Walkable communities are increasingly promoted for their health, social, and environmental benefits. However, the extent to which the demand or preference for walkable communities accords with ...various other housing demands across different populations is still questionable. Using data sets from two research projects focused on nonmetropolitan communities in Texas, this study examined to whom neighborhood walkability and safety are important when selecting a residence. It further explored environmental attributes that explained the differences in neighborhood preferences of older versus middle-age and urban versus rural home buyers. Multivariate logistic regressions showed that race/ethnicity, adiposity, personal attitudes, regional home locations, and residential experiences explained the odds of considering walkability and safety in residential selection. Environmental characteristics such as land uses, destinations, and perceived safety were differently valued among the subgroups of home buyers. Further efforts are needed to better understand diverse residential demands within the larger context of the community environment and demographic shift.
Population growth and urban expansion have led to increased demand for buildings. Optimizing the building façade design, using integrated photovoltaic (PV) shading and vertical farming (VF) can ...reduce building energy consumption while ensuring a partial food supply. However, the importance and prevalence of productive façades have not received significant attention. Furthermore, few studies have focused on the impact of productive façades on both indoor and outdoor environmental qualities. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the potential of integrating productive façades with residential façades in high-density cities. A typical community in Guangzhou, China was investigated. Thermal comfort, light comfort, electricity production, and crop yield were considered, and the optimal façade configuration was chosen from the established 146-model library. The integrated module can effectively improve the indoor lighting and thermal comfort of residential buildings. The module also mitigates the outdoor thermal environment to a certain extent, meeting 6.3–10.3% and 7.6–9.6% of the annual electricity and vegetable demands, respectively, in residential communities. This study can guide other densely populated cities with subtropical climates to advance the research and construction of productive façades, improving occupant comfort, reducing energy consumption, and mitigating food security and urban climate change issues.
Based on analysis of construction and operation of micro integrated energy systems (MIES), this paper presents economic optimization for their configuration and sizing. After presenting typical ...models for MIES, a residential community MIES is developed by analyzing residential direct energy consumption within a general design procedure. Integrating with available current technologies and local resources, the systematic design considers a prime mover, fed by natural gas, with wind power, photovoltaic generation, and two storage devices serving thermal energy and power to satisfy cooling, heating and electricity demands. Control strategies for MIES also are presented in this study. Multi-objective formulas are obtained by analyzing annual cost and dumped renewable energy to achieve optimal coordination of energy supply and demand. According to historical load data and the probability distribution of distributed generation output, clustering methods based on
K
-means and discretization methods are employed to obtain typical scenarios representative of uncertainties. The modified non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm is applied to find the Pareto frontier of the constructed multi-objective formulas. In addition, aiming to explore the Pareto frontier, the dumped energy cost ratio is defined to check the energy balance in different MIES designs and provide decision support for the investors. Finally, simulations and comparision show the appropriateness of the developed model and the applicability of the adopted optimization algorithm.
VegeSafe is a national community science initiative aimed at characterising soils in Australian residential gardens and community gardens. The program has been operating for over 5 years and has ...generated soil metal(loid) data from over 8600 residential garden and community garden soil samples, submitted by almost 2000 community scientists. The VegeSafe program represents the largest archive of soil metal(loid) data and associated metadata for residential garden soils in Australia. Samples were collected across Australia, with 61% of samples collected from NSW (
n
= 5284), Victoria (VIC) 20% (
n
= 1688) of samples and Queensland (QLD) 7% (
n
= 592) of samples. Soil metal(loid) data obtained by analysis of bulk soil samples by portable X-ray florescence spectrometry (pXRF) for As, Cu, Cr Mn, Pb and Zn showed spatial patterns of greater soil metal(loid) concentrations around city areas, particularly in NSW and VIC. The Australian Health Investigation Levels for low-density residential land uses (HIL-A) were used in this study as guideline values for soil metal(loid) concentrations. Overall, there was a relatively small number of HIL-A exceedances in the dataset, with most metal(loid)s exceeding their HIL-A concentration in < 5% of incidences. The notable exception to this was for Pb, which had HIL-A (300 mg/kg) exceeded in 27% (
n
= 1427) of samples in NSW, 17% (
n
= 280) in VIC and 10% (
n
= 61) in QLD. Through the power of community engagement and community science, the VegeSafe program presents an unprecedented insight into soil metal(loid) concentrations in Australian residential gardens.
UniCITI Alam is a mixed development of commercial buildings and medium rise apartments. The whole development was designed based on the integration of student residential community with the combined ...commercial centre and temporary campus. The lecture rooms are located at the second floor of the triple-storey shop house. To improve the indoor environmental quality and comfortability of the teaching and learning activities, physical measurements of the indoor environment parameters (air temperature, relative humidity and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration) and light intensity are the main methods applied in the presented case study. Data collected will be compared with Malaysian Standard MS 1525: 2007 (Code of Practice on Energy Efficiency and Use of Renewable for Non Residential Building) and DOSH. The finding will be used for improving the environmental quality of the lecture rooms and enhancing the ecology circle.
