The aim of this study is to define the features that smart buildings should fulfil in order to be compatible with the overall context of the smart city and to introduce a new evaluation framework of Smart Buildings Integration into a Smart City (SBISC). By analysing scientific literature as well as existing international and local project examples, the features of smart buildings that are expected to be adopted in smart cities were identified. The SBISC evaluation methodology was developed and applied to a set of selected projects. The literature review revealed that the smart building and smart city concepts were developed in different time frames and by different stakeholders and, thus, need to be realigned. The most important aspect is to employ in a smart building all the functionalities proposed by the smart areas of the city and vice versa by enabling the recommended features of smart materials, smart building services, and smart construction to serve for the surrounding systems. Nine office buildings representing smart building concept in different smart cities built within the period 2007–2018 with a total area from 10,000 m² to 143,000 m² were selected for the analysis. The research of selected projects revealed that the smart buildings have more potential to become smarter by utilizing smart cities capabilities in the areas of smart energy, smart mobility, smart life, and smart environment. Smart cities are the most prominent trend in creating a cohesive environment.

This research presents key factors influencing smart building integration into smart cities considering the city as a technological system. This paper begins with an overview of the concept of smart buildings, defining their features and discussing the technological advancements driving their development. The frameworks for smart buildings are presented, emphasizing energy efficiency, sustainability, automation, and data analytics. Then, the concept of a smart city and the role of digitalization in its development is explored. The conceptual framework of smart building into a smart city is presented, contributing to understanding the complex process of integrating smart buildings into smart cities. Further research delves into the factors influencing the integration of smart buildings into smart cities, focusing on energy, mobility, water, security systems, and waste management infrastructure domains. Each thematic area is examined, highlighting the importance of integration and the associated challenges and opportunities, based on research in the literature and the analysis of case studies. This enables the identification of 26 factors influencing integration and the synthesis of findings. The findings indicate that the successful integration of smart buildings into smart cities requires attention to multiple factors related to smart energy, smart mobility, smart water, smart security, and smart waste management infrastructures. The results obtained from this research provide valuable insights into the factors influencing smart building integration into a smart city from a technological perspective, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions and develop strategies paving the way for sustainable, resilient, and efficient urban environments.

Inevitably, the 21st century has initiated a series of developments in the construction industry, leading to its digitalization and resulting in a series of innovative approaches and practices. At the same time, the construction industry, being one of the main global environment polluters, should fulfil well-established, as well as novel, sustainability requirements in order to evolve in harmony with the rising concerns on the availability of natural resources. This overview study aims to present the main developments, research, and scientific challenges in the field of sustainable construction, emphasizing the field of energy. The study aims to present a state-of-the-art scientific discussion on the sustainable built environment topic by analyzing cutting edge topics in the fields of building elements and whole building energy assessment, of indoor air quality and low carbon buildings, as well as on sustainable energy systems and smart buildings. The study also presents the state-of-the-art in existing tools which are adopted for the assessment of the sustainable built environment, including the use of digital tools and building information modelling for the energy assessment of the built environment, as well as the application of Life Cycle Assessment on building-related processes. Cross cutting issues related to the analysis of the building sector in the Industry 4.0 era, such as sustainability management topics and environmental geomatics are also discussed. The study concludes in those fields which will be of interest of the scientific community in the following years, towards achieving the goals of the sustainable development of the building sector.

Smart buildings and smart cities are not the future perspectives anymore—the smart building integration into a smart city is an actual question for today and tomorrow. Development of smart buildings not only enhances the smart city concept but also promotes positivity to the urban development and national economy, and increases the quality of life of the whole population reacting to global challenges of sustainability. The innovative smart building and smart city technologies enable us to overcome these challenges by being employed through all real estate (RE) project development stages. The Evaluation Framework for Real Estate Development in Smart Cities created by the authors provides the possibility to assess the existing as well as to forecast future RE projects integration into a smart city during the whole life-cycle stage. The practical application of the presented evaluation framework was illustrated by the comparative case study. Based on the created smart building integration into a smart city evaluation framework for real estate development, 10 RE projects in Lithuania and over the world were assessed and rated by selected criteria relevant to different RE development stages. The evaluation results revealed that, especially at the design and construction stages, the existing intelligence of RE projects and/or cities is insufficient. Although real estate projects are technologically advanced as single entities, the integration into smart city networks is limited by interoperability capabilities of the cities or by different strategic goals settled by real estate developers.

