Altering the surface cover of an area causes the change in the environment. By erecting buildings change in the flow of energy and matter through the urban ecosystems occurs creating multiple environmental problems. Built areas exert considerable influence over their local climate, amplifying problems such as heat waves, air pollution, and flooding. Greening the building envelope these problems can be partially mitigated. By combining nature and built areas in their designs, architects and urban planners can respond to these serious human health and welfare issues and restore the environmental quality of dense urban areas. Green living systems are not the only solution for new designs. Retrofitting existing buildings by altering the buildings' surficial properties can reduce buildings' energy consumption in case of older buildings with poor existing insulation. Implementation of green living systems in the building envelope, greening horizontal surfaces with intensive and extensive green roofs or using vegetation in vertical greening systems for fa?ades, is a strategy that provides ecological, economic, and social benefits. This review paper presents collected evidence of effects and explores the important role that the green living systems can play in the dense urban areas. Benefits such as heat island amelioration, reduction of buildings energy consumption, air quality and indoor and outdoor comfort conditions improvement, stormwater management and improved water run-off quality, will be mainly considered.

Affected by undeniable climatic change, the temperature of the urban areas rises continually, increasing rapidly the energy problem of cities and amplifying the pollution problems. The thermal stress is increased, thus both the indoor and the outdoor thermal comfort levels are decreased, enhancing the health problems. Green roof implementation in the building envelope is strategy that provides heat island amelioration, thermal comfort for occupants and reduces energy consumption of buildings. Green living roofs are a passive cooling technique, which can stop the incoming solar radiation from reaching the building structure below. In this paper, we assessed the importance of the green roofs in providing environmental and building energy benefits, and brief investigation on the different configuration of the soil layer in the green roof assembly influences to the temperature of the roof surface was presented. Investigation was conducted for first phase of the living roof growth. Four cells were designed in SolidWorks software where the transient thermal study was performed in order to determine differences between the behavior of the conventional roof and three green roof types.

The environmental benefits of green roofs have been widely recognized. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to moisture management in the green roof systems. The moisture in the green roof has an influence on its thermal and hydrological performances. An accurate measurement of water content in green roof substrate is important for irrigation monitoring, optimal irrigation management, and plant growth. Knowing the performance and characteristics of the sensor for the chosen substrate layer in a green roof system is essential. This paper presents laboratory calibration of the capacitive moisture sensor in two types of the green roof substrate layer. The volumetric water content of several mineral wool and soil samples, with the water content from low until saturated, were measured using the gravimetric method and related to frequency obtained by the sensor. The results have shown that the capacitive moisture sensor has a good response to water content variation.

Integration of nature, live, organic materials, in the design of built areas and building structure is an architectural response to environmental problems of dense urban areas. At the site where green space is limited, greening the building envelope is the solution for the issues such as heat waves, flooding, and noise and air pollution. The benefits could be predicted only using accurate simulation model of this technology. The energy balance of green living roof was researched through models developed over the years by various authors. Most models have been developed and validated with data from extensive roofs and more than 50% of the models were validated using data from warm temperate climatic zones. Ability to determine the impact of green living roofs at different stages of their architectural design process is of most importance if the incorporation this technology is planned due to the impact on building and urban level.

The paper presents results of an experimental investigation performed under controlled laboratory conditions, in order to identify real causes of variation in the rotational speed of an axial fan that can be noticed after a certain period following the start of operation. The theoretical background important for understanding the observed phenomenon is given and the hypothesis is proposed which states that the temperature rise in motor windings and a consequential rise of their resistances are responsible for such specific behavior of the axial fan. The experiment was performed on a standard test rig with a small industrial axial fan, driven by a three-phase induction motor with the rated power of 1.5 kW. The experimental procedure is described in details, measured and calculated results are presented and appropriate conclusions are given. The obtained experimental results confirm the proposed hypothesis.

Obtaining all acceptable locations is one of the main tasks for siting wind turbines. The economic factors are usually very limiting. Very thorough analyses are needed in order to ensure the project finalization. Nevertheless, even after all the steps are made, some problems may occur. One of them is the real status of the winds in the so-called climatology period. This paper focuses on the influences of the changing winds after the preliminary estimations are done. The estimations are obtained using the WAsP simulation software. The results are compared in terms of quality and quantity of the wind data and capacity factor. Finally, an economic analysis is done.