Abstract
The State of Kerala in Southern part of India has significant potential for generation of power from renewable energy sources, especially solar energy. Most of the PV projects in the State ...are being implemented on roof-tops due to the unavailability of land area in the densely populated State for large utility scale PV power plants. The concept of implementing Solar PV projects by empowering Local Self Governments has been explained in this paper by illustrating the case study of the Indian State of Kerala. The respective Local Self Governments like Municipal Corporations are playing a key role in Kerala in this decision-making process to accomplish model carbon free solar communities by installing Solar Photovoltaic Projects. The requirement of local beneficiary will be analysed by local trained experts and feasibility study will be conducted for the beneficiary communities involving residential buildings, local industries and commercial institutions and educational institutions and the PV projects will be implemented utilising the local E.P.C players. Local Self Governments like Municipal Corporations were empowered to plan, formulate and implement their own Solar Photovoltaic Projects. This approach is being implemented in Kerala resulting in solar electrification of local communities/institutions through the decentralised approach. This created a new business model at the local level involving trained manpower and supply chain for meeting the Local Self Government targets for new PV projects in order to achieve the targets of carbon free communities.
Although Beijing has carried out municipal solid waste （MSW） source separation since 1996, it has largely been ineffective. In 2012, a ＂Green House＂ program was established as a new attempt for ...central sorting. In this study, the authors used material flow analysis （MFA） and cost benefit analysis （CBA） methods to investigate Green House＇s environment and economic feasibility. Results showed that the program did have significant environmental benefits on waste reduction, which reduced the amount of waste by 34%. If the Green House program is implemented in a residential community with wet waste ratio of 66%, the proportion of waste reduction can reach 37%. However, the Green House is now running with a monthly loss of 1982 CNY. This is mainly because most of its benefits come from waste reduction （i.e., 5878 CNY per month）, which does not turn a monetary benefit, but is instead distributed to the whole of society as positive environmental externalities. Lack of government involvement, small program scale, and technical/managerial deficiency are three main barriers of the Green House. We, thus, make three recommendations： involve government authority and financial support, expand the program scale to separate 91.4 tons of waste every month, and use more professional equipment/technologies. If the Green House program can successfully adopt these suggestions, 33.8 tons of waste can be reduced monthly, and it would be able to flip the loss into a profit worth 35034 CNY.
In this study, we introduce an integrated framework for managing the complex interdependence between urban infrastructures and the socioeconomic environment within which it evolves, in pursuit of ...sustainable and environmentally cleaner urban living. The framework addresses the nature of individual preferences for more sustainable urban infrastructures, and how we can use this knowledge to improve urban form in ways that reduce environmental impacts. Using metropolitan Atlanta as a case study, we developed a survey that focuses on the preferences of Atlanta residents for low-impact development (LID) and transit-oriented development (TOD), with responses collected on the Mechanical Turk crowed-source platform. Using these responses we developed a latent-class residential community choice model for four distinctive classes of respondents that revealed heterogeneous preferences for community amenities. Next, we integrated the results of these individual choices into an agent-based market diffusion model, to predict land-use pattern, and to explore policies that drive greater adoption of more compact development. Finally, we used the results of this data collection and modelling to estimate the carbon emission reduction potentials from more compact development driven by LID and TOD. In the future, we will continuously refine the steps and address the issues including survey sample bias to make the framework more reliable and useful for sustainable urban infrastructure planning, design and implementation.
在追求可持续而更整洁的城市生活环境过程中，城市基础设施与其所处社会经济环境之间呈现 出复杂的相互依赖关系。本研宄引入了一个综合框架来探讨这一关系。这一框架讨论了个体偏 好更加可持续的城市基础设施属于何种性质，以及我们能如何利用这一知识，以减少环境影响 的方式改善城市形态。我们通过亚特兰大都市区的案例研宄，做了一项调查，重点关注亚特兰 大市民对低影响开发（LID)和公交导向型开发(TOD)的偏好，相关回答在Mechanical Turk 众包平台上收集。答题者对社区便利设施表现出了不同的偏好，大致分为四种类型。利用这些 回答，我们针对这四类不同的答题者开发了一个隐匿类型居民群体选择模型。然后，我们将这 些个体选择的结果纳入一个基于代理人的市场扩散模型，来预测土地利用模式并探讨能推动采 纳更紧凑型开发的政策。最后，我们利用这一数据收集和建模的结果，估计了 LID和TOD 驱动下的更紧凑型开发将实现的碳减排潜力。未来，我们将进一步完善各个步骤并处理调查样 本偏差等问题，使这一框架更可靠，能对可持续城市基础设施的规划、设计和实施发挥更大的 作用。
The residential sector consumes a significant portion of the electricity sold in the United States. Above 60% of the energy used in the sector is used to operate heating, ventilation, and air ...conditioning (HVAC) systems and water heating (WH) systems. With the increase of intelligence in the grid and the new decision and control options enabled by the Internet of Things; control of these devices can be used to support the grid. This article presents a scalable multiagent system for optimizing HVAC and WH systems while maintaining comfort. It allows a utility to orchestrate the shifting of energy from critical periods without direct control, but instead by using a price signal. The architecture, optimization formulation, implementation strategy and results from an implementation project are discussed.
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