In recent years, there has been significant focus on smart cities, on how they operate and develop, and on their technical and social challenges. The importance of infrastructure as a major pillar of support in cities, in addition to the rapid developments in smart city research, necessitate an up-to-date review of smart cities’ infrastructure issues and challenges. Traditionally, a majority of studies have focused on traffic control and management, transport network design, smart grid initiatives, IoT (Internet of Things) integration, big data, land use development, and how urbanization processes impact land use in the long run. The work presented herein proposes a novel review framework that analyzes how smart city infrastructure is related to the urbanization process while presenting developments in IoT sensor networks, big data analysis of the generated information, and green construction. A classification framework was proposed to give insights on new initiatives regarding smart city infrastructure through answering the following questions: (i) What are the various dimensions on which smart city infrastructure research focuses? (ii) What are the themes and classes associated with these dimensions? (iii) What are the main shortcomings in current approaches, and what would be a good research agenda for the future? A bibliometric analysis was conducted, presenting cluster maps that can be used to understand different research trends and refine further searches. A bibliographic analysis was then followed, presenting a review of the most relevant studies over the last five years. The method proposed serves to stress where future research into understanding smart systems, their implementation and functionality would be best directed. This research concluded that future research on the topic should conceptualize smart cities as an emergent socio-techno phenomenon.

Project success is crucial for businesses, but the impact of virtual teams on it is still not fully understood. The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has led to the widespread adoption of virtual environment solutions to support geographically dispersed project teams. The growth in the use of virtual or hybrid teams in projects is expected to continue, as it presents an irreversible trend. Furthermore, there has been a significant increase in interest in sustainability in project management in recent years, emphasizing the long-term perspective for project success. To address this gap and contribute to the project success theory, a quantitative study was conducted to examine the impact of stakeholder engagement, knowledge management, and sustainable practices in project management on project success in virtual work environments using structural equation modeling. Experienced Portuguese-speaking project management professionals were surveyed. No evidence was found to support the moderating role of virtual teams, concluding that the virtual nature of a team does not diminish stakeholder engagement, knowledge-sharing, or sustainability in project management and its influence on project success. This study provides valuable insights for enhancing project success in virtual work environments, as it is the first of its kind to quantitatively address the sustainable long-term approach of project success in virtual environments.

This research investigated the crucial correlation between stakeholder engagement and knowledge management, and their role in enhancing sustainability in project management, with a specific focus on the virtual environment. With the shift towards virtual solutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the rise of remote work, it has become increasingly important to understand how these constructs interact in this new context. Through a web-based survey questionnaire and Structural Equation Modeling analysis, we found that both stakeholder engagement and knowledge management have a significant positive effect on sustainability practices in project management. Even more interestingly, these relationships remain consistent regardless of whether the project is conducted in a virtual or traditional environment. These findings have important implications for organizations across industries, as they can use these insights to improve sustainability practices in project management by focusing on the integration of stakeholder engagement and knowledge management in the virtual or presential environment. This study is the first of its kind to quantitatively investigate this connection, making it a valuable contribution to the field.

Life Cycle Assessment is a methodology that investigates impacts linked to a product or service during its entire life cycle. Life Cycle Assessment studies investigate processes and sub-processes in a fragmented way to ascertain their inputs, outputs and emissions and get an overview of the generating sources of their environmental loads. The lifecycle concept involves all direct and indirect processes of the studied object. This article aims to model the material flows in the masonry and drywall systems and internal walls in a Brazilian scenario, and calculate the climate change impacts generated by the transport of the component materials of the systems. Internal walls of a residential dwelling in Rio de Janeiro are analyzed from a qualitative inventory of all life cycles with an analysis of material flows, based on technical and academic literature. All Life Cycle Impact Assessment of the systems is carried out with international data from the database, and using the IPCC2013 method for climate change impacts. This study disregards the refurbishment and possible extensions within the use phase. Thus, the inventory identifies weaknesses of the systems while the impact assessment validates the results. This study allows us a complete understanding about the inner walls systems in the Brazilian scenario, evidencing its main weaknesses and subsidizes decision-making for the industry and for planning of the new buildings.

Rehabilitation and Sustainability complement each other insofar as new uses are defined for the existing constructions, avoiding the disposal and consequent environmental impact of this action. In Brazil, the culture of new construction still prevails, even with the relevant inventory of existing buildings, as indicated in studies conducted in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Dissemination of knowledge of rehabilitation techniques can encourage the development of strategies for the implementation of these practices in brazilian market. Therefore, this paper will try to indicate techniques that may be improved and incorporated into the rehabilitation of Brazilian constructions, aiming aspects of sustainability and reinsertion of contemporary construction in urban heritage.

Use of photovoltaic modules in buildings has been reported to be an effective tool in managing energy consumption. The novelty in the research herein is in a framework that integrates different performance parameters through the use of an experimental design to expect all variables via linear regression analysis. An emphasis is placed on making the method readily available to practitioners and experts in the area of renewable energy, using standard procedure and easily accessible software. This work empowers the decision-making process and sustainability through a parametric analysis of the installation of photovoltaic modules to increase their energy output towards nearly zero energy buildings. A case study of a group of photovoltaic modules is examined in four cities with different locations and climate data to validate the proposed framework. Results demonstrate that the installation of photovoltaic modules on the mounted roof is better than elevations, and the vertical installation of modules is the worst possible inclination to maximize the yielded energy. The impact of inclination is higher than orientation in influencing the energy productivity of photovoltaic modules. This work specifies integrating such modules mounted on roofs and elevations towards the equator line, by a proportion of inclination/latitude equal to 85 ± 3%, to maximize the energy output.