This book describes the wind resources in the built environment that can be converted into energy by a wind turbine. It especially deals with the integration of a wind turbine and a building in such a way that the building concentrates the available wind energy for the wind turbine. The three different ways to concentrate wind power are examined: wind turbines on the roof or at the sides of a building; wind turbines between two airfoil shaped buildings; wind turbines in ducts through buildings.

This book assesses wind engineering research studies in the past two decades to identify an interdisciplinary research agenda and delineate an action plan for evaluation of critical wind engineering efforts. It promotes the interdisciplinary approach to achieve collaborative research, assesses the feasibility of formalizing undergraduate wind engineering curricula, and assesses international wind engineering research activities and transfer approaches for U.S. applications.

In the context of urbanization and compact urban living, conventional experience-based planning and design often cannot adequately address the serious environmental issues, such as thermal comfort and air quality. The ultimate goal of this book is to facilitate a paradigm shift from the conventional experience-based ways to a more scientific, evidence-based process of decision making in both urban planning and architectural design stage. This book introduces novel yet practical modelling and mapping methods, and provides scientific understandings of the urban typologies and wind environment from the urban to building scale through real examples and case studies. The tools provided in this book aid a systematic implementation of environmental information from urban planning to building design by making wind information more accessible to both urban planners and architects, and significantly increasing the impact of urban climate information on the practical urban planning and design. This book is a useful reference book to architectural postgraduates, design practitioners and planners, urban climate researchers, as well as policy makers for developing future livable and sustainable cities.

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Life cycle assessment enables the identification of a broad range of potential environmental impacts occurring across the entire life of a product, from its design through to its eventual disposal or reuse. The need for life cycle assessment to inform environmental design within the built environment is critical, due to the complex range of materials and processes required to construct and manage our buildings and infrastructure systems. After outlining the framework for life cycle assessment, this book uses a range of case studies to demonstrate the innovative input-output-based hybrid approach for compiling a life cycle inventory. This approach enables a comprehensive analysis of a broad range of resource requirements and environmental outputs so that the potential environmental impacts of a building or infrastructure system can be ascertained. These case studies cover a range of elements that are part of the built environment, including a residential building, a commercial office building and a wind turbine, as well as individual building components such as a residential-scale photovoltaic system. Comprehensively introducing and demonstrating the uses and benefits of life cycle assessment for built environment projects, this book will show you how to assess the environmental performance of your clients’ projects, to compare design options across their entire life and to identify opportunities for improving environmental performance.

Wind Issues in the Design of Buildings explains the ways that structural designers accommodate the impact of extreme wind events on the built environment. By studying the flow and pressure fields around buildings, architects and engineers can identify and select the best strategies for ensuring that a building will resist the loads due to high winds, maintaining pleasant conditions in outdoor spaces, assessing natural ventilation potential, and seeing that any exhaust fumes are dispersed adequately. This volume identifies wind characteristics and describes the effects of winds generated by hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. It explains the internal and external pressures on a building's cladding (skin) and the effects of wind-borne debris. A building's response to the structural loads caused by wind is outlined, along with techniques for resisting wind. A chapter is devoted to wind tunnels and physical modeling to predict structural loads, cladding response, pedestrian experience, topographic effects, and snow deposition. A section of frequently asked questions, a glossary, and recommended reading make this material in this volume accessible to students and nontechnical members of project teams. Structural engineers and architects will find this book a useful aide in explaining wind-related issues to clients, builders, building officials, and owners. Students in structural and architectural engineering will welcome the clear, concise presentation of an important component of structural design.

Both the number and percentage of people living in urban areas is growing rapidly. Up to half of the world's population is expected to be living in a city by the end of the century and there are over 170 cities in the world with populations over a million. Cities have a huge impact on the local climate and require vast quantities of energy to keep them functioning. The urban environment in turn has a big impact on the performance and needs of buildings. The size, scale and mechanism of these interactions is poorly understood and strategies to mitigate them are rarely implemented. This is the first comprehensive book to address these questions. It arises out of a programme of work (POLISTUDIES) carried out for the Save programme of the European Commission. Chapters describe not only the main problems encountered such as the heat island and canyon effects, but also a range of design solutions that can be adopted both to improve the energy performance and indoor air quality of individual buildings and to look at aspects of urban design that can reduce these climatic effects. The book concludes with some examples of innovative urban bioclimatic buildings. The project was co-ordinated by Professor Mat Santamouris from the University of Athens who is also the editor of the book. Other contributions are from the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, ENTPE, Lyons, France and the University of Stuttgart, Germany.