Harmonizing smart technologies with building resilience and sustainable built environment systems

Abstract

Given the escalating concerns posed by climate change-related disasters, there is an urgent need for a more sustainable and resilient built environment. The developing digital revolution in recent years has the potential to harness its superior features to achieve sustainable and resilient building sector goals. This paper aims to present a futuristic perspective on the three basic pillars of a more sustainable and resilient built environment. These pillars comprise sustainability, resilience, and the utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for monitoring and managing structural health and performance. This is evident in the context of smart buildings and their ability to enhance energy consumption efficiency, improve quality of life, and strengthen structural health monitoring in terms of reducing damage and facilitating timely maintenance operations. Through comparing the components of the virtual city designed from two types of alkali-activated binder concrete (AABC) and ordinary Portland cement (OPC) concrete, all components of the city designed from AABC showed a reduction in the amount of emitted CO2. The highest decrease was observed in the schools designed from AABC, where the reduction was about 25 %, while the lowest decrease was for the villas and infrastructure; about 11 % and 10 % respectively, compared to those designed from OPC concrete. The results also indicated that the utilization of sustainable concrete instead of traditional varieties has the potential to decrease CO2 emissions by up to 25 %. The importance of this work resides in establishing a basis for forthcoming research that combines intelligent, environmentally friendly, and resilient building practices.

Keywords

• AI
• Built-environment
• Conservation
• LCA
• Resilience
• Smart buildings