The Amur River Basin is located in China’s high-latitude and cold border areas. While inheriting the characteristics of Chinese traditional building, combined with its unique geographical and climatic environmental conditions, the local residential buildings have unique architectural features of cold climate adaptability. Outstanding insulation technology has become the main feature of the area, and has greatly affected the development of modern vernacular architecture. According to the archaeological reports and documents, this article selects ancient architectural sites from different historical periods as the research objects. Based on building restoration, AIRPAK software is used to simulate and analyze the indoor temperature of the building site, and to explore the effects of active heating measures, such as different forms of fire hypocaust system, and passive cold protection measures, such as different types of wall structures. According to archaeological information and simulation data, this paper summarizes the characteristics of the cold climate adaptability technology of ancient buildings in China’s cold border areas over different historical periods. Because of the relatively lagging development background of the Amur River Basin in modern times, the construction of its vernacular buildings continued to use the traditional low-tech insulation technology of ancient buildings to adapt to the cold environment. Therefore, attention and research on insulation technology of ancient buildings can provide a new perspective of architectural heritage protection in cold regions. Establishing a development model that combines archaeology and cultural heritage protection is an effective way to achieve the goals of architectural cultural heritage research and protection.

In summer, the urban heat island effect causes unbearable warmth in Shantou City, especially in the urban areas along the Inner Bay with densely populated neighborhoods. An investigation of the layout patterns of 100 residential neighborhoods along Shantou’s Inner Bay was conducted, leading to the establishment of four types and nine sub-types of idealized residential neighborhood models. Their wind speed, relative humidity, and air temperature were simulated in the ENVI-met software (version No.5.0.1). The simulation results show that high-rise buildings in the front areas play a decisive role in the overall microclimate environment. Accordingly, three principal drawbacks regarding neighborhood layout for thermal climate adaptation were extracted. Furthermore, by comparing the simulation results before and after modifying the layout of high-rise buildings, three spatial strategies to strengthen the humidification and cooling effect of sea–land breezes to optimize the outdoor microclimatic environment of neighborhoods were proposed, and these strategies were subsequently verified in the Golden-Harbor neighborhood.

I achieved the goal of collection and storage of 1944 habitation sites in the Amur River basin by creating the ARCGIS geo-spatial database. On this basis, by visualizing the distribution of the habitation sites in six archaeological periods and four geography plates, the spatial and temporal distribution information of these sites were interpreted quantitatively. Specifically, the quantitative indicators, such as nuclear density, location of gravity center, and cultural inheritance index, revealed the spatial distribution of the habitation sites. In addition, the elevation, slope, and distance value from the river were extracted through spatial analysis of ArcGIS, revealing the characteristics of the combination of sites and geographical conditions. The analysis of vegetation and temperature-climate conditions of the Amur River basin suggests the coupling relationship between ancient settlements and the natural environment: Arable land with an average annual temperature above 4 ℃ is the area with the highest concentration of large settlements, while other woodlands, grasslands and swamps with lower average annual temperatures are the main distribution areas of small nomadic sites.

Integrated qiaopi office–residence heritage preserves the material setting of remittance-letter operations together with domestic, educational, and ritual activities. In Lingnan’s hot–humid and disaster-prone environment, condition records need to be repeatable, spatially traceable, and continuously updatable. Taking Jingzu Jiashu and Mingde Jiashu, two former qiaopi office sites in Chaoshan, as case studies, this research develops an evidence-traceable digital conservation workflow integrating multi-source documentation; an adopted YOLOv8 surface-deterioration baseline; qualitative Grad-CAM visualization; structured deterioration records; and semi-automatic, human-confirmed Revit/HBIM association. UAV and terrestrial photography, mobile LiDAR/scanning, handheld measurement, measured drawings, point-cloud and reality-based products, and geometric models were organized into case-specific HBIM environments. The adopted deterioration dataset comprised 362 original images at 512 × 512 pixels and 2024 bounding-box annotations for five visually identifiable categories: spalling, staining, plants, saltpetering, and crack. The original images were divided into 253 training, 72 validation, and 37 independent-test images, while augmentation was restricted to the training subset, increasing the training pool to 1600 images. The previously established YOLOv8 baseline achieved a Precision of 0.85, Recall of 0.72, mAP50 of 0.83, and mAP50–95 of 0.58. Grad-CAM heatmaps were used as qualitative aids to examine model-emphasized image regions. Retained detections associated with Jingzu Jiashu and Mingde Jiashu were converted into versioned records containing source-image identifiers, deterioration classes, detector confidence, survey information, spatial references, verification states, and revision histories. Candidate spatial associations were generated through case identifiers, façade or space zones, element identifiers, and available spatial evidence, while final M1–M3 associations required human confirmation. By preserving source provenance, spatial uncertainty, and record histories, the workflow provides an auditable information basis for routine inspection, post-event review, maintenance prioritization, repair interpretation, and resilience-oriented preventive conservation. The workflow supports screening-level deterioration recognition and information management but does not provide causal diagnosis, structural assessment, exact affected-area measurement, building-independent generalization, or automatic repair recommendations.

The Heilongjiang River Basin (HRB), the largest cold river basin in northern China, exhibits a complex and regionally distinct settlement system. However, its intermediate-level regional typology remains underexplored, necessitating a systematic analysis of settlement distribution, spatial clustering, and morphological evolution. This article constructs a geographic information database of historical settlement sites in the HRB based on settlement inventories derived from cultural relic census records and regional archeological survey data. This study employs a structured spatiotemporal framework encompassing three distinct geographical regions and spanning four archaeological periods to examine the distribution characteristics of settlement sites. By integrating data from archeological excavations of selected sites, the research elucidates the regional typologies and morphological evolution of historical settlements in the basin, revealing their development principles and unique regional attributes. The findings indicate that the spatial distribution of historical settlement sites in the HRB presents distinct regional characteristics. The Sanjiang plain, the presence of ring-trench settlements, and the Yi-Luo city during the Han–Wei period (206 BCE – 420 CE) reflect a transitional phase from settlements to urban centers. In the Mudanjiang River Basin, the Bohai kingdom period is characterized by large-scale capital cities, a multi-capital system, and a comprehensive transportation network, forming a hierarchical urban system. The Songnen plain inherits the urban forms of the Bohai kingdom (698 – 926) as well as the Liao (916 – 1125) and Jin (1115 – 1234) dynasties, marked by the double-city connected capital pattern and standardized garrison settlements. Overall, historical settlements in the HRB exhibit prominent military defense attributes, simplified architectural forms, and regional differentiation. These characteristics provide valuable insights into the evolution of historical settlement patterns in Northeast China.