria. The outcomes of this study showed that design criteria should concern waterproofing, drainage, and access; economic criteria are construction costs, return on investment, and maintenance cost. This study enables decision-makers to consider the criteria established during the decision of retrofitting an existing building with a green roof.

Shimla is a teeming city, with a population of 140,000, in the north Indian Himalayas. It sits in an area of high seismicity that was rocked by a devastating earthquake about a hundred years ago, yet is oblivious of the ticking time bomb below its foundations. Initiating risk reduction in this fast growing urban economic hub is an enormous challenge. SEEDS, a national NGO, started working in the city just before the earthquake centenary in 2005, with an aim to identify ways of reducing earthquake risk through actions that could be carried out by the citizens and the local government, with school children playing a catalytic role.

The importance of education in disaster risk reduction has been emphasized in several international agendas, frameworks, conferences, as well as UN programs. Chapter 36 of Agenda 21, on “Promoting Education, Public Awareness and Training” stated, “Education, including formal education, public awareness and training, should be recognized as a process by which human beings and societies can reach their fullest potential” (UNEP, 1992). Furthermore, the UN/ISDR System Thematic Cluster/Platform on Knowledge and Education argued that “Education for disaster risk reduction is an interactive process of mutual learning among people and institutions. It encompasses far more than formal education at schools and universities, and involves the recognition and use of traditional wisdom and local knowledge for protection from natural hazard” (UN/ISDR, 2005). In the 2006 Review of the Role of Education and Knowledge in Disaster Risk Reduction, Professor Ben Wisner commented, “Education, knowledge and awareness are critical to building the ability to reduce losses from natural hazards, as well as the capacity to respond to and recover effectively from extreme natural events when they do, inevitably, occur” (Wisner, 2006). The Second Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (2007, India) urged governments to make school safety and the integration of disaster risk reduction into school curricula a priority on the national agenda (UN/ISDR, 2007a). The Third Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (2008, Malaysia) recognized education as an essential contribution to effective implementation of disaster risk reduction and concrete impact in terms of shifts in behaviors at the local level, where communities are most vulnerable to disasters (UN/ISDR, 2008). Last but not least, the UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) program emphasized that “Education is the primary agent of transformation toward sustainable development, increasing people's capacities to transform their visions for society into reality” (UNESCO, 2005a).

With numerous and ambiguous sets of information and often conflicting requirements, construction management is a complex process involving much uncertainty. Decision makers may be challenged with satisfying multiple criteria using vague information. Fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) provides an innovative approach for addressing complex problems featuring diverse decision makers’ interests, conflicting objectives and numerous but uncertain bits of information. FMCDM has therefore been widely applied in construction management. With the increase in information complexity, extensions of fuzzy set (FS) theory have been generated and adopted to improve its capacity to address this complexity. Examples include hesitant FSs (HFSs), intuitionistic FSs (IFSs) and type-2 FSs (T2FSs). This chapter introduces commonly used FMCDM methods, examines their applications in construction management and discusses trends in future research and application. The chapter first introduces the MCDM process as well as FS theory and its three main extensions, namely, HFSs, IFSs and T2FSs. The chapter then explores the linkage between FS theory and its extensions and MCDM approaches. In total, 17 FMCDM methods are reviewed and two FMCDM methods (i.e. T2FS-TOPSIS and T2FS-PROMETHEE) are further improved based on the literature. These 19 FMCDM methods with their corresponding applications in construction management are discussed in a systematic manner. This review and development of FS theory and its extensions should help both researchers and practitioners better understand and handle information uncertainty in complex decision problems.

Existing old building stock needs retrofit of structures and performance upgrading. Retrofit is often neglected, either lacking understanding of maintenance importance or to keep living costs low. Retrofit is inevitable. Depending on a buildings geographical location, condition or expected time of use; demolition of building or increment space is worth considering. This study looks at the economics about which is the best option: renovation and energy efficient upgrading of existing building or replacement of existing building.

Research method is case study. The same case building – size, age, existing performance as well as renovation and new performance – studied at different regions. These are (1) growing city, (2) stable city and (3) shrinking city. Life cycle cost analysis bases on payback periods. The most important input data are the rent and occupancy rate on each area.

In growing cities, both renovation and replacement of existing buildings are feasible options. In other two areas, payback periods of renovations are rather long and acceptable only if building is in own use. Often retrofit is necessary because of the poor condition of the building.

This study looks at the subject only from building owners economical point of view and ties building to its location. Life cycle assessment (energy use and greenhouse gas emissions) has analysed earlier (Nippala and Heljo, 2010).

Analysis gives the most feasible option to different regions.

This study raises the debate on how realistic it is to expect the building stock to meet the EU’s energy saving and greenhouse cut targets.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss design principles applied to nature-based solutions (NBS) within the urban and peri-urban environment. It is divided into three parts: the first part tries to set the physical space of the interventions, with some reflections on the notion of “city,” introducing the concept of the technosphere. The second part elaborates on the concept of coexistence, particularly with respect to the attitude toward the projects, whereas the designer tries to embody the changes, either in new buildings, new plans, or even in the retrofitting of the existing urban environment, with the aim of integrating green systems within the complex built environment. The third part illustrates different case studies where, at the different scales, NBS are implemented.

Recent developments in the competitive landscape of the management support software industry sub-sector — characterised by saturation, consolidation and defragmentation — have also attracted attention to the phenomenon of cluster formation. Layers of SMEs forming satellite systems centred on large players in this industry fill in structural holes in the competitive fabric of the market which are left open — at least temporarily — by the large ‘incubator’ company, while at the same time also acting as a type of capacity buffer or technology spearhead for the larger player which does not need to invest its own capacities into certain niches. This paper discusses the significance of clustering in the management support software sector and aims to offer explanations predicated on intangible constructs which may retrofit traditional agglomeration economies approaches. The findings of a pilot study corroborate the implications of clustering in relation to knowledge spillover effects, labour mobility, network formation, the generation of social capital, reputation building and effects of the urban ambience as factors potentially moderating the competitive environment within clusters vis-à-vis outside. Moreover, effects of the density of cluster labour pools and spin-off are considered. Simultaneously, the unique efficacy of these effects by means of mitigation of the idiosyncratic growth constraints affecting SMEs in this industry context — such as high levels of customer dependence, lack of legitimacy and the importance of reputation as well as customer references — is proposed.

Green building is an outcome of a design that focuses on increasing the efficiency of resources use energy and national environment. A variety of assessment programmes were developed, such as green building incentive (GBI) had been implemented in Malaysia as a strong indication for the key player in the construction industry to use the opportunity for their companies by embracing the idea of green building focussing on renewable energies, energy conservation, green building, waste management, and support service. However, the current situation reveals that the incentives were not effective enough to encourage the key players to apply the green building concept in their development. The purpose of this research is to produce a new parameter of GBIs for construction key players in Malaysia. The participants of this research were among the implementer and policy maker in helping to produce new parameter on green building incentives in Malaysia. The significant of this new parameter is to provide some guidance to the government in improving and strengthen the prior incentive, hence increase the participation of key building players in green building development in Malaysia. Apart from that, the green incentives are considered to be valuable tools in generating interest, in creating a motive for the adoption of green building practices over conventional practices and in eliminating knowledge gaps.