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.

Climate change is one of the major concerns worldwide and greenhouse gas emissions plays an important role in increasing the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere. Furthermore, the construction industry is one of that presents a considerable environmental impact as it consumes large amounts of natural resources and energy. Aiming to investigate the environmental impacts, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology evaluates products and services showing the similarities and differences in evaluating midpoint and endpoint impact categories. This study reviews LCA from a building perspective and empowers the decision-making process and sustainable building design in the construction sector. The novelty is to estimate the operating energy performance and evaluate the endpoint impacts of building materials at an early designing stage, considering two methods of construction; concrete construction and steel construction. This work follows the methodological framework of LCA based on ISO 14040 and 14044 guidelines within the available database, using Autodesk Green Building Studio application in Autodesk Revit and Open LCA software based on two assessment methods: IMPACT 2002+ and ILCD 2011. A case study of a multi-story office building is applied to achieve the objectives of this work. The building is structured at four levels of subsystems and associated construction materials: basic structure, walls, finishing, and windows. Results indicate that using steel construction instead of concrete construction is more environmentally friendly in such types of buildings. It encourages the application of innovative techniques in the production process to protect natural resources, reduce energy consumption, and protecting the built environment.

Linking Building Information Modelling and Building Energy Modelling methodologies appear as a tool for the energy performance analysis of a dwelling, being able to build the physical model via Autodesk Revit and simulating the energy modeling with its complement Autodesk Insight. A residential two-story house was evaluated in five different locations within distinct climatic zones to reduce its electricity demand. Experimental Design is used as a methodological tool to define the possible arrangement of results emitted via Autodesk Insight that exhibits the minor electric demand, considering three variables: Lighting efficiency, Plug-Load Efficiency, and HVAC systems. The analysis concluded that while the higher the efficiency of lighting and applications, the lower the electric demand. In addition, the type of climate and thermal characteristics of the materials that conform to the building envelope have significant effects on the energetic performance. The adjustment of different energetic measures and its comparison with other climatic zones enable decision-makers to choose the best combination of variables for developing strategies to lower the electric demand towards energy-efficient buildings.