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A comprehensive review on green buildings research: bibliometric analysis during 1998–2018

• Environmental Concerns and Pollution control in the Context of Developing Countries
• Published: 16 February 2021
• Volume 28 , pages 46196–46214, ( 2021 )

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• Li Ying 1 , 2 ,
• Rong Yanyu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0722-8510 1 , 3 ,
• Umme Marium Ahmad 1 ,
• Wang Xiaotong 1 , 3 ,
• Zuo Jian 4 &
• Mao Guozhu 1 , 3  

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Buildings account for nearly 2/5ths of global energy expenditure. Due to this figure, the 90s witnessed the rise of green buildings (GBs) that were designed with the purpose of lowering the demand for energy, water, and materials resources while enhancing environmental protection efforts and human well-being over time. This paper examines recent studies and technologies related to the design, construction, and overall operation of GBs and determines potential future research directions in this area of study. This global review of green building development in the last two decades is conducted through bibliometric analysis on the Web of Science, via the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index databases. Publication performance, countries’ characteristics, and identification of key areas of green building development and popular technologies were conducted via social network analysis, big data method, and S-curve predictions. A total of 5246 articles were evaluated on the basis of subject categories, journals’ performance, general publication outputs, and other publication characteristics. Further analysis was made on dominant issues through keyword co-occurrence, green building technologies by patent analysis, and S-curve predictions. The USA, China, and the UK are ranked the top three countries where the majority of publications come from. Australia and China had the closest relationship in the global network cooperation. Global trends of the top 5 countries showed different country characteristics. China had a steady and consistent growth in green building publications each year. The total publications on different cities had a high correlation with cities’ GDP by Baidu Search Index. Also, barriers and contradictions such as cost, occupant comfort, and energy consumption were discussed in developed and developing countries. Green buildings, sustainability, and energy efficiency were the top three hotspots identified through the whole research period by the cluster analysis. Additionally, green building energy technologies, including building structures, materials, and energy systems, were the most prevalent technologies of interest determined by the Derwent Innovations Index prediction analysis. This review reveals hotspots and emerging trends in green building research and development and suggests routes for future research. Bibliometric analysis, combined with other useful tools, can quantitatively measure research activities from the past and present, thus bridging the historical gap and predicting the future of green building development.

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Introduction

Rapid urban development has resulted in buildings becoming a massive consumer of energy (Yuan et al. 2013 ), liable for 39% of global energy expenditure and 68% of total electricity consumption in the USA (building). In recent years, green buildings (GBs) have become an alternative solution, rousing widespread attention. Also referred to as sustainable buildings, low energy buildings, and eco-buildings, GBs are designed to reduce the strain on environmental resources as well as curb negative effects on human health by efficiently using natural resources, reducing garbage, and ensuring the residents’ well-being through improved living conditions ( Agency USEP Indoor Air Quality ; Building, n.d ). As a strategy to improve the sustainability of the construction industry, GBs have been widely recognized by governments globally, as a necessary step towards a sustainable construction industry (Shen et al. 2017 ).

Zuo and Zhao ( 2014 ) reviewed the current research status and future development direction of GBs, focusing on connotation and research scope, the benefit-difference between GBs and traditional buildings, and various ways to achieve green building development. Zhao et al. ( 2019 ) presented a bibliometric report of studies on GBs between 2000 and 2016, identifying hot research topics and knowledge gaps. The verification of the true performance of sustainable buildings, the application of ICT, health and safety hazards in the development of green projects, and the corporate social responsibility were detected as future agenda. A scientometrics review of research papers on GB sources from 14 architectural journals between 1992 and 2018 was also presented (Wuni et al. 2019a ). The study reported that 44% of the world participated in research focusing on green building implementation; stakeholder management; attitude assessment; regulations and policies; energy efficiency assessment; sustainability performance assessment; green building certification, etc.

With the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, society is now aware of the importance of healthy buildings. In fact, in the past 20 years, the relationship between the built environment and health has aroused increasing research interest in the field of building science. Public spaces and dispersion of buildings in mixed-use neighborhoods are promoted. Furthermore, telecommuting has become a trend since the COVID-19 pandemic, making indoor air quality even more important in buildings, now (Fezi 2020 ).

The system for evaluating the sustainability of buildings has been established for nearly two decades. But, systems dedicated to identifying whether buildings are healthy have only recently appeared (McArthur and Powell 2020 ). People are paying more and more attention to health factors in the built environment. This is reflected in the substantial increase in related academic papers and the increase in health building certification systems such as WELE and Fitwel (McArthur and Powell 2020 ).

Taking the above into consideration, the aim of this study is to examine the stages of development of GBs worldwide and find the barriers and the hotpots in global trends. This study may be beneficial to foreign governments interested in promoting green building and research in their own nations.

Methodology

Overall description of research design.

Since it is difficult to investigate historical data and predict global trends of GBs, literature research was conducted to analyze their development. The number of published reports on a topic in a particular country may influence the level of industrial development in that certain area (Zhang et al. 2017 ). The bibliometric analysis allows for a quantitative assessment of the development and advancement of research related to GBs and where they are from. Furthermore, it has been shown that useful data has been gathered through bibliometrics and patent analysis (Daim et al. 2006 ).

In this report, the bibliometric method, social network analysis (SNA), CiteSpace, big data method, patent analysis, and S-curve analysis are used to assess data.

Bibliometrics analysis

Bibliometrics, a class of scientometrics, is a tool developed in 1969 for library and information science. It has since been adopted by other fields of study that require a quantitative assessment of academic articles to determine trends and predict future research scenarios by compiling output and type of publication, title, keyword, author, institution, and countries data (Ho 2008 ; Li et al. 2017 ).

Social network analysis

Social network analysis (SNA) is applied to studies by modeling network maps using mathematics and statistics (Mclinden 2013 ; Ye et al. 2013 ). In the SNA, nodes represent social actors, while connections between actors stand for their relationships (Zhang et al. 2017 ). Correlations between two actors are determined by their distance from each other. There is a variety of software for the visualization of SNA such as Gephi, Vosviewer, and Pajek. In this research, “Pajek” was used to model the sequence of and relationships between the objects in the map (Du et al. 2015 ).

CiteSpace is an open-source Java application that maps and analyzes trends in publication statistics gathered from the ISI-Thomson Reuters Scientific database and produces graphic representations of this data (Chen 2006 ; Li et al. 2017 ). Among its many functions, it can determine critical moments in the evolution of research in a particular field, find patterns and hotspots, locate areas of rapid growth, and breakdown the network into categorized clusters (Chen 2006 ).

Big data method

The big data method, with its 3V characters (volume, velocity, and variety), can give useful and accurate information. Enormous amounts of data, which could not be collected or computed manually through conventional methods, can now be collected through public data website. Based on large databases and machine learning, the big data method can be used to design, operate, and evaluate energy efficiency and other index combined with other technologies (Mehmood et al. 2019 ). The primary benefit of big data is that the data is gathered from entire populations as opposed to a small sample of people (Chen et al. 2018 ; Ho 2008 ). It has been widely used in many research areas. In this research, we use the “Baidu Index” to form a general idea of the trends in specific areas based on user interests. The popularity of the keywords could imply the user’s behavior, user’s demand, user’s portrait, etc. Thus, we can analyze the products or events to help with developing strategies. However, it must be noted that although big data can quantitatively represent human behavior, it cannot determine what motivates it. With the convergence of big data and technology, there are unprecedented applications in the field of green building for the improved indoor living environment and controlled energy consumption (Marinakis 2020 ).

• Patent analysis

Bibliometrics, combined with patent analysis, bridges gaps that may exist in historical data when predicting future technologies (Daim et al. 2006 ). It is a trusted form of technical analysis as it is supported by abundant sources and commercial awareness of patents (Guozhu et al. 2018 ; Yoon and Park 2004 ). Therefore, we used patent analysis from the Derwent patent database to conduct an initial analysis and forecast GB technologies.

There are a variety of methods to predict the future development prospects of a technology. Since many technologies are developed in accordance with the S-curve trend, researchers use the S-curve to observe and predict the future trend of technologies (Bengisu and Nekhili 2006 ; Du et al. 2019 ; Liu and Wang 2010 ). The evolution of technical systems generally goes through four stages: emerging, growth, maturity, and decay (saturation) (Ernst 1997 ). We use the logistics model (performed in Loglet Lab 4 software developed by Rockefeller University) to simulate the S-curve of GB-related patents to predict its future development space.

Data collection

The Web of Science (WOS) core collection database is made up of trustworthy and highly ranked journals. It is considered the leading data portal for publications in many fields (Pouris and Pouris 2011 ). Furthermore, the WOS has been cited as the main data source in many recent bibliometric reviews on buildings (Li et al. 2017 ).

Access to all publications used in this paper was attained through the Science Citation Index-Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index databases. Because there is no relevant data in WOS before 1998, our examination focuses on 1998 to 2018. With consideration of synonyms, we set a series of green building-related words (see Appendix ) in titles, abstracts, and keywords for bibliometric analysis. For example, sustainable, low energy, zero energy, and low carbon can be substituted for green; housing, construction, and architecture can be a substitute for building (Zuo and Zhao 2014 ).

Analytical procedure

The study was conducted in three stages; data extraction was the first step where all the GB-related words were screened in WOS. Afterwards, some initial analysis was done to get a complete idea of GB research. Then, we made a further analysis on countries’ characteristics, dominant issues, and detected technology hotspots via patent analysis (Fig. 1 ).

Analytical procedure of the article

Results and analysis

General results.

Of the 6140 publications searched in the database, 88.67% were articles, followed by reviews (6.80%), papers (3.72%), and others (such as editorial materials, news, book reviews). Most articles were written in English (96.78%), followed by German (1.77%), Spanish (0.91%), and other European languages. Therefore, we will only make a further analysis of the types of articles in English publications.

The subject categories and their distribution

The SCI-E and SSCI database determined 155 subjects from the pool of 5246 articles reviewed, such as building technology, energy and fuels, civil engineering, environmental, material science, and thermodynamics, which suggests green building is a cross-disciplinary area of research. The top 3 research areas of green buildings are Construction & Building Technology (36.98%), Energy & Fuels (30.39%), and Engineering Civil (29.49%), which account for over half of the total categories.

The journals’ performance

The top 10 journals contained 38.8% of the 5246 publications, and the distribution of their publications is shown in Fig. 2 . Impact factors qualitatively indicate the standard of journals, the research papers they publish, and researchers associated with those papers (Huibin et al. 2015 ). Below, we used 2017 impact factors in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to determine the journal standards.

The performance of top10 most productive journals

Publications on green building have appeared in a variety of titles, including energy, building, environment, materials, sustainability, indoor built environment, and thermal engineering. Energy and Buildings, with its impact factor 4.457, was the most productive journal apparently from 2009 to 2017. Sustainability (IF = 2.075) and Journal of Cleaner Production (IF = 5.651) rose to significance rapidly since 2015 and ranked top two journals in 2018.

Publication output

The total publication trends from 1998 to 2018 are shown in Fig. 3 , which shows a staggering increase across the 10 years. Since there was no relevant data before 1998, the starting year is 1998. Before 2004, the number of articles published per year fluctuated. The increasing rate reached 75% and 68% in 2004 and 2007, respectively, which are distinguished in Fig. 3 that leads us to believe that there are internal forces at work, such as appropriate policy creation and enforcement by concerned governments. There was a constant and steady growth in publications after 2007 in the worldwide view.

