In recent years, the study of thermal comfort has gained significant attention for its profound impact on human well-being and productivity. Addressing thermal comfort in healthcare environments has become increasingly important as public demand for improved healthcare standards increases and patients prioritize their overall experience during medical visits. This study explores advances in thermal comfort research in healthcare facilities, tailored to the specific characteristics of Chinese healthcare facilities. It covers various aspects, including China's five major climatic regions, different categories of healthcare facilities, distinct functional zones within healthcare facilities, and different demographic groups. Additionally, this study summarized thermal sensation data across diverse demographic groups from reviewed literature, analyzing median indicators of different groups. When compared with current standards, it appears that while these standards generally support the broad needs of healthcare facility occupants, they fall short of accommodating the detailed design requirements specific to environments of healthcare facilities. The study identifies shortcomings in domestic research and suggests future research directions. It provides valuable insights for optimizing healthcare facilities' designs and environmental parameters in accordance with evolving global standards in healthcare facility management in China.

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.

Much research from different fields has explored the crime-space relationship for different crime types with various study units. However, empirical studies in the diverse urban environments get conflict results that support the two contrary planning paradigms, 'open' and 'closed' solutions. Through a case study in one prosperous city in China, this research tries to detect the relationship between neighbourhood permeability and the burglary distribution pattern with the study unit of neighbourhood committees. This study focuses on three types of permeability, namely socio-economic, physical, and spatial ones. Our findings show that neighbourhoods with generally lower physical or spatial permeability allowing fewer people to enter or pass by are associate with burglary clustering. Socio-economic barriers offer a positive impact on burglary prevention. Nevertheless, the relationship between permeability and crime distribution is not geographically uniform over the whole city. A suggestion for future research is outlined in the conclusion.

Rural residential buildings in China are often characterised by poor envelope performance and unsatisfactory indoor thermal conditions, yet systematic methods for developing representative building archetypes for thermal assessment remain limited. This study proposes a data-driven and measurement-validated framework for developing rural housing archetypes for thermal environment assessment. Detailed physical and household data were collected from 459 dwellings in six villages in Weihai, China. Classification variables were identified through a combined review of typological studies and thermal-comfort-related factors, refined using field survey evidence, and then used in K-means clustering to derive six representative dwelling groups. Prototype models were developed in EnergyPlus and evaluated against measured indoor air temperature and relative humidity data from representative dwellings. The results show that the six archetypes capture major differences in plan configuration, construction type, and orientation-specific window-to-wall ratio, while the simulated monthly thermal conditions generally agree with measurements. The proposed framework provides a robust basis for stock-level thermal assessment and retrofit-oriented analysis of rural housing.

In view of climate-sensitive interactions between buildings and the immediate environment, climate adaptation is crucial means for sustainable and green building development. The following study imparts a distinctive view on the performance-based effect of architectural and engineering parameters of high-rise office buildings by exploiting the advantages of climatic features in different climate environments. By so doing, it identifies and quantifies the major sensitive design parameters on building energy performance. Furthermore, the most applicable passive strategies to attaining stipulated building sustainability criteria are established. The results indicate that the energy performance of high-rise buildings in a certain climate environment is highly sensitive to the design characteristics, such as plan ratio, core position and atrium effect. In a cold climate environment, a high-rise building with a rectangular building plan (plan ratio = 1:1.44, with vertical split-core in the absence of an atrium), satisfies the Passivhaus engineering criteria on air-tightness and fabric insulation; and adopts double-glass curtain walls presented the best energy performance. Whereas, a square building plan (with vertical split-core and no atrium), complies with air-tightness and fabric insulation criteria under Passivhaus engineering standards, minimizes east- and west-bound window exposures, and adopts double-glass curtain walls exhibited the best energy performance in the hot climate zone but will require renewable energy systems to attain the stipulated building sustainability criteria.