Buildings & the Environment

The rise of living standards and the deterioration of thermal conditions in the urban environment are mainly responsible for the increase in the energy consumption in buildings. Low energy design of urban environment and buildings in densely populated areas requires consideration of a wide range of factors, including urban setting, transport planning, energy system design and architectural and engineering details. Furthermore, sustainability has acquired great importance due to the negative impact of various developments on the environment. This book focuses on ways to reduce building energy consumption by designing buildings which are more economical in their use of energy for heating, lighting, cooling, ventilation and hot water supply. Furthermore, people living in developed countries are exposed to many physical and mental stresses caused by the urban environment, including air, water and ground pollution. Various trails concerning the domiciliary environment are discussed to support and promote human health in indoor conditions, such as those involving the use of fewer chemicals in buildings. This book also details the establishment of negatively-charged indoor air conditions and investigate their biological effects. Other chapters in this book include a study of methods on how to reduce the energy consumption in different kinds of school buildings, findings on a new generation of decision-making tools for estimating the environmental effects on residential property value and methods on how to reduce airborne contamination in hospital buildings.

Table of Contents:
Preface; Numerical Approaches for Fire Modelling with Turbulent, Combustion, Soot and Radiation Considerations; Energy Efficiency, Climate Change, Buildings and the Need for Development in Renewable Energy Use; Managing Processes Related To Pedestrian Mobility through the Distrimobs Decision Support System; Adsorption and Advanced Oxidation Process for Environmental Cleaning of Polluted Water; Computational Prediction of Air-Flow and Thermal Comfort in Naturally Ventilated Real-scale Buildings; Establishment of Negatively-charged Indoor Air Conditions and their Biological Effects; Energy Saving in HVAC of Spanish School Buildings; Traditional Underground Wine Cellars of Spain: Building and Morphological Properties and Hygrothermal Behaviour -- Taking Advantage of Soil Properties; Estimating the Environmental Effects on Residential Property Value with GIS; Fungal Contamination in Hospital Buildings; Building Form and Air Pollution in Compact City: A Review for the Macao Peninsula; Use of Semantic Web Technologies in Design of Informational Retrieval Systems; Mereological Aspects of Ontological Analysis for Thesauri Constructing; Index