The number of articles published yearly, between 1998 and 2018

The characteristics of the countries

Global distribution and global network were analyzed to illustrate countries’ characteristics. Many tools such as ArcGIS, Bibexcel, Pajek, and Baidu index were used in this part (Fig. 4 ).

Analysis procedure of countries’ characteristics

Global distribution of publications

By extracting the authors’ addresses (Mao et al. 2015 ), the number of publications from each place was shown in Fig. 5 and Table 1 . Apparently, the USA was the most productive country accounting for 14.98% of all the publications. China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) and the UK followed next by 13.29% and 8.27% separately. European countries such as Italy, Spain, and Germany also did a lot of work on green building development.

Global geographical distribution of the top 20 publications based on authors’ locations

Global research network

Global networks illustrate cooperation between countries through the analysis of social networks. Academic partnerships among the 10 most productive countries are shown in Fig. 6 . Collaboration is determined by the affiliation of the co-authors, and if a publication is a collaborative research, all countries or institutions will benefit from it (Bozeman et al. 2013 ). Every node denotes a country and their size indicates the amount of publications from that country. The lines linking the nodes denote relationships between countries and their thickness indicates the level of collaboration (Mao et al. 2015 ).

The top 10 most productive countries had close academic collaborative relationships

It was obvious that China and Australia had the strongest linking strength. Secondly, China and the USA, China, and the UK also had close cooperation with each other. Then, the USA with Canada and South Korea followed. The results indicated that cooperation in green building research was worldwide. At the same time, such partnerships could help countries increase individual productivity.

Global trend of publications

The time-trend analysis of academic inputs to green building from the most active countries is shown in Fig. 7 .

The publication trends of the top five countriesbetween 1998 and 2018 countries areshown in Fig 7 .

Before 2007, these countries showed little growth per year. However, they have had a different, growing trend since 2007. The USA had the greatest proportion of publications from 2007, which rose obviously each year, reaching its peak in 2016 then declined. The number of articles from China was at 13 in 2007, close to the USA. Afterwards, there was a steady growth in China. Not until 2013 did China have a quick rise from 41 publications to 171 in 2018. The UK and Italy had a similar growth trend before 2016 but declined in the last 2 years.

Further analysis on China, the USA, and the UK

Green building development in china, policy implementation in china.

Green building design started in China with the primary goal of energy conservation. In September 2004, the award of “national green building innovation” of the Ministry of Construction was launched, which kicked off the substantive development of GB in China. As we can see from Fig. 7 , there were few publications before 2004 in China. In 2004, there were only 4 publications on GB.

The Ministry of Construction, along with the Ministry of Science and Technology, in 2005, published “The Technical Guidelines for Green Buildings,” proposing the development of GBs (Zhang et al. 2018 ). In June 2006, China had implemented the first “Evaluation Standard for Green Building” (GB/T 50378-2006), which promoted the study of the green building field. In 2007, the demonstration of “100 projects of green building and 100 projects of low-energy building” was launched. In August 2007, the Ministry of Construction issued the “Green Building Assessment Technical Regulations (try out)” and the “Green Building Evaluation Management,” following Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Shanghai, more than 20 provinces and cities issued the local green building standards, which promoted GBs in large areas in China.

At the beginning of 2013, the State Council issued the “Green Building Action Plan,” so the governments at all levels continuously issued incentive policies for the development of green buildings (Ye et al. 2015 ). The number of certified green buildings has shown a blowout growth trend throughout the country, which implied that China had arrived at a new chapter of development.

In August 2016, the Evaluation Standard for Green Renovation of Existing Buildings was released, encouraging the rise of residential GB research. Retrofitting an existing building is often more cost-effective than building a new facility. Designing significant renovations and alterations to existing buildings, including sustainability measures, will reduce operating costs and environmental impacts and improve the building’s adaptability, durability, and resilience.

At the same time, a number of green ecological urban areas have emerged (Zhang et al. 2018 ). For instance, the Sino-Singapore Tianjin eco-city is a major collaborative project between the two governments. Located in the north of Tianjin Binhai New Area, the eco-city is characterized by salinization of land, lack of freshwater, and serious pollution, which can highlight the importance of eco-city construction. The construction of eco-cities has changed the way cities develop and has provided a demonstration of similar areas.

China has many emerging areas and old centers, so erecting new, energy efficiency buildings and refurbishing existing buildings are the best steps towards saving energy.

Baidu Search Index of “green building”

In order to know the difference in performance among cities in China, this study employs the big data method “Baidu Index” for a smart diagnosis and assessment on green building at finer levels. “Baidu Index” is not equal to the number of searches but is positively related to the number of searches, which is calculated by the statistical model. Based on the keyword search of “green building” in the Baidu Index from 2013 to 2018, the top 10 provinces or cities were identified (Fig. 8 ).

Baidu Search Index of green building in China 2013–2018 from high to low

The top 10 search index distributes the east part and middle part of China, most of which are the high GDP provinces (Fig. 9 ). Economically developed cities in China already have a relatively mature green building market. Many green building projects with local characteristics have been established (Zhang et al. 2018 ).

TP GDP & Search Index were highly related

We compared the city search index (2013–2018) with the total publications of different cities by the authors’ address and the GDP in 2018. The correlation coefficient between the TP and the search index was 0.9, which means the two variables are highly related. The correlation coefficient between the TP and GDP was 0.73, which also represented a strong relationship. We inferred that cities with higher GDP had more intention of implementation on green buildings. The stronger the local GDP, the more relevant the economic policies that can be implemented to stimulate the development of green buildings (Hong et al. 2017 ). Local economic status (Yang et al. 2018 ), property developer’s ability, and effective government financial incentives are the three most critical factors for green building implementation (Huang et al. 2018 ). However, Wang et al. ( 2017 ) compared the existing green building design standards and found that they rarely consider the regional economy. Aiming at cities at different economic development phases, the green building design standards for sustainable construction can effectively promote the implementation of green buildings. Liu et al. ( 2020 ) mainly discussed the impact of sustainable construction on GDP. According to the data, there is a strong correlation between the percentage of GDP increments in China and the amount of sustainable infrastructure (Liu et al. 2020 ). The construction of infrastructure can create jobs and improve people’s living standards, increasing GDP as a result (Liu et al. 2020 ).

Green building development in the USA and the UK

The sign that GBs were about to take-off occurred in 1993—the formation of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), an independent agency. The promulgation of the Energy Policy Act 2005 in the USA was the key point in the development of GBs. The Energy Policy Act 2005 paid great attention to green building energy saving, which also inspired publications on GBs.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), a popular metric for sustainable buildings and homes (Jalaei and Jrade 2015 ), has become a thriving business model for green building development. It is a widely used measure of how buildings affect the environment.

Another phenomenon worth discussion, combined with Fig. 7 , the increasing rate peaked at 75% in 2004 and 68% in 2007 while the publications of the UK reached the peak in 2004 and 2007. The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), a United Kingdom membership organization, created in 2007 with regard to the 2004 Sustainable Building Task Group Report: Better Buildings - Better Lives, intends to “radically transform,” all facets of current and future built environment in the UK. It is predicted that the establishment of the UKGBC promoted research on green buildings.

From the China, the USA, and the UK experience, it is predicted that the foundation of a GB council or the particular projects from the government will promote research in this area.

Barriers and contradicts of green building implement

On the other hand, it is obvious that the USA, the UK, and Italian publications have been declining since 2016. There might be some barriers and contradicts on the adoption of green buildings for developed countries. Some articles studied the different barriers to green building in developed and developing countries (Chan et al. 2018 ) (Table 2 ). Because the fraction of energy end-uses is different, the concerns for GBs in the USA, China, and the European Union are also different (Cao et al. 2016 ).

It is regarded that higher cost is the most deterring barrier to GB development across the globe (Nguyen et al. 2017 ). Other aspects such as lack of market demand and knowledge were also main considerations of green building implementation.

As for market demand, occupant satisfaction is an important factor. Numerous GB post-occupancy investigations on occupant satisfaction in various communities have been conducted.

Paul and Taylor ( 2008 ) surveyed personnel ratings of their work environment with regard to ambience, tranquility, lighting, sound, ventilation, heat, humidity, and overall satisfaction. Personnel working in GBs and traditional buildings did not differ in these assessments. Khoshbakht et al. ( 2018 ) identified two global contexts in spite of the inconclusiveness: in the west (mainly the USA and Britain), users experienced no significant differences in satisfaction between green and traditional buildings, whereas, in the east (mainly China and South Korea), GB user satisfaction is significantly higher than traditional building users.

Dominant issues

The dominant issues on different stages.

Bibliometric data was imported to CiteSpace where a three-stage analysis was conducted based on development trends: 1998–2007 initial development; 2008–2015 quick development; 2016–2018 differentiation phase (Fig. 10 ).

Analysis procedure of dominant issues

CiteSpace was used for word frequency and co-word analysis. The basic principle of co-word analysis is to count a group of words appearing at the same time in a document and measure the close relationship between them by the number of co-occurrences. The top 50 levels of most cited or occurred items from each slice (1998 to 2007; 2008 to 2015; 2016 to 2018) per year were selected. After merging the similar words (singular or plural form), the final keyword knowledge maps were generated as follows.

Initial phase (1998–2007)

In the early stage (Fig. 11 ), “green building” and “sustainability” were the main two clusters. Economics and “environmental assessment method” both had high betweenness centrality of 0.34 which were identified as pivotal points. Purple rings denote pivotal points in the network. The relationships in GB were simple at the initial stage of development.

Co-word analysis from 1998–2007

Sustainable construction is further enabled with tools that can evaluate the entire life cycle, site preparation and management, materials and their reusability, and the reduction of resource and energy consumption. Environmental building assessment methods were incorporated to achieve sustainable development, especially at the initial project appraisal stage (Ding 2008 ). Green Building Challenge (GBC) is an exceptional international research, development, and dissemination effort for developing building environmental performance assessments, primarily to help researchers and practitioners in dealing with difficult obstacles in assessing performance (Todd et al. 2001 ).

Quick development (2008–2015)

In the rapid growing stage (Fig. 12 ), pivot nodes and cluster centers were more complicated. Besides “green building” and “sustainability,” “energy efficiency” was the third hotspot word. The emergence of new vocabulary in the keyword network indicated that the research had made progress during 2008 – 2015. Energy performance, energy consumption, natural ventilation, thermal comfort, renewable energy, and embodied energy were all energy related. Energy becomes the most attractive field in achieving sustainability and green building. Other aspects such as “life cycle assessment,” “LEED,” and “thermal comfort” became attractive to researchers.

Co-word analysis from 2008–2015

The life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular technique for the analysis of the technical side of GBs. LCA was developed from environmental assessment and economic analysis which could be a useful method to evaluate building energy efficiency from production and use to end-use (Chwieduk 2003 ). Much attention has been paid to LCA because people began to focus more on the actual performance of the GBs. Essentially, LCA simplifies buildings into systems, monitoring, and calculating mass flow and energy consumption over different stages in their life cycle.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) was founded by the USGBC and began in the early twenty-first century (Doan et al. 2017 ). LEED is a not-for-profit project based on consumer demand and consensus that offers an impartial GB certification. LEED is the preferred building rating tool globally, with its shares growing rapidly. Meanwhile, UK’s Building Research Establishment Assessment Method (BREEAM) and Japan’s Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE) have been in use since the beginning of the twenty-first century, while New Zealand’s Green Star is still in its earlier stages. GBs around the world are made to suit regional climate concerns and need.

