during a very long period of time, civil engineers have been the only ones to be designated as the experts for underground space, while the planners and architects were the ones of the development at the surface. cities worldwide tend to overlook an invaluable asset that lies beneath their surfaces. most cities and urban regions are unaware of the benefits underground space use has to offer, bo...

Carbon storage and sequestration by urban trees in the United States was quantified to assess the magnitude and role of urban forests in relation to climate change. Urban tree field data from 28 cities and 6 states were used to determine the average carbon density per unit of tree cover. These data were applied to statewide urban tree cover measurements to determine total urban forest carbon st...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Malmquist–Luenberger index Urban water utilities Greenhouse gas emissions Nonparametric productivity measurement The energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the provision of urban water and sewerage services have become an increasingly important issue in recent times. However, the impact of negative externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions on the product...

From 60 decade  sustainability issues  and sustainable developing  have opened a way in scientific meetings associated with  environment and urbanization and architecture. Sustainability goals are improving of environment situation , less pollution  and at least interference on  land and interaction of  natural and artificial environment , that most of these cases attracted attention in archite...

Changes in plant phenology—the seasonal timing of developmental events—are probably the best documented observed responses to ongoing climate change. Studies based on large global data sets have shown unequivocally that spring has advanced in the northern hemisphere (Parmesan and Yohe 2003, Root et al. 2003, Menzel et al. 2006), with an overall estimate across species of almost 3 days per decad...

The most important meteorological parameter affecting the human energy balance during sunny weather conditions is the mean radiant temperature T(mrt). It considers the uniform temperature of a surrounding surface giving off blackbody radiation, which results in the same energy gain of a human body given the prevailing radiation fluxes. This energy gain usually varies considerably in open space ...

land vulnerable to desertification increased in the mediterranean basin since world war ii dueto several interacting factors including climate variations, land-use changes and growing human pressure. itwas hypothesized that the increase in the level of land vulnerability is not distributed homogeneously overtime and space while impacting preferentially landscapes surrounding large urban agglome...

Health has been the main driver for many urban environmental interventions, particularly in cases of significant health problems linked to poor urban environmental conditions. This paper examines empirically the links between climate change mitigation and health in urban areas, when health is the main driver for improvements. The paper aims to understand how systems of urban governance can enab...

Heat-related mortality in US cities is expected to more than double by the mid-to-late 21st century. Rising heat exposure in cities is projected to result from: 1) climate forcings from changing global atmospheric composition; and 2) local land surface characteristics responsible for the urban heat island effect. The extent to which heat management strategies designed to lessen the urban heat i...

A scheme that couples a detailed building energy model, EnergyPlus, and an urban canopy model, the Town Energy Balance (TEB), is presented. Both models are well accepted and evaluated within their individual scientific communities. The coupled scheme proposes a more realistic representation of buildings and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, which allows a broader analysi...