Background: Energy-efficient university campuses will play a vital role in the development of future sustainable cities, and will be important for achieving the Chinese carbon-neutrality goals. It is, therefore, necessary to develop new decision-making tools for evaluating the sustainability of campus buildings. Since university campuses typically comprise a broad variety of building types, standardized evaluation methods and tools, such as Green BIM, are needed. Green BIM (Building Information Modeling) emphasizes the importance and role of BIM technology in the design and construction of green buildings, providing a standardized framework for the decision-making process, and methods for improving the green performance of buildings. Methods: This study develops a method based on the Green BIM framework, using BIM architecture to analyse building performance, and the Assessment Standard for Green Building (GB/T 50378-2019) standard to establish benchmark values for evaluation, and project objectives. The method is evaluated on three examples of the most representative university buildings in northern China. The goal is to understand common denominators and differences between different types of campus buildings, in terms of green building indicators, that are important to consider in the early design stages of campus building complexes. Results: In this study, a library is used as a case study to demonstrate the tools for evaluating green performance. The study optimizes green performance from five aspects: surrounding environment, function layout, envelope performance and system transformation, and management measures improvement. The results show that this optimization scheme can achieve reductions of the annual loads of about 47.4%, in line with the national energy efficiency standards for public buildings. In particular, the heating load was reduced by 59.1%, and the cooling load reduced by 21.5%. Conclusion: A comprehensive approach, combining the aspects of planning, building design, system design, energy management, and energy conservation planning, is required to improve the green performance of university buildings to meet the goals. In the future, it will be further necessary to perform data mining of energy consumption patterns, and continue energy retrofitting of existing buildings and energy systems, to achieve the goal of green and low-carbon campuses.

During the period of the “12th Five-Year Plan,” energy demand exhibited a rigorous growth trend along with the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization and the constant upgrading of consumption structure. Therefore, the path that all cities and provinces must take towards sustainable development required by the “13th Five-Year Plan” is to enhance research on the energy efficiency of buildings, especially existing buildings; sufficiently evaluate regional building energy demands and the characteristics of resources and environment; and formulate regional technical measures and policies for building practical energy efficiency measures. In this research, building energy-saving technologies are classified into four categories, i.e., green energy efficiency technologies for building envelopes, renewable energy sources, HVAC equipment systems, and architectural environment control systems. The existing office buildings representing different architectural climatic regions (cold region A, cold region B, and hot-summer cold-winter region) under the jurisdiction of Shaanxi province, China, are selected as the objects of research to discuss “typical buildings” in-depth. The research finds that even for buildings of the same type, the energy efficiency retrofit technologies selected for them are quite different because the buildings are situated in different climatic regions. For example, in regard to the materials, such as low-E hollow glass doors and windows, high transparency materials should be selected for cold regions, whereas sun-shading materials should be selected for hot-summer cold-winter regions. In comparison with the Standard for Energy Consumption of Civil Buildings (GB/T 51161-2016), the energy consumption of the existing office buildings that have been retrofitted can basically reach the threshold values specified by the national standard, but there is still a distance from the guideline values, which is related to the technology clusters selected and the economic category and can be corrected in practical applications. This research establishes technology cluster systems for energy efficiency retrofits that are suitable for different climatic regions. This work also assists relevant departments in formulating the local energy use quotas for existing public buildings, promotes the management of energy efficiency by local governments for public buildings, and provides theoretical and technical support for the low-carbon ecological development of Chinese cities.

Ensuring optimal building performance is vital for enhancing student activity comfort and fostering energy-saving initiatives toward low-carbon objectives. This paper focuses on university student centers in China, aiming to diminish building energy consumption while enhancing indoor thermal comfort. Parametric modeling of typical cases is executed using the Grasshopper 1.0.0007 software package, and the simulation of building energy consumption and indoor thermal comfort relies on the Ladybug and Honeybee plug-in. Employing a multi-objective optimization design method and the Octopus multi-objective optimization algorithm, this study integrates numerical simulations and on-site surveys to analyze how factors like building form, orientation, envelope structure, and others impact the indoor and outdoor environment. A comprehensive optimization design approach is implemented for the building’s exterior components, including the walls, windows, roof, and shading system. After conducting a comparative analysis of the annual comprehensive energy consumption and indoor thermal comfort before and after the optimization plan, it is determined that implementing these measures reduces the annual comprehensive energy consumption of the building under study by 58.8% and extends the duration of indoor thermal comfort by 53.0%. This study presents a practical optimization design methodology for university student center architecture in China, aiding architects in decision making and advocating for energy-efficient building designs.

This study investigates rural settlement patterns and land suitability in Rwanda’s Western Highlands, a mountainous region highly vulnerable to geohazards like landslides and flooding. Its primary aim is to inform sustainable, climate-resilient development planning in this fragile landscape. We employed high-resolution satellite imagery, a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and comprehensive geospatial datasets to analyze settlement distribution, using Thiessen polygons for influence zones and Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) for spatial clustering. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was integrated with the GeoDetector model to objectively weight criteria and analyze settlement pattern drivers, using population density as a proxy for human pressure. The analysis revealed significant spatial heterogeneity in settlement distribution, with both clustered and dispersed forms exhibiting distinct exposure levels to environmental hazards. Natural factors, particularly slope gradient and proximity to rivers, emerged as dominant determinants. Furthermore, significant synergistic interactions were observed between environmental attributes and infrastructure accessibility (roads and urban centers), collectively shaping settlement resilience. This integrative geospatial approach enhances understanding of complex rural settlement dynamics in ecologically sensitive mountainous regions. The empirically grounded insights offer a robust decision-support framework for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction, contributing to more resilient rural planning strategies in Rwanda and similar Central African highland regions.

The lighting conditions of a library directly affect the users’ spatial experience, with glass curtain walls being widely used in the design of library skins. Although glass curtain walls have been extensively adopted, they increase indoor sun exposure and glare. Considering sunlight duration and radiation as the design basis, this study employs the Rhino and Grasshopper parametric platforms to parametrically design a library with a dynamic shading skin. Specifically, our design utilizes modular shading components that can change depending on the simulated sunlight data at different times. Additionally, a new optimal design strategy has been developed to enhance the environmental lighting performance of the library. The simulation results highlight that the indoor environmental lighting performance, under dynamic epidermal shading and based on sunlight duration data, is better for east–west, north–south, and east–west orientations on the summer solstice and the winter solstice. Meanwhile, the indoor environmental lighting performance, under dynamic epidermal shading based on daylight radiation data, is better for north–south orientation on the winter solstice. Overall, this study uses parameterization to integrate building simulation and architectural design to improve a building’s lighting performance.