In practice, not all certified green buildings are necessarily performing well. Newsham et al. ( 2009 ) gathered energy-use information from 100 LEED-certified non-residential buildings. Results indicated that 28–35% of LEED structures actually consumed higher amounts of energy than the non-LEED structures. There was little connection in its actual energy consumption to its certification grade, meaning that further improvements are required for establishing a comprehensive GB rating metric to ensure consistent performance standards.

Thermal comfort was related to many aspects, such as materials, design scheme, monitoring system, and human behaviors. Materials have been a focus area for improving thermal comfort and reducing energy consumption. Wall (Schossig et al. 2005 ), floor (Ansuini et al. 2011 ), ceiling (Hu et al. 2018 ), window, and shading structures (Shen and Li 2016 ) were building envelopes which had been paid attention to over the years. Windows were important envelopes to improve thermal comfort. For existing and new buildings, rational use of windows and shading structures can enhance the ambient conditions of buildings (Mcleod et al. 2013 ). It was found that redesigning windows could reduce the air temperature by 2.5% (Elshafei et al. 2017 ), thus improving thermal comfort through passive features and reducing the use of active air conditioners (Perez-Fargallo et al. 2018 ). The monitoring of air conditioners’ performance could also prevent overheating of buildings (Ruellan and Park 2016 ).

Differentiation phase (2016–2018)

In the years from 2016 to 2018 (Fig. 13 ), “green building,” ”sustainability,” and “energy efficiency” were still the top three hotspots in GB research.

Co-word analysis from 2016–2018

Zero-energy building (ZEB) became a substitute for low energy building in this stage. ZEB was first introduced in 2000 (Cao et al. 2016 ) and was believed to be the solution to the potential ramifications of future energy consumption by buildings (Liu et al. 2019 ). The EU has been using ZEB standards in all of its new building development projects to date (Communuties 2002 ). The USA passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, aiming for zero net energy consumption of 1 out of every 2 commercial buildings that are yet to be built by 2040 and for all by 2050 (Sartori et al. 2012 ). Energy consumption became the most important factor in new building construction.

Renewable energy was a key element of sustainable development for mankind and nature (Zhang et al. 2013 ). Using renewable energy was an important feature of ZEBs (Cao et al. 2016 ; Pulselli et al. 2007 ). Renewable energy, in the form of solar, wind, geothermal, clean bioenergy, and marine can be used in GBs. Solar energy has been widely used in recent years while wind energy is used locally because of its randomness and unpredictable features. Geothermal energy is mainly utilized by ground source heat pump (GSHP), which has been lauded as a powerful energy system for buildings (Cao et al. 2016 ). Bioenergy has gained much popularity as an alternative source of energy around the globe because it is more stable and accessible than other forms of energy (Zhang et al. 2015 ). There is relatively little use of marine energy, yet this may potentially change depending on future technological developments (Ellabban et al. 2014 ).

Residential buildings receive more attention because people spend 90% of their time inside. Contrary to popular belief, the concentration of contaminants found indoors is more than the concentration outside, sometimes up to 10 times or even 100 times more (agency). The renovation of existing buildings can save energy, upgrade thermal comfort, and improve people’s living conditions.

Energy is a substantial and widely recognized cost of building operations that can be reduced through energy-saving and green building design. Nevertheless, a consensus has been reached by academics and those in building-related fields that GBs are significantly more energy efficient than traditional buildings if designed, constructed, and operated with meticulousness (Wuni et al. 2019b ). The drive to reduce energy consumption from buildings has acted as a catalyst in developing new technologies.

Compared with the article analysis, patents can better reflect the practical technological application to a certain extent. We extracted the information of green building energy-related patent records between 1998 and 2018 from the Derwent Innovations Index database. The development of a technique follows a path: precursor–invention–development–maturity. This is commonly known as an S-type growth (Mao et al. 2018 ). Two thousand six hundred thirty-eight patents were found which were classified into “Derwent Manual Code,” which is the most distinct feature just like “keywords” in the Derwent Innovations Index. Manual codes refer to specific inventions, technological innovations, and unique codes for their applications. According to the top 20 Derwent Manual Code which accounted for more than 80% of the total patents, we classified the hotspots patents into three fields for further S-curve analysis, which are “structure,” “material,” and “energy systems” (Table 3 ).

Sustainable structural design (SSD) has gained a lot of research attention from 2006 to 2016 (Pongiglione and Calderini 2016 ). The S-curve of structure* (Fig. 14 ) has just entered the later period of the growth stage, accounting for 50% of the total saturation in 2018. Due to its effectiveness and impact, SSD has overtime gained recognition and is now considered by experts to be a prominent tool in attaining sustainability goals (Pongiglione and Calderini 2016 ).

The S-curves of different Structure types from patents

Passive design is important in energy saving which is achieved by appropriately orientating buildings and carefully designing the building envelope. Building envelopes, which are key parts of the energy exchange between the building and the external environment, include walls, roofs, windows, and floors. The EU increased the efficiency of its heat-regulating systems by revamping building envelopes as a primary energy-saving task during 2006 to 2016 (Cao et al. 2016 ).

We analyzed the building envelope separately. According to the S-curve (Fig. 14 ), the number of patents related to GB envelops are in the growth stage. At present, building envelops such as walls, roofs, windows, and even doors have not reached 50% of the saturated quantity. Walls and roofs are two of the most important building envelops. The patent contents of walls mainly include wall materials and manufacturing methods, modular wall components, and wall coatings while technologies about roofs mainly focus on roof materials, the combination of roof and solar energy, and roof structures. Green roofs are relatively new sustainable construction systems because of its esthetic and environmental benefits (Wei et al. 2015 ).

The material resources used in the building industry consume massive quantities of natural and energy resources consumptions (Wang et al. 2018 ). The energy-saving building material is economical and environmentally friendly, has low coefficient heat conductivity, fast curing speed, high production efficacy, wide raw material source and flame, and wear resistance properties (Zhang et al. 2014 ). Honeycomb structures were used for insulating sustainable buildings. They are lightweight and conserve energy making them eco-friendly and ideal for construction (Miao et al. 2011 ).

According to the S-curve (Fig. 15 ), it can be seen that the number of patents on the GB “material” is in the growth stage. It is expected that the number of patents will reach 50% of the total saturation in 2022.

The S-curves of a different material from patents

Building material popularly used comprised of cement, concrete, gypsum, mortar compositions, and boards. Cement is widely used in building material because of its easy availability, strong hardness, excellent waterproof and fireproof performance, and low cost. The S-curve of cement is in the later period of the growth stage, which will reach 90% of the total saturation in 2028. Composite materials like Bamcrete (bamboo-concrete composite) and natural local materials like Rammed Earth had better thermal performance compared with energy-intensive materials like bricks and cement (Kandya and Mohan 2018 ). Novel bricks synthesized from fly ash and coal gangue have better advantages of energy saving in brick production phases compared with that of conventional types of bricks (Zhang et al. 2014 ). For other materials like gypsum or mortar, the numbers of patents are not enough for S-curve analysis. New-type green building materials offer an alternative way to realize energy-saving for sustainable constructions.

Energy system

The energy system mainly included a heating system and ventilation system according to the patent analysis. So, we analyzed solar power systems and air conditioning systems separately. Heat* included heat collecting panels and a fluid heating system.

The results indicated that heat*-, solar-, and ventilation-related technologies were in the growth stage which would reach 50% of the total saturation in 2022 (Fig. 16 ). Photovoltaic technology is of great importance in solar energy application (Khan and Arsalan 2016 ).

The S-curves of energy systems from patents

On the contrary, air conditioning technologies had entered into the mature stage after a decade of development. It is worth mentioning that the design of the fresh air system of buildings after the COVID-19 outbreak is much more important. With people spending the majority of their time inside (Liu et al. 2019 ), volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, and carbon dioxide received the most attention worldwide (Wei et al. 2015 ). Due to health problems like sick building syndrome, and more recently since the COVID-19 outbreak, the supply of fresh air can drastically ameliorate indoor air quality (IAQ) (Liu et al. 2019 ). Regulating emissions from materials, enhanced ventilation, and monitoring air indoors are the main methods used in GBs for maintaining IAQ (Wei et al. 2015 ). Air circulation frequency and improved air filtration can reduce the risk of spreading certain diseases, while controlling the airflow between rooms can also prevent cross-infections. Poor indoor air quality and ventilation provide ideal conditions for the breeding and spreading of viruses by air (Chen et al. 2019 ). A diverse range of air filters coupled with a fresh air supply system should be studied. A crucial step forward is to create a cost-effective, energy-efficient, intelligent fresh air supply system (Liu et al. 2017 ) to monitor, filter outdoor PM2.5 (Chen et al. 2017 ), and saving building energy (Liu and Liu 2005 ). Earth-air heat exchanger system (EAHE) is a novel technology that supplies fresh air using underground soil heat (Chen et al. 2019 ).

A total of 5246 journal articles in English from the SCI and SSCI databases published in 1998–2018 were reviewed and analyzed. The study revealed that the literature on green buildings has grown rapidly over the past 20 years. The findings and results are summarized:

Data analysis revealed that GB research is distributed across various subject categories. Energy and Buildings, Building and Environment, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Sustainability were the top journals to publish papers on green buildings.

Global distribution was done to see the green building study worldwide, showing that the USA, China, and the UK ranked the top three countries, accounting for 14.98%, 13.29%, and 8.27% of all the publications respectively. Australia and China had the closest relationship on green building research cooperation worldwide.

Further analysis was made on countries’ characteristics, dominant issues through keyword co-occurrence, green building technology by patent analysis, and S-curve prediction. Global trends of the top 5 countries showed different characteristics. China had a steady and consistent growth in publications each year while the USA, the UK, and Italy were on a decline from 2016. The big data method was used to see the city performance in China, finding that the total publications had a high correlation with the city’s GDP and Baidu Search Index. Policies were regarded as the stimulation for green building development, either in China or the UK. Also, barriers and contradictions such as cost, occupants’ comfort, and energy consumption were discussed about the developed and developing countries.

Cluster and content analysis via CiteSpace identified popular and trending research topics at different stages of development; the top three hotspots were green buildings, sustainability, and energy efficiency throughout the whole research period. Energy efficiency has shifted from low to zero energy buildings or even beyond it in recent years. Energy efficiency was the most important drive to achieve green buildings while LCA and LEED were the two potential ways to evaluate building performance. Thermal comfort and natural ventilation of residential buildings became a topic of interest to the public.

Then, we combined the keywords with “energy” to make further patent analysis in Derwent Innovations Index. “Structure,” “material,” and “energy systems” were three of the most important types of green building technologies. According to S-curve analysis, most of the technologies of energy-saving buildings were on the fast-growing trend, and even though there were conflicts and doubts in different countries on GB adoption, it is still a promising field.

Future directions

An establishment of professional institutes or a series of policies and regulations on green building promulgated by government departments will promote research development (as described in the “Further Analysis on China, the USA, and the UK” section). Thus, a policy enacted by a formal department is of great importance in this particular field.

Passive design is important in energy saving which is ensured by strategically positioning buildings and precisely engineering the building envelope, i.e., roof, walls, windows, and floors. A quality, the passive-design house is crucial to achieving sustained thermal comfort, low-carbon footprint, and a reduced gas bill. The new insulation material is a promising field for reducing building heat loss and energy consumed. Healthy residential buildings have become a focus of future development due to people’s pursuit of a healthy life. A fresh air supply system is important for better indoor air quality and reduces the risk of transmission of several diseases. A 2020 study showed the COVID-19 virus remains viable for only 4 hours on copper compared to 24 h on cardboard. So, antiviral materials will be further studied for healthy buildings (Fezi 2020 ).