The enhancement of the competitiveness of a construction company is one of the most important strategic objectives in construction industry. The company's management system, work organization and employment of available assets are some of the most important factors upon which overhead costs and the bidding price of a construction company depend directly. A statistical analysis of a homogenous group of construction companies reveals the company's overhead costs value distribution function, which can be used to evaluate the competitive advantages and disadvantages of a specific construction company. A detailed overhead costs categorization and the findings of a survey conducted among contractors influenced the selection of the principal parameters of the company's activity, on which the value of overhead costs depends; they are the number of company's head office employees and the area of company's facilities. The developed competitiveness evaluation methodology enables the construction managers to adequate and scientific position the company on the market of homogenous construction companies group, to estimate its activity as well as to evaluate the competitive advantages and disadvantages of bidding prices and certain costs in public tendering of construction operations and services. Santrauka Didinti statybos įmonės konkurencingumą yra vienas svarbiausių statybos verslo strateginių uždavinių. Įmonės valdymo struktūra, veiklos organizavimas, turimo turto naudojimas yra vieni iš svarbiausių veiksnių, nuo kurių tiesiogiai priklauso statybos įmonės pridėtinės išlaidos, kartu ir siūlomos statybos darbų kainos. Statistiškai tiriant homogeninę statybos įmonių grupę nustatyta statybos įmonių pridėtinių išlaidų reikšmių pasiskirstymo funkcija, pagal kurią gali būti įvertinti konkrečios statybos įmonės konkurenciniai pranašumai ar trūkumai. Išsamiai apibrėžta pridėtinių išlaidų struktūra ir statybos rangovų apklausos rezultatai darė įtaką pagrindinių įmonės veiksnių, nuo kurių priklauso pridėtinių išlaidų dydis, parinkimui – tai įmonės administracijos darbuotojų skaičius ir nekilnojamojo turto plotas. Sudarytas statybos įmonės valdymo sistemos ir infrastruktūros charakteristikų regresinis modelis yra patogus planavimo ir prognozavimo įrankis parenkant tinkamą įmonės veiklos pridėtinių išlaidų struktūrą ir pritaikant įmonės plėtrai reikalingą strategiją. Siūloma statybos įmonių konkurencingumo įvertinimo metodika leidžia statybos organizacijų vadovams adekvačiai ir moksliškai pagrįstai nustatyti įmonės padėtį homogeninės statybos įmonių grupės rinkoje, įvertinti jos veiklos efektyvumą ir nesunkiai nustatyti kainos, išlaidų konkurencinius pranašumus bei trūkumus dalyvaujant statybos darbų ir paslaugų viešuosiuose pirkimuose.

The integration of smart buildings (SBs) into smart cities (SCs) is critical to urban development, with the potential to improve SCs’ performance. Artificial intelligence (AI) applications have emerged as a promising tool to enhance SB and SC development. The authors apply an AI-based methodology, particularly Large Language Models of OpenAI ChatGPT-3 and Google Bard as AI experts, to uniquely evaluate 26 criteria that represent SB services across five SC infrastructure domains (energy, mobility, water, waste management, and security), emphasizing their contributions to the integration of SB into SC and quantifying their impact on the efficiency, resilience, and environmental sustainability of SC. The framework was then validated through two rounds of the Delphi method, leveraging human expert knowledge and an iterative consensus-building process. The framework’s efficiency in analyzing complicated information and generating important insights is demonstrated via five case studies. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the effects of SB services on SC infrastructure domains, highlighting the intricate nature of SC, as well as revealing areas that require further integration to realize the SC performance objectives.