Population explosion, irresponsible consumerism, environmental catastrophes, tremendous market-based urban development and the dedication of cities to cars and concrete rather than citizens and environment has put a big question mark over the future of the world’s developing countries. Urban sustainability has emerged as the only solution to the environmental, social and economic challenges facing our cities. In recent years in countries struggling with the concept of urban sustainability, such as Iran, academic circles and the state have had heated debates over sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current situation of sustainable development of the built environment in Iran. The focus is on recognition of urban governance, policies and regulations. The paper examines the scope of sustainable technologies employed in Iran in terms of the development of energy efficiency and renewable energies. This is followed by an investigation of urban sustainability assessment methods through which the paper tackles policy, technology and assessment mechanism issues from a perspective of sustainable built environment development in both theoretical research and practical development in Iran.

The conventional typical meteorological year (TMY) based on continuous-year original meteorological records without considering abrupt climate changes (ACC) may not be able to represent a real “typical” climate properly. Consequently, building performance analyses and simulations based on TMY may be not accurate. Current research rarely tackles this issue in TMY development. This paper presents an innovative TMY development with the consideration of ACC in the original meteorological records. It is based on the Chinese standard weather database method (CSWD) with the meteorological records of six Chinese cities in different climate zones. It applies the Moving t-test method to identify and exclude ACC points and to refine the timescales for TMY development. It also depicts the development of individual typical meteorological months again with the ACC impact to improve the accuracy of TMY. The method has been verified in several building energy consumption and thermal comfort analyses. The results demonstrate that the analysis based on the new TMY climate datasets when considering ACC will end up with less energy consumption and better thermal performance compared to the analyses based on the conversion dataset without considering ACC. This experimental research will refine TMY development, and further improve building energy performance analysis and design.

Buildings and the construction sector as a whole are among the chief emitters of carbon, and the structural system of a building contributes substantially to its embodied carbon emissions. Whereas extensive studies exist into carbon missions, a detailed evaluation of real multipart building systems in brick, steel, and timber (glulam) substitutes is lacking. This paper employs whole-life-embedded carbon as a sustainability metric to compare a current UK supermarket building system of steel, brick, and timber. Four construction systems by the supermarket, referred to as CS1, CS2, CS3, and CS4, are used in the investigation. Comparisons are also made between two end-of-life treatment methods (recycle and landfill) along with the benefits that can be realised in future construction projects. The outcome from the comparative assessment reveals that there are minor variations in the embodied carbon of building systems used by the supermarket. CS4, while currently presenting marginal gains (approximately 148,960.68 kgCO₂eq.) compared to CS1, loses its advantages when recycled contents for future construction projects are considered. The result indicates that CS4 generates about 18% less carbon emission reduction potential than CS1, whilst CS3 generates approximately 16% less than CS1. The findings of this article can enhance the knowledge of embodied carbon estimation and reduction capabilities of timber, steel, and brick buildings. Also, the detailed method for quantifying embodied carbon used in this article can be adopted in similar projects around the world.

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), particularly in educational facilities, is gainingconsiderable interest and is a synonymous indicator towards evaluatinghuman comfort. Factors such as CO2 concentration, temperature, andhumidity play crucial parts in determining an acceptable level of IAQ.Many studies have also demonstrated that the indoor air quality ofclassrooms affects students’ concentration and performance. Today withthe threat of a global pandemic, the demand of clean & fresh indoor airquality in education buildings is extremely intensive. This study focuseson investigating IAQ situations and changes in different typical functionalspaces of a higher education building in the UK. CO2, temperature, andhumidity data in various learning environment were monitored via dataloggers during the winter. Associated with data monitoring, a set ofquestionnaires surveys were carried out to evaluate the user’s experience.The results of this study show that temperature and CO2 concentrationin the classrooms was constantly higher than the government guidanceon a daily basis. The analysis also shows that temperature and humidityincreased with CO2 levels, but at a much lower rate. This study hasrevealed poor and concerning IAQ in higher education buildings in the UK,particularly in larger rooms with high occupancy. Along with the findings,this paper also identifies possible impact or factors and proposes solutionsto overcome these issues.

Mock-up simulation is a design or human factor research method to help designers identify key design issues and factors of a product or environment. This paper discusses physical mock-up (PMU) and digital mock-up (DMU) applications in healthcare building development through a narrative literature review. The following questions are addressed in this paper: what would the purposes of using PMU or DMU simulations be? At which phase of a hospital design would a PMU or DMU simulation be used? What methods can be used to conduct PMU and DMU simulations? The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these two mock-up methods and highlights the importance of clinical staff’s involvement in mock-up simulations. It gives recommendations for the design practitioners or project managers of healthcare building development recommendations to implement these two mock-up methods in healthcare building development projects.