With the quick development of big data method and intelligent algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) green buildings will be a trend. The core purpose of AI buildings is to achieve optimal operating conditions through the accurate analysis of data, collected by sensors built into green buildings. “Smart buildings” and “Connected Buildings” of the future, fitted with meters and sensors, can collect and share massive amounts of information regarding energy use, water use, indoor air quality, etc. Analyzing this data can determine relationships and patterns, and optimize the operation of buildings to save energy without compromising the quality of the indoor environment (Lazarova-Molnar and Mohamed 2019 ).

The major components of green buildings, such as building envelope, windows, and skylines, should be adjustable and versatile in order to get full use of AI. A digital control system can give self-awareness to buildings, adjusting room temperature, indoor air quality, and air cooling/heating conditions to control power consumption, and make it sustainable (Mehmood et al. 2019 ).

Concerns do exist, for example, occupant privacy, data security, robustness of design, and modeling of the AI building (Maasoumy and Sangiovanni-Vincentelli 2016 ). However, with increased data sources and highly adaptable infrastructure, AI green buildings are the future.

This examination of research conducted on green buildings between the years 1998 and 2018, through bibliometric analysis combined with other useful tools, offers a quantitative representation of studies and data conducted in the past and present, bridging historical gaps and forecasting the future of green buildings—providing valuable insight for academicians, researchers, and policy-makers alike.

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The datasets generated and analyzed throughout the current study are available in the Web of Science Core Collection.

This study was supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.51808385).

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Li Ying, Rong Yanyu, Umme Marium Ahmad, Wang Xiaotong & Mao Guozhu

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Ying Li conceived the frame of the paper and wrote the manuscript. Yanyu Rong made the data figures and participated in writing the manuscript. Umme Marium Ahmad helped with revising the language. Xiaotong Wang consulted related literature for the manuscript. Jian Zuo contributed significantly to provide the keywords list. Guozhu Mao helped with constructive suggestions.

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Topic: (“bioclimatic architect*” or “bioclimatic build*” or “bioclimatic construct*” or “bioclimatic hous*” or “eco-architect*” or “eco-build*” or “eco-home*” or “eco-hous*” or “eco-friendly build*” or “ecological architect*” or “ecological build*” or “ecological hous*” or “energy efficient architect*” or “energy efficient build*” or “energy efficient construct*” or “energy efficient home*” or “energy efficient hous*” or “energy efficient struct*” or “energy saving architect*” or “energy saving build*” or “energy saving construct*” or “energy saving home*” or “energy saving hous*” or “energy saving struct*” or “green architect*” or “green build*” or “green construct*” or “green home*” or “low carbon architect*” or “low carbon build*” or “low carbon construct*” or “low carbon home*” or “low carbon hous*” or “low energy architect*” or “low energy build*” or “low energy construct*” or “low energy home*” or “low energy hous*” or “sustainable architect*” or “sustainable build*” or “sustainable construct*” or “sustainable home*” or “sustainable hous*” or “zero energy build*” or “zero energy home*” or “zero energy hous*” or “net zero energy build*” or “net zero energy home*” or “net zero energy hous*” or “zero-carbon build*” or “zero-carbon home*” or “zero-carbon hous*” or “carbon neutral build*” or “carbon neutral construct*” or “carbon neutral hous*” or “high performance architect*” or “high performance build*” or “high performance construct*” or “high performance home*” or “high performance hous*”)

Time span: 1998-2018。 Index: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI。

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Li, Y., Rong, Y., Ahmad, U.M. et al. A comprehensive review on green buildings research: bibliometric analysis during 1998–2018. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28 , 46196–46214 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12739-7

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REVIEW article

Sustainable high-rise buildings: toward resilient built environment.

• Department of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States

This article examines outstanding “sustainable” skyscrapers that received international recognition, including LEED certification. It identifies vital green features in each building and summarizes the prominent elements for informing future projects. Overall, this research is significant because, given the mega-scale of skyscrapers, any improvement in their design, engineering, and construction will have mega impacts and major savings (e.g., structural materials, potable water, energy, etc.). Therefore, the extracted design elements, principles, and recommendations from the reviewed case studies are substantial. Further, the article debates controversial design elements such as wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, glass skin, green roofs, aerodynamic forms, and mixed-use schemes. Finally, it discusses greenwashing and the impact of COVID-19 on sustainable design.

Introduction

As cities cope with rapid urban population growth and attempt to curb urban sprawl, policymakers, and decision-makers are increasingly interested in vertical urbanism. The United Nations estimates that by 2050 the urban population will increase by about 2.5 billion people, which translates to 80 million dwellers a year, 1.5 million new a week, or 220 thousand a day (The United Nations). Furthermore, it estimates that by 2100 the urban population will reach about 9 billion inhabitants, doubling today's urban population of 4.5 billion. Consequently, to accommodate the influx of urban population while reducing urban sprawl, we must engage the vertical dimension of cities ( Beedle et al., 2007 ; Al-Kodmany and Ali, 2013 ; Wood and Henry, 2015 ).

Indeed, employing high-rise buildings is not the only way to increase urban density. However, cities are embracing the tall building typology for additional reasons, including land prices, demographic change, globalization, urban regeneration, agglomeration, land preservation, infrastructure, transportation, international finance, and air right, among others ( Short, 2013 ; Binder, 2015 ; Kim and Lee, 2018 ; Abbood et al., 2021 ). Notably, we have seen in the last 20 years, or so an unprecedented, accelerated pace in constructing significant high-rises. In the previous two decades, the world added 12,979 tall buildings (100+ m) to the 7,804 buildings they previously built. Further, “cities have erected over 1,361 towers with heights that exceed 200 m, while they built only 284 before. Cities also constructed 150 supertalls (300+ m), while they constructed merely 24 supertalls previously. Further, cities recently completed three megatalls (600+ m); and obviously built none before” ( Al-Kodmany, 2018a , p. 31).

Climate change demands a new sustainable design that addresses serious challenges such as massive storms, earthquakes, and flooding. Urban planners have recently developed new models, for example, a “sponge city,” which advocates designing buildings and infrastructure that safely accommodate anticipated massive flooding. The “sponge city” model builds on the Green Infrastructure (GI) model that aims to improve water management systems and enhance the ecological wellbeing of urban habitats. Integrating green elements in buildings and their surrounding will surely help to absorb rainwater. Similarly, incorporating innovative engineering and architectural solutions helps capture and recycle rainwater, further reducing the likelihood of flooding ( Yeang, 2008 ; Wang et al., 2018 ).

Goals and Objectives

The prime goal of this research is to map out “green” design ideas that contribute to the sustainability of tall buildings. This research is significant because, given the mega scale of skyscrapers, any improvement in their design, engineering, and construction will have mega impacts and significant savings. Therefore, the extracted design elements, principles, and recommendations from the case studies examined in this article are substantial. For example, tall buildings require extensive structural materials ( Krummeck and MacLeod, 2016 ). Therefore, we can significantly reduce costs and carbon emissions by employing appropriate technologies and efficient structural systems. Likewise, tall buildings accommodate many tenants who consume enormous quantities of water. We can save valuable potable water by utilizing efficient water systems and gray and black water recycling systems through the full height of tall buildings. Collectively, this article informs the readers of innovative ideas and promising projects that support sustainable architecture, engineering, and urban planning ( Yeang, 1995 , 1996 , 2020 ).

Sustainability as a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework

Sustainability is a buzzword and a current policy, planning, and grant writing trend. Undoubtedly, the concept of urban sustainability continues to help guide and support architecture and urban developments ( Kim and Lee, 2018 ; Abbood et al., 2021 ). In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which details 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) and 169 Actionable Targets to be realized by 2030. In particular, Goal #11 refers to creating sustainable cities and communities. Further, the United Nations World Urban Forum (WUF), the world's premier conference on urban development, has embraced “sustainability” as an overarching theme for its agendas. The commitment to SDG's has been apparent since WUF's first meeting in 2002, titled “Sustainable Urbanization,” in Nairobi, Kenya, through the latest in 2020, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. In the same vein, in 2016, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) adopted the New Urban Agenda (translated to 33 languages), stressing sustainability. Like the United Nations focus on and interest in sustainability, other important organizations, such as the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Local Government for Sustainability (ICLEI), and Global Platform for Sustainable Cities (GPSC), have worked on and supported local and global sustainability projects, initiatives, and programs (United Nations) ( Short, 2013 ; Kim and Lee, 2018 ).

Likewise, the term “sustainability” frequently appears in academic literature and is discussed in professional conferences. In the United States, the American Planning Association (APA), the prime professional planning organization, continues to use the term “sustainability” in its National Planning Conference (NPC) and publications. In 2010, at the United Nations 5th WUF, the APA announced the creation of the Sustaining Places Initiative, which focuses on sustainability as a key to all urban planning activities. In recent years, the program has published several key reports, articles, and books that highlight this planning approach; see Sustaining Places: Best Practices for Comprehensive Plans by Short (2013) ; Binder (2015) ; Godschalk and Rouse (2015) .

This research views “sustainability” as an overarching theme that links ideas of “ecological,” “green,” “resilient,” and “smart,” where each feeds into the three pillars of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental. That is, “sustainability” can be viewed as a central concept due to its comprehensive framework represented in its three pillars (social, economic, and environmental) or the 3Ps (people, profit, and planet), where “people” refers to community wellbeing and equity; “profit” refers to economic vitality; and “planet” refers to the environment and resource conservation. These pillars or dimensions are also expressed by the 3Es (equality, economic, and ecology) or what is known as the triple bottom line TBL or 3BL. Sustainability seeks to balance these three dimensions according to short- and long-term goals and across geographic scales—from individual habitats to neighborhood, community, city, region, country, continent, and the planet ( Binder, 2015 ; Al-Kodmany, 2018a ).

Sustainability has emphasized the concept of endurance and long-term survival. As such, it augmented the idea of resilience. In turn, global warming and climate change have produced abnormal rates of flooding, droughts, storms, tidal surges, soil erosion, and sea-level rise, which collectively prompted resilience as paramount. As such, sustainable and resilient designs have merged and promoted emergency preparedness to reduce the harmful impacts on people, infrastructure, and institutions caused by unanticipated future natural disasters ( Krummeck and MacLeod, 2016 ).

Similarly, sustainability has always supported embracing technology to improve the performance of buildings, infrastructures, and overall quality of life. For example, it has advocated using technology to generate “green” energy and advanced rail mass systems over the private automobile. Integrating technology into the urban environment is meant to improve the three pillars of sustainability, including economic, social, and environmental.

As such, a plethora of innovative “smart” technologies (e.g., smart elevators, smart appliances, smart payment, smart infrastructure, smart grid, smart traffic management systems, and smart parking) intend to achieve greener, more sustainable, and resilient cities. For example, smart grids can enable the efficient handling, distribution, and delivery of electricity throughout the city. Smart meters can warn homeowners or businesses when they have leaks in their water systems. Smart buildings employ intelligent features that use energy efficiently while increasing user comfort by collecting and interpreting data related to power, security, occupancy, water, temperature, and humidity ( Yeang, 2020 ).

Overall, the sustainability concept has been developed to become comprehensive and inclusive over the past three decades. It helps us adapt our activities to the constraints and opportunities of the natural systems needed to support our lives. It also helps planning for balanced developments that make urban centers prosper and natural landscapes flourish as an integral component of a diverse economy and cultural heritage. Worldwide, sustainability efforts are growing because people—including city officials, planners, architects, and community members—can more easily see the links between environmental, economic, and social objectives and higher quality of life ( Yeang, 1995 , 1996 ).

Case Studies

Over the past decade or so, a wealth of creative green solutions have been developed through the design and construction of skyscrapers, providing valuable knowledge that will benefit the development of future towers ( Du et al., 2015 ; Oldfield, 2019 ). An in-depth evaluation would require building performance and operation data currently unavailable. In some cases, the data is simply not collected, and in others, the data is collected but not shared for liability reasons. Therefore, instead of focusing on evaluation, this paper elaborates on the sustainable design features employed in some of the world's most notable contemporary skyscrapers ( Wood, 2013 ; Al-Kodmany, 2015a , 2018b ). The following 12 case studies highlight vital green features of modern skyscrapers. They come mainly from three continents, including North America, China, and the Middle East.

Bank of America Tower

Bank of America is one of the world's major financial institutions. Bank of America Tower (also known as One Bryant Park) was designed by Cook + Fox Architects ( Abbood et al., 2021 ). The 336 m (1,200 ft) tall, 55-story BoA tower is proclaimed to be among the greenest skyscrapers in the U.S. It is the first commercial high-rise to earn LEED Platinum certification, the highest designation from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Table 1 highlights the building's green features.

Table 1 . Bank of America Tower: Key green features.

The Visionaire Tower

The Visionaire Tower is a 35-story building located in Battery Park City, NYC. Completed in 2008, the tower contains 251 condominium units. Notably, it was the first to receive the LEED Platinum from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in New York City and is considered one of the greenest residential condominiums in the U.S. Pelli Clarke Pelli served as the architect ( Al-Kodmany, 2018b ). Table 2 highlights the building's green features.

Table 2 . Key green features.

One World Trade Center

On September 11, 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center and several other buildings in Lower Manhattan were damaged or destroyed. Soon after the devastation, the ambitious reconstruction to replace and honor the World Trade Center began. The massive One World Trade Center on the northwest corner of the 6.5-ha (16-ac) site was completed in 2015. The radio antenna that tops the 123 m (400 ft) spire reaches a symbolic height of precisely 541 m (1,776 ft) high to honor the year of America's independence. The 105-floor 1 WTC is the tallest in North America ( Binder, 2015 ). The building was designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM). Table 3 highlights the building's green features.

Table 3 . One World Trade Center: Key green features.

The Tower at PNC Plaza

The 33-story, 167 m (554 ft) Tower at PNC Plaza is the new corporate headquarters for the PNC Financial Services Group, one of America's oldest financial institutions. Gensler led the tower's architectural design, and Buro Happold led the building's engineering in collaboration with the consulting firm Paladino & Co. The tower was completed in 2015 and received LEED Platinum certification ( Barkham et al., 2017 ). Table 4 highlights the building's green features.

Table 4 . The Tower at PNC Plaza: Key green features.

Salesforce Tower

The 326 m (1,070 ft) tall, iconic Transbay Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco, CA. Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the 80-story office tower is located adjacent to the San Francisco Transbay Transit Center (SFTTC), a multi-modal transportation hub. The building received LEED Gold certification ( Al-Kodmany, 2020 ). Table 5 highlights the building's green features.

Table 5 . Salesforce Tower: Key green features.

Devon Energy Center

The Devon Energy Center is the new headquarters of the independent oil and natural gas producer Devon Energy Corporation, located in the heart of Oklahoma City. The 50-story building was completed in 2012. Designed by New Haven-based architects Pickard Chilton, the Devon Energy building is among the largest LEED-NC Gold-certified buildings in the world ( Al-Kodmany, 2018b ). Table 6 highlights the building's green features.

Table 6 . Devon Energy Center: Key green features.

Manitoba Hydro Place

Manitoba Hydro is a major government-owned energy utility (electric and natural gas) in Manitoba, Canada. The complex consists of two 18-story twin office towers that sit on a stepped, three-story podium. Completed in 2009, it is the first in Canada to achieve LEED Platinum Certification from the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC), the highest certification available under the LEED program. The challenge was to design an energy-efficient building in a place that experiences extreme climates—temperatures fluctuating from −35°C to +34°C (−31°F to +95°F) over the year ( Oldfield, 2019 ). Table 7 highlights the building's green features.

Table 7 . Manitoba Hydro Place (MHP): Key green features.

EnCana Energy Company needed a significant building to consolidate its scattered staff and help revitalize Calgary's downtown, Alberta, Canada. The tower was named after the Bow River and forms the first phase of a master plan covering two city blocks on the east side of Centre Street, a central axis through downtown Calgary. The 58-story Bow office building rises to 238 m (779 ft) and is the tallest office tower in Calgary. The skyscraper is the headquarters for energy giants EnCana (TSX:ECA) and Cenovus (TSX:CVE), among other companies. The 238 m (781 ft) tower was designed by Foster and Partners and completed in 2012. The Bow has achieved LEED Gold certification ( Al-Kodmany and Ali, 2016 ). Table 8 highlights the building's green features.

Table 8 . The Bow: Key green features.

Shanghai Tower

The Shanghai Tower is the third tower in the trio of supertall buildings, including Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center, located in the heart of Shanghai's new Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone. Rising to a height of 632 m (2,073 ft), it is the tallest building in China. The 121-story tower offers a mix of functions, including offices, hotels, shops, restaurants, and the world's highest open-air observation deck at 562 m (1,844 ft). The tower has achieved LEED Platinum certification ( Al-Kodmany, 2015a ). Table 9 highlights the building's green features.

Table 9 . Shanghai Tower: Key green features.

Greenland Group Suzhou Center

At 358 m (1,175 ft), Greenland Group Suzhou Center (also known as Wujiang Greenland Tower) visually anchors the Wujiang waterfront of Suzhou City, China. The tower is part of a larger multi-block development, and Suzhou Center aims to function as the catalyst. The 78-floor tower accommodates a mixed-use program of hotels, serviced apartments, offices, and retail space. The building was completed in 2021 and aimed to achieve LEED-CS Silver status ( Kim and Lee, 2018 ). Table 10 highlights the building's green features.

Table 10 . Greenland Group Suzhou Center: Key green features.

Parkview Green FangCaoDi

Parkview Green FangCaoDi complex is located in the heart of Beijing's Central Business District (CBD). It is an iconic landmark and a potent symbol of creative design thinking that promotes attractive forms, efficient utilities, functionality, and enjoyable experiences. The project was designed by Integrated Design Projects, engineered by ARUP, developed by Hong Kong Parkview Group, and is owned by Beijing Chyau Fwu Properties Ltd. Parkview Green FangCaoDi has achieved LEED Platinum certification. The project was opened to the public in 2012 ( Wood and Salib, 2013 ; Al-Kodmany, 2015a ). Table 11 highlights the building's green features.

Table 11 . Parkview Green FangCaoDi: Key green features.

Al Bahar Towers

Al Bahar Towers, the new headquarters for the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, occupy a prominent site on the North Shore of Abu Dhabi Island in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Completed in 2012, the project comprises two 25-story, 150 m (490 ft) tall office towers. They are among the first buildings in the Gulf to receive the U.S. Green Building Council LEED Silver rating ( Al-Kodmany, 2014 ). Table 12 highlights the building's green features.

Table 12 . Al Bahar Towers: Key green features.

Vital Green Features

The reviewed case studies offer a wealth of green features. These are inspirational and form a foundation for architects interested in sustainable skyscrapers. Table 13 summarizes the prime green features based on LEED key topics and links them to sustainability. It gives the reader a quick overview and comparison among the different buildings.

Table 13 . Crucial green features based on LEED key topics and link to sustainability.

Who Pays and Who Gains?

It is often unclear who benefits from employing green features. Table 14 attempts to illustrate the complexity of the issue by differentiating among the various stakeholders.

Table 14 . Who pays and who gains by employing green features?

Making a Choice

The tables provided in this article help navigate “green” options. The decision will rely on multiple factors, including cost and benefit analysis. All the green features that suggest employing technology, the final decision will depend on the availability and affordability of technology. When technology needs to be shipped thousands of miles, environmental, and monetary costs could be high. As a result, some of the claimed green features may not be green and may render to be controversial. Here are some examples:

Wind Turbines

Due to the higher velocity of wind at higher altitudes, it would make sense to take advantage of greater heights of tall buildings by integrating wind turbines into them. Further, turbines produce power on-site, saving power transmission costs. As such, tall buildings have the potential to harness wind energy. However, only a handful of tall buildings employed wind turbines worldwide due to practical challenges (e.g., turbulence, small blade size, specialized maintenance, little return on investment, and accidents). For example, Bahrain World Trade Centre, which innovatively integrated wind turbines, reports that management has stopped the turbines as tenants complained about the noise generated by the turbines. Similarly, the power generated by wind turbines installed on the top of the Strata SE1 in London was too little—it can barely light the hallways of the building. Eventually, the turbines were turned off. Likewise, Pearl River Tower reports little benefits from the employed turbines. In the case of Hess (Discovery) Tower in Houston, turbines were never operated because one of the blades fell off the roof onto a pickup truck.

Photovoltaic Panels

Similar renewable energy means, such as photovoltaic panels, continue to be largely impractical. First, the roof area in a skyscraper is relatively small and is often preoccupied by mechanical and digital equipment and antenna. Second, other buildings could block facades of tall buildings. In places that feature long overcast days, solar harnessing is minimal. Further, the technology continues to be inefficient. Therefore, the return on investment is low, discouraging developers from pursuing this type of renewable energy.

Glass skin continues to be controversial. Glass allows in natural light, resulting in a significant saving on artificial lighting. However, Glass increases the demand for cooling and heating. Low-emission coating mitigates the problem. In any case, climatic conditions may influence the decision on the glass percentage. Some architects argue that overall Glass should not exceed 50% of the building. However, real estate experts argue that location to desirable views such as lakes and parks makes the Glass desirable.

Green Roofs

Again, the roof of a skyscraper is relatively tiny, and it is often preoccupied with mechanical and digital equipment. Further, wind's high velocity at higher altitudes may render the place uncomfortable. However, there have been some cases that feature “successful” rooftop parks. For example, the rooftop park in Marina Bay Sands bridges three tall buildings, creating a spacious entertaining space in the sky—it became the signature feature of the entire complex.

Aerodynamic Forms

Aerodynamic forms are meant to mitigate the impact of wind by deflecting its forces. By so doing, the required structural elements will be reduced, entailing significant cost savings. However, manipulating form should not result in unfunctional interior spaces. Further, we may need to overcome “vanity height” (i.e., reducing rather than boosting height for showing off). “A 1,500-foot (457-m) skyscraper must be fifty times stronger against the wind than a 200-foot (61-m) one ( Al-Kodmany, 2018b , p.71).” Tall buildings are tested in a tunnel wind laboratory to optimize their forms at the design stage. A famous example is Burj Khalifa; the architects optimized its final form in a wind tunnel.

Mixed-Use Towers

Recently, mixed-use tall buildings have been proliferating all around the world. As the name indicates, mixed-use towers offer spaces for multiple functions, including residential, office, hotel, retail, educational, restaurant, café, sky-park, and sky-garden functions. The CTBUH defines a mixed-use tower as a tall building that contains two or more functions, where each of the functions occupies at least 15% of the tower's total space. Car parks and mechanical plant space do not count as mixed-use functions—though incorporating them could be essential. A mixed-use tower could be more sustainable than a single-use tower for multiple reasons, namely economic uncertainty and fluctuating markets, commercial synergy that results from diverse functions, adaptive reuse, convenience, and smaller plates on upper floors. Indeed, in an unstable economy, a mixed-use building offers greater opportunities to secure investment in real estate development because the rental income comes from multiple sources. Second, various uses guarantee the presence of people and economic activities for longer hours—potentially around the clock—thereby providing convenience to local tenants and improving the perceived safety and security. Third, mixed-use towers have the potential to use resources and waste efficiently. For example, the water system can capture graywater from residential spaces (which generate a larger amount of graywater) and transfer the recovered water to the cooling system of office spaces where water consumption is high and potable water use is low. This type of system can drastically reduce the use of potable water (which is generally used in the cooling system) in office spaces, resulting in significant savings.

The above examples illustrate that choosing a green feature is not always straightforward. Likewise, assessing “greenness” could be controversial. For example, the Bank of America Tower in NYC employed green features, and upon completion, developers and owners claimed to be among the world's greenest skyscrapers. It explicitly uses the most efficient energy technologies, such as a 4.6-megawatt combined heat and power plant that runs on natural gas. The wasted heat created for electricity is recycled to heat and cool the building in winter and summer, respectively, thus reducing overall natural gas usage. However, the skyscraper is one of the city's highest energy users because it hosts large stock and bond traders who require intensive computing. Similarly, abusive behavior of tenants (e.g., keeping lights on when not needed, overusing water in the shower, etc.) could alter the expected results. As such, trade-off analysis will help decide on selecting green features.

Greenwashing

While sustainability is an important concept, we need to stress that greenwashing is prevalent. Cities' “green” agendas have been “hijacked” by industries that wish to take advantage of the new trend by converting sustainable missions into money-grubbing businesses. Industries propagate the notion that new technologies offer superior benefits. Mouzon reflects on this issue by stating: “Today, most discussions on sustainability focus on ‘gizmo green,' which is the proposition that we can achieve sustainability simply by using better equipment and better materials” ( Mouzon, 2010 , p. 42). Indeed, integrating “smart” technology and “green” machines into our daily life is essential; nevertheless, “this is only a small part of the whole equation. Focusing on gizmo green misses the big picture entirely,” according to Du et al. (2015 , p. 43). We need to question where the technology comes from. In the context of the United States, he argues that using Low-E Glass imported from China and selling organic produce from Chile do not necessarily contribute to making our cities more sustainable when we consider transportation and environmental implications. We need to pay attention to both the broader issues of sustainability and the smaller measures such as banning plastic bags, restricting lawn watering, and using renewable energy.

COVID-19 and Sustainable Skyscraper Design

Most of the examined buildings were conceived and constructed before COVID-19. However, the recent pandemic has stressed the sustainability mission of making our buildings healthier. For example, COVID-19 has reminded us of the importance of natural ventilation that helps reduce the spread of the virus. In the post-pandemic era, it will be easier to make the case to invest in intelligent systems that ensure a high-quality air supply. Likewise, it is likely to be easier to make a case for water filtering systems to fight situations where a virus can contaminate the water supply.

The pandemic also has reminded us of the importance of green and communal spaces within and around tall buildings, on and beyond the ground level, such as sky gardens, sky parks, green roofs, Phyto walls (modular wall system comprising containers of hydroponic plants), public parks, indoor gardens, plants, and open spaces to offer occupants accessibility to nature within tall buildings and combat adverse effects of high density. Architects and tenants will value outdoor elements such as terraces, courtyards, gardens, and balconies to ease access to natural ventilation, daylight, and fresh air.

Further, because of the pandemic, many people will likely favor natural elements such as green landscaping and community gardens to improve air quality and reduce carbon emissions resulting from transporting food. Similarly, the pandemic has taught us the importance of bringing natural light and sun rays into our buildings and public spaces to kill germs and improve our bodies' immune systems. Extra hygiene could be further emphasized in dense places (such as high-rise buildings) in every aspect and scale, such as elevators, stairways, hallways, corridors, door handles, and the like. For reinforcing indoor hygiene, many other innovations will take place. Spaces for exercise and meditation are likely to be emphasized in future offices. Therefore, we predict that a “value” shift is underway. As public health becomes a priority, the sustainability mission will become a priority ( Al-Kodmany, 2018d , e ).

Given the massive densification of the 21 st -century city, architects, engineers, and urban planners increasingly face the challenge of constructing taller buildings. This review paper examines prominent examples of “sustainable” skyscrapers of varying geographic locations, climates, and socio-cultural contexts. It summarizes the prime green features based on LEED key topics and links them to sustainability. The findings are inspirational and form a design foundation for building sustainable skyscrapers. They would help navigate “green” options while considering who pays and benefits from them. The discussions also elaborate on controversial issues.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: power consumption, renewable energy, aerodynamic forms, recycling systems, structural materials, greenwashing, COVID-19

Citation: Al-Kodmany K (2022) Sustainable High-Rise Buildings: Toward Resilient Built Environment. Front. Sustain. Cities 4:782007. doi: 10.3389/frsc.2022.782007

Received: 23 September 2021; Accepted: 23 March 2022; Published: 18 April 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Al-Kodmany. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Kheir Al-Kodmany, kheir@uic.edu

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Archnet-IJAR

ISSN : 2631-6862

Article publication date: 26 August 2020

Issue publication date: 23 June 2021

Excessive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO 2) undoubtedly lead to climate change, which directly affects both the natural and the built environment. Observing the impact of climate change on the construction industry, this paper examines sustainable architectural design as a tool to mitigate climate change.

Design/methodology/approach

To achieve the previous goal, the authors conduct a comprehensive documentary analysis of three types of sources: (1) scholarly articles in the fields of climate research, sustainable construction, green buildings and sustainable architecture; (2) contemporary global reports on climate change and its impact on the built environment and (3) practitioners' guides explaining practical architectural solutions to the climate crisis.

The systematic analysis provides three types of results: objectives, strategies and principles of sustainable architectural design aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change. On the one hand, the research results provide a solid basis for further conceptual research into architectural design responsive to the effects of changing climate. On the other hand, the detailed strategies and principles are relevant for urban designers and architects.

Originality/value

Among a range of literature in the field of climate change and its effects on the built environment, a particular value of the paper is in addressing a very local level, i.e. the level of individual building and its immediate surroundings. More specifically, this paper provides concrete design components that help reduce CO 2 emissions, finally decreasing the vulnerability index of urban systems.

• Climate change
• Built environment
• Construction industry
• Sustainable architecture
• Green building
• CO2 emission

Sijakovic, M. and Peric, A. (2021), "Sustainable architectural design: towards climate change mitigation", Archnet-IJAR , Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 385-400. https://doi.org/10.1108/ARCH-05-2020-0097

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Life-cycle performance modeling for sustainable and resilient structures under structural degradation: a systematic review.

1. Introduction

2. research and methods, 3. research analysis, 4. bibliography analysis, 5. life-cycle performance modeling, 5.1. degradation mechanisms, 5.2. intervention mechanisms, 5.3. performance indicators, 6. discussion, 6.1. degradation mechanisms, 6.2. intervention mechanisms, 6.3. performance indicators, 6.4. performance levels, 6.5. tools and methodologies, 7. conclusions.

• The content analysis shows that the life-cycle performance modeling of buildings and bridge infrastructure systems has received increased attention over the years and the research interest in the field is growing due to the increased vulnerability of the built environment against the degradation mechanisms.
• It was noted that most of the included articles focus on reliability performance indicators with progressive degradation mechanisms indicating reliability under aging structures being extensively investigated. Conversely, risk and resilience performance indicators are also explored but mostly for instantaneous degradation mechanisms. This could be due to the higher consideration of the low probability of failure and need to consider uncertainties in reliability assessment more frequently as opposed to risk or resilience performance indicators. Moreover, reliability is arguably an older concept than the risk or, more prominently, resilience in the engineering context.
• A review of life-cycle performance modeling was provided in terms of its components including degradation mechanisms, intervention mechanisms, life-cycle performance stages, and performance indicators. Then, a discussion on the included journal articles was provided in terms of the identified components of life-cycle performance modeling. This way of identifying individual components, mechanisms, and performance indicators is particularly useful for readers interested in understanding the life-cycle performance management of structure and infrastructure systems.
• Additionally, the adopted tools, techniques, and methodologies that were utilized for the performance management of buildings and bridges under degradation mechanisms during their life cycle were highlighted. The prominent methodologies include optimization, life-cycle assessments, stochastic models, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and decision-making tools, among others.

Author Contributions

Data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Anwar, G.A.; Akber, M.Z.; Ahmed, H.A.; Hussain, M.; Nawaz, M.; Anwar, J.; Chan, W.-K.; Lee, H.-H. Life-Cycle Performance Modeling for Sustainable and Resilient Structures under Structural Degradation: A Systematic Review. Buildings 2024 , 14 , 3053. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14103053

Anwar GA, Akber MZ, Ahmed HA, Hussain M, Nawaz M, Anwar J, Chan W-K, Lee H-H. Life-Cycle Performance Modeling for Sustainable and Resilient Structures under Structural Degradation: A Systematic Review. Buildings . 2024; 14(10):3053. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14103053

Anwar, Ghazanfar Ali, Muhammad Zeshan Akber, Hafiz Asfandyar Ahmed, Mudasir Hussain, Mehmood Nawaz, Jehanzaib Anwar, Wai-Kit Chan, and Hiu-Hung Lee. 2024. "Life-Cycle Performance Modeling for Sustainable and Resilient Structures under Structural Degradation: A Systematic Review" Buildings 14, no. 10: 3053. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14103053

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Urban planning, design and management approaches to building urban resilience: a rapid review of the evidence

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Urban planning, risk governance and resilience have become increasingly important pathways to promote and protect public health at the local level. While climate change, inadequately planned urbanization and environmental degradation have left many cities vulnerable to disasters; the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the links between health and urban environments, and the relevance of sustainable and resilient planning. As part of the Protecting environments and health by building urban resilience project led by the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health, we conducted a rapid review of the evidence on urban planning, design and management strategies for increasing preparedness and resilience at the local level. Drawing from six databases (2015–2021), we identified a total of 172 scientific articles. Specific local response strategies were identified for six hazard types and eight cross-cutting issues. Findings suggest that institutional innovation, improving early warning, or understanding risks and cascading effects, are important for all hazards, while urban greening and controlling urban sprawl have synergies and co-benefits across multiple hazard types. This compilation of evidence can support local administrations and communities in further integrating health protection considerations into mainstream urban planning and management and help prepare cities to increase hazard preparedness and become more resilient.

• Urban planning
• environment and health
• preparedness
• sustainable development
• evidence review

Climate change, rapid or inadequately planned urbanisation and environmental degradation have left many cities vulnerable to disasters. In addition, cities increasingly face local emergencies through industrial accidents and system failures, indicating the high degree of interdependencies, especially within large cities. Inadequate planning has thus been recognized as a relevant disaster risk factor, affecting urban hazards, exposure and level of vulnerability (UNDRR Citation 2017 ).

Disasters and local emergencies have a direct impact on population health, causing injuries, diseases, and mental and psychosocial outcomes. In addition, they may significantly affect the functionality of critical infrastructure, such as health-care facilities or water and energy supply, thereby further increasing existing health challenges due to lack of treatment and care services, with specific impacts for chronic and infectious diseases. Increasing local preparedness for health emergencies should therefore be considered a priority by national governments as well as local authorities (WHO Citation 2021 ). However, while the immediate impacts on health and well-being of disasters may be recognized, the academic literature about these impacts and the links between health, urban planning and disaster management has not been consolidated; evidence from the local level is especially lacking.

Cities need to understand what features and processes make them vulnerable to crises and environmental emergencies, and their associated health impacts. They also need to recognize the most effective actions to take to reduce risk, prepare and become resilient (WHO Citation 2020 ). Reflecting the global relevance of this challenge, various international commitments and agreements have highlighted the need to address disaster risk, emergency preparedness and resilience at urban scale. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (United Nations Citation 2015b ) stipulates four action priorities: understanding disaster risk, strengthening governance to manage it, investing in disaster reduction for resilience, and enhancing preparedness for better response – all priorities to protect lives, livelihods and health. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 on sustainable cities and communities (United Nations Citation 2015c ) requires increased efforts by cities to adopt and implement policies on disaster resilience, and to establish disaster risk-management schemes. The Paris Agreement (United Nations Citation 2015a ) established – alongside its focus on climate change mitigation – the first universal, legally binding global commitment on climate change adaptation to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability. The New Urban Agenda (United Nations Citation 2017 ) also seeks to ensure healthy, resilient and sustainable cities through disaster risk reduction and management.

Much can be done at the city level by local authorities, planners and managers to translate these global agendas into local action, using urban planning and design to reduce risks and vulnerabilities and build resilience – ultimately resulting in the protection of health and well-being (WHO Citation 2022 ). While multilateral institutions have provided frameworks and guidelines to assist governments and decision-makers, there is a pressing need to localise global commitments through concrete strategies and actions. The scientific literature on this, however, is still limited. Recent reviews have focused on single hazard types or events (e.g. on flooding events (Bertilsson et al . Citation 2019 ); or related to the COVID-19 pandemic (Sharifi and Reza Khavarian-Garmsir Citation 2020 ), or focused on certain types of solutions (e.g. nature-based solutions (Bush and Doyon Citation 2019 ). One recent review addressed the (still understudied) relationship between urban form and urban resilience. From a more conceptual standpoint, literature on urban resilience has reflected on the concept itself (Sara et al . Citation 2016 ) and provided conceptual frameworks (Sharifi and Yamagata Citation 2014 ) and narratives on how to integrate ‘resilience thinking’ in policy (Béné et al . Citation 2018 ) and urban planning (Sharifi and Yoshiki Citation 2018 ).

Despite a growing interest in integrating ‘urban resilience’ in cities’ urban planning and policy, there is still a need for a broader, more holistic and multi faceted approach that includes both spatial/physical infrastructure and governance issues related to urban planning, design and management jointly; but at the same time that goes beyond narratives and theoretical frameworks or principles, by identifying concrete strategies and actions relevant to multiple hazard types. As part of the Protecting environments and health by building urban resilience project, Footnote 1 this review aims at identifying strategies in the literature to help cities bridge the gap between global agendas and local action, set priorities, and tackle the challenges of preparing for and preventing the likelihood and severity of impacts of local extreme events. Through a broad and inclusive approach, it deals with the multiple challenges around building urban resilience and aims to identify feasible interventions for improving preparedness and resilience at the local level through urban planning, design and management actions.

A rapid review of recent literature on urban planning, design, management and preparedness related to disasters was undertaken between June and November 2021 in order to answer the following question: What urban planning, design and management strategies and actions can cities implement to make them more resilient to hazards and emergencies, and also more sustainable and healthy?

The decision for conducting a rapid review was based on the broadness of the question and the fact that ‘urban resilience’ is a growing and still not consolidated topic. Conducting a rapid review was also influenced by the project’s time and resource constraints, as detailed in the limitations of the study (Section Limitations of the study).

The entire process of this rapid review was undertaken by a team of two researchers and followed the steps described in the Rapid Review Guidebook (Dobbins Citation 2017 ). However, a larger team of researchers and experts in epidemiology, environmental sciences and public health was involved in the definition of the question and the database search strategy, as well as in the final phases of identifying applicability and transferability and in the writing of the report. The report was then reviewed by experts in the area of disaster risk reduction to ensure a correct use of terminology and receive feedback on the most relevant and effective way to present the findings.

Inclusion criteria

Documents included were scholarly (peer-reviewed) journal articles for primary searches involving studies in humans. All types of study design were included: scoping reviews; systematic reviews; meta-analyses; and ecological, prospective, cross-sectional, case-control and intervention studies. For secondary searches (using Google Scholar), book chapters and/or conference papers were included if considered relevant. In addition to original research papers, the review also considered papers that reviewed and summarised original research. The papers were in English, although some in Spanish were included if considered relevant. Global literature was searched, but the selection was made for content applicable to the cities in the WHO European Region.

The review included general planning approaches, concepts and frameworks on how to prepare through urban design, planning and management. It was restricted to publications from the years 2015–2021 in order to reflect the most recent urban planning and management concepts and to limit the amount of material to be assessed within the available time. The year 2015 marks the adoption of various global agreements such as the Paris Agreement, the 2030 Agenda and associated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It was also the year of publication of key guidelines related to the topic of study, namely the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Habitat III New Urban Agenda.

Search strategy

Table 1. keywords selected for the primary literature search..

The combination presented in Table 1 resulted in the most relevant titles within a manageable quantity of search results. Several other keyword combinations (including terms such as ‘health’, ‘well-being’, ‘mortality’ or ‘disease’ in the outcome category) were tested in preliminary searches, but these added a large number of papers specific to health (systems and impacts) rather than to city/urban events or to urban planning or preparedness. Other terms such as ‘exposure’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘risk’ and ‘transformation’ were excluded from the set due to the large number of nonspecific or irrelevant results obtained. The term ‘COVID*’ was also intentionally excluded from the primary search terms as it added a large number of unrelated articles.

Table 2. Primary search strategy databases.

After advanced searches in all databases selected for the primary search, an initial screening of papers was carried out based on the information available in the title and abstract, following the inclusion criteria. Discussion and agreement via consensus between two independent researchers resolved cases of doubt. Secondary searches on COVID-19 and specific case studies, using Google Scholar, were added to the final 172 papers included for full-text review. During the full text review, some additional references were found and included when considered relevant and fitting with the inclusion criteria.

Data extraction

Data extraction and critical appraisal was carried out by a team of two researchers. Extracted information included: title, author(s), year of publication, type of hazard focused on (if applicable), region/country/city referred to (if applicable), type of publication (study design), number and type of studies included (in the case of reviews), population studied, intervention(s) implemented/measured, and a summary of aims and results.

Figure 1. Literature search strategy and outcome.

Table 3. Results of the literature review by type of event.

No papers were found on cold extremes, food security, or on forest fires related to heatwaves.

In terms of geographical location, 79 articles (46%) were general or no location was indicated, while 93 (54%) were based on specific locations or case studies. Within the latter group, 44 articles referred to (or were based on) countries in the WHO European Regional, while 37 articles were from countries outside the WHO European Region (but were considered relevant and applicable to cities in the WHO European Region and therefore included in the review).

Results by hazard type

Table 4. summary of urban management and planning strategies by hazard type., results by cross-cutting issues.

Redundancies in terms of relevance of strategies and their applicability to more than one hazard type were detected through the analysis of the material by single hazard type. In addition to this, a significant number of the papers reviewed mentioned the importance of establishing multihazard thinking and methods, and of considering cascading effects (especially the most recent articles), even when the main focus of the paper was on one specific hazard.

Figure 2. An urban-scape with the eight cross-cutting elements identified in the review.

Climate-change mitigation and adaptation

Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather extremes in every region across the globe (IPCC Citation 2021 ) and over 90% of cities worldwide are facing significant climate risks (CDP Worldwide Citation 2021 ). Recently, the focus of urban management and planning has broadened from mitigation (mainly of GHG emissions) to adaptation planning (Sara and Woodruff Citation 2020 ). A review of climate-change action plans in Europe found, however, that mitigation is still more extensively considered (Grafakos et al . Citation 2020 ). Another study showed that local governments tend only to have a mitigation, adaptation or joint plan in large cities (with over 500.000 inhabitants) – especially those in central and northern Europe (Reckien et al . Citation 2018 ); and city size and wealth are considered predictors of whether they will plan for climate change (Sara and Woodruff Citation 2020 ). More developed cities could also have greater knowledge capacity and resources (Patterson Citation 2021 ). Compared to megacities, medium-sized cities have received less attention in the context of climate risk management. However, growing medium-sized cities have an opportunity to integrate adaptation to climate change into their ongoing development process (Birkmann et al . Citation 2021 ).

Strategic adaptation actions can be carried out through environmental management, asset procurement and public finance mechanisms; cooperating with civil society organisations to improve equity, awareness and knowledge transfer; and engaging with the creative potential of residents through cross-sectoral tools and experimentation with different participatory processes (Chu et al . Citation 2017 ). These strategies, however, require institutional innovation and usually involve changes in underlying rules-in-use (Patterson and Huitema Citation 2019 ).

The literature reviewed also suggests that protection of the city can no longer be considered only a function of public organisations. Private and non-profit organisations, as well as households, have significant roles to play (Comfort Citation 2006 , Wamsler Citation 2016 ). Creating conditions that foster autonomous adaptation at the household level does, however, require a distributed risk governance system and city – citizen collaboration, where the citizen can play an important part in assessing and managing environmental risks to increase resilience (Göpfert et al . Citation 2019 ). Social mobilisation initiatives – from government-led planning processes to neighbourhood-scale grass roots initiatives – can also lower perceived barriers to sustainable climate solutions and motivate action through engagement, learning and hands-on involvement (Lin et al . Citation 2021 ). City-to-city learning is another pathway towards climate-change adaptation (for example, through city networks), and emphasising the importance of local policy development when facing the challenges of climate change (Goh Citation 2019 , Axelsson et al . Citation 2021 ).

A number of barriers, trade-offs and unforeseen consequences of climate-change adaptation actions are also identified. For instance, several studies agree that to face the effects of climate change, the sector-minded, single-issue approaches typical of municipalities organised according to territorial jurisdictions need to be overcome (Bowen and Ebi Citation 2015 , Chu et al . Citation 2017 , Göpfert et al . Citation 2019 , Grafakos et al . Citation 2020 , Sharifi Citation 2021 ). Instead, the cross-sectoral nature of both risks and related responses needs to be emphasised. For instance, green spaces, roads, parks, water systems, heat management and urban ecology are all important factors in rainfall management, but these issues often extend outside any one city government department (Axelsson et al . Citation 2021 ). In addition, the search for co-benefits, or ‘win – win’ solutions that connect adaptation goals with general development needs (such as environmental protection, poverty reduction and infrastructure and economic growth) can support the development of shared visions of the future for strategic urbanism interventions to be successful (Chu et al . Citation 2017 ).

Table 5. Summary of challenges and local responses related to climate-change mitigation and adaptation.

Risk perception, behaviour change and personal preparedness.

Personal preparedness may reduce the impacts of emergencies (Silva and Pedro Costa Citation 2018 ), while risk perception can be significantly positive in predicting attitude and behavioural intention to respond to certain issues (Zhu et al . Citation 2020 ). In this regard, local governments and organisations have a key role in spreading information concerning the harmful effects of certain risks.

Dominianni et al . ( Citation 2018 ) highlighted the need to increase power outage awareness (including power outage notification programmes) and preparedness among at-risk people. Born et al . ( Citation 2011 ) suggest that disaster preparedness could be enhanced with more robust disaster education for civilians and better communication between administrations and civilians, as well as other initiatives such as creation and maintenance of a database of pre-credentialed, pre-certified medical specialists. Improved insurance coverage at the household level is another key aspect identified in the literature, as it can help homeowners rebuild and recover at a faster pace. However, studies in the United States of America focusing on floods (Diana et al . Citation 2019 ) and hurricanes (Kousky Citation 2017 ) found that overall levels of insurance coverage are low; and while recent disaster experiences might increase net insurance purchases, this effect tends to fade away fairly quickly.

Table 6. Summary of challenges and local responses related to risk perception, behaviour change and personal preparedness.

Risk analysis and assessment tools.

Preventing and/or mitigating the effects of hazards strongly depends on the availability of reliable information and predictions (however much uncertainty remains), for which risk analysis and assessment tools are crucial and rapidly developing. This review found multiple proposals of approaches, methodologies and tools for risk analysis and assessment, most of which use GIS tools for mapping and visualisation. Some seek to assess the probability of multiple hazards taking place, mapping susceptibility to risks (Pourghasemi et al . Citation 2020 ) and, in some cases, reaching preliminary quantification of the potential effects on an urban environment (Almeida et al . Citation 2020 ).

Hazard-specific tools include a model to aid the design of fire risk mitigation strategies (Ferreira et al . Citation 2016 ) and a large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment method related to emergency planning – considering inaccessible urban areas, isolated people and possible evacuation routes (Anglade et al . Citation 2020 ). Specific to itineraries and evacuation routes, other methodologies address the difficulty of reaching affected areas because of obstructions on road infrastructure – mainly because of collapses (Francini et al . Citation 2018 ) – or disruption of the roadway network due to natural hazards, identifying critical links and vulnerabilities (Mera and Balijepalli Citation 2020 ). Several methodologies identified in the review address flood hazards in cities (Li et al . Citation 2016 , Kourgialas and Karatzas Citation 2017 ).

Table 7. Summary of challenges and local responses related to risk analysis and assessment tools.

Geographical location and exposure to hazards.

A city’s location often determines its exposure to certain types of hazards. The literature generally identifies cities in coastal and river floodplains as those most exposed to the effects of climate change and associated emergencies. Much less material was found on inland and dry cities, while none reported on landslides or vulnerable seismic areas.

Although, in terms of urban heat, coastal urban areas may benefit from cooler air due to seabreeze (Imran et al . Citation 2019 , Vahmani et al . Citation 2019 ), these areas are also becoming increasingly vulnerable to flooding events. In fact, population density in flood-prone coastal zones and megacities is expected to grow by 25% by 2050 (Huang-Lachmann and Lovett Citation 2016 ). Long, Cornut & Kolb ( Citation 2020 ) identified two main (and conceptually opposed) strategies for adapting to coastal risks: holding the coastal line through hard constructions such as seawalls or ripraps; and managed retreat of activities and populations to a part of the territory not exposed to hazards.

The ‘giving water more space’ approach is also clearly reflected in policy reframing in the (Kingdom of the) Netherlands since the 2000s (although it is a strategy that could be applicable to inland cities too). While Dutch tradition is premised on building dikes to withstand high river discharges, the expected extreme future weather events have led to new planning strategies of giving land back to the water – such as the Room for the river strategy in Rotterdam (Lu and Stead Citation 2013 ). These have further evolved into innovative adaptation plans such as the ‘water city’ or ‘floating city’ concept, where floating housing is favoured in order to meet the increasing demand for residential areas in the city (Huang-Lachmann and Lovett Citation 2016 ).

Although inland locations have received less attention in the literature, Cerra ( Citation 2016 ) identifies a number of site-planning and design practices for inland locations that possess climate-adaptive potential, including floodplain storage, low-impact developments, resilient planting designs, use of vegetation and shading, or multimodal mobility, among others.

Table 8. Summary of challenges and local responses related to cities’ geographical location.

Urban form/models.

The most specific references to the urban form in relation to vulnerability to disasters in the material analysed focus on the issue of density. For instance, from a mitigation perspective, a literature review (Sharifi Citation 2021 ) found many studies demonstrating that compact urban development featuring appropriate levels of density, coupled with land-use mix and improved accessibility and connectivity, contributes to mitigation through promoting active and public transportation, and reducing energy needs for cooling and heating of buildings. Other studies focusing on the UHI effect and its potential to exacerbate the effects of heatwaves (and lead to peak use of air-conditioning) could seem to differ, however (Xu et al . Citation 2019 ).

Compact urban development reduces demand for land, thereby enabling avoidance of risk-prone areas. Compactness also entails less infrastructure development than in the case of dispersed forms, allowing better maintenance in general. While this could also apply in terms of speed and efficiency for emergency teams dealing with high-density, mixed-use and well connected areas (Sharifi Citation 2021 ), other studies focusing on fire risk or impacts of earthquakes highlighted potential challenges specific to dense urban areas, such as difficulty accessing victims in high-rise buildings and blocking of emergency routes and narrow evacuation roads (Ferreira et al . Citation 2016 , Nasrollahi and Behnam Citation 2018 , Anglade et al . Citation 2020 ). This may be especially true in the case of older, more deteriorated urban areas, where premises are small and densely populated, and buildings are built with low-quality materials and/or have deteriorated over time (Soleimani and Poorzahedy Citation 2021 ).

From a flood-risk perspective, concentrated growth (and a commitment to managing urban sprawl and the rural environment) seems to fit nicely within land-use strategies for coastal and fluvial flooding protection (Axelsson et al . Citation 2021 ). And although temperature extremes (and the UHI effect) could provide an argument against dense urban living due to increased building density and the obstruction of wind corridors (Francesch-Huidobro et al . Citation 2017 ), proper design of air flows and wind paths -usually through low/medium-rise buildings and linear parks (Capolongo et al . Citation 2018 )- can favour the formation of cooling breezes (Gunawardena et al . Citation 2017 ). In fact, lower population densities in general do not necessarily solve the problem of excess heat, as much of the increased land usage in dispersed urban developments is likely to be greenfield land, such as greenbelts and other peripheral green areas (Larsen Citation 2015 , Gunawardena et al . Citation 2017 ).

Table 9. Summary of challenges and local responses related to urban form/models.

From a heat perspective, passive-cooling design strategies applied to buildings and their surroundings – such as increasing albedo through cool roofs and pavements, shading, orientation and natural ventilation – contribute to mitigation as well as to adaptation, providing cooling benefits and reducing cooling energy demand (Sharifi Citation 2021 ). Biophilic design also makes density more appealing, providing extra habitat opportunities when tall buildings are landscaped, and making urban environments more aesthetically appealing (Newman Citation 2020 ).

Retrofitting increases occupants’ capacity to cope with heatwaves (and be less dependent on air-conditioning) (Hatvani-Kovacs et al . Citation 2018 ), and in addition to structural property-level flood resilience measures (Depietri and McPhearson Citation 2017 ), outdoor strategies such as site selection, layout and design of parking lots, and surrounding landscape design (integrating climate-sensitive strategies) are relevant flood management strategies (Houghton and Castillo-Salgado Citation 2017 ).

From an earthquake and fire risk perspective, designing or retrofitting disaster-resistant buildings should be included in the city design process, considering both potential earthquake damage and its effect on fire resistance (Anglade et al . Citation 2020 ). This is especially important in old city centres, where fire risk tends to increase (Ferreira et al . Citation 2016 ).

Table 10. Summary of challenges and local responses related to buildings.

Transportation.

Few articles selected for this review focused on transportation planning and its role in making cities more resilient to emergencies or disasters. The transportation network was often referred to in the literature as a critical infrastructure that may be affected by several types of hazards (Garschagen and Sandholz Citation 2018 , Hatvani-Kovacs et al . Citation 2018 , Diana et al . Citation 2019 ). It was also addressed in terms of street width and routes in case of earthquakes or fires, highlighting the vulnerability of older urban centres; and several articles provided tools to identify the most efficient links and itineraries in case of emergency (Nasrollahi and Behnam Citation 2018 , Armaghan and Yaghoobi Pazani Citation 2019 ).

Public transportation infrastructure is generally considered relatively robust against adverse events and more effective for disaster absorption than private vehicle use, as it can facilitate better emergency access and quicker and easier evacuation (Sharifi Citation 2021 ). Houghton and Castillo-Salgado ( Citation 2017 ), in a literature review on resilience to urban flooding, highlighted the link between flooding vulnerability and access to transportation to evacuate exposed/at-risk areas before, during and after flooding events. Promotion of transit-oriented development is also mentioned in the literature as a means to reduce traffic congestion, pollution, and other unwanted outcomes of the extensive automobile use in large metropolitan areas (such as low-income city periphery developments) (Newman Citation 2020 , Soleimani and Poorzahedy Citation 2021 ).

Table 11. Summary of challenges and local responses related to transportation.

Green infrastructure and nature-based solutions.

Nature-based solutions (NBSs) are being increasingly implemented in urban planning to deliver multiple health benefits and reduce climate risks (Andersson et al . Citation 2017 ; EEA Citation 2021 ). Environmentally, NBSs may build urban resilience through heat mitigation, rainfall retention and runoff reduction, wind shielding and sustenance of ecosystem health via biodiversity conservation (Faivre et al . Citation 2017 , Mabon Citation 2019 , Axelsson et al . Citation 2021 ). For instance, wetlands contribute to water purification and flood attenuation, while urban forests and street trees can provide refuge from heat and ameliorate the worst impacts of coastal and surface flooding (Frantzeskaki et al . Citation 2019 ). NBSs (and urban greening strategies in general) can help boost biodiversity in urban areas; for example, by de-paving unnecessary paved areas, or using green roofs to provide predator-free micro-habitats for birds (Rastandeh and Jarchow Citation 2020 ). Open green spaces can also serve as safe evacuation shelters in the event of an earthquake (Xu et al . Citation 2019 ).

At the building scale, biophilic architecture strategies such as green walls, green roofs and green balconies can help reduce the temperature in and around the buildings and promote carbon sequestration within the fabric of the city (Newman Citation 2020 ), as well as potentially improve air quality and reduce noise pollution (though these benefits were not well addressed in the literature). At the landscape scale, green infrastructure encompasses various land uses including forests, woodlands, moorlands, agricultural land and urban green spaces such as parks, rivers and lakes. It is also capable of being scaled from individual projects to landscape initiatives, giving it great flexibility in the policy framework (Axelsson et al . Citation 2021 ).

From a disaster risk reduction perspective, there is strong evidence that coastal ecosystems reduce wave energy and can also reduce inland flooding depths during storm surge events by providing resistance to the flow of water (Moore et al . Citation 2016 , Narayan et al . Citation 2017 ). Interestingly, NBSs have also shown potential for improved resilience and social cohesion in post-disaster settings, through actions such as tree planting, establishing or improving parks and open spaces (Furuta and Shimatani Citation 2018 , Mabon Citation 2019 ). Urban agriculture also offers an opportunity for social interaction, in addition to adaptation and mitigation co-benefits such as reducing the need for energy-intensive food transportation, improving soil carbon sequestration capacity through promoting sustainable agriculture, improving microclimatic conditions and facilitating transition towards low-carbon, plant-based and healthy diets (Gondhalekar and Ramsauer Citation 2017 , Sharifi Citation 2021 ).

From a thermal-sensitive strategy perspective, increasing the proportion of green spaces and higher albedo materials in urban areas has the potential to mitigate the UHI effect in cities (Maggiotto et al . Citation 2021 ). A cool surface material conducts less heat into its interior, stores less heat in its volume, and either reflects or (in the case of permeable materials) has a high level of embodied moisture to be evaporated or infiltrated into the soil (Hatvani-Kovacs et al . Citation 2018 ). For instance, green roofs and cool roofs are effective design strategies to decrease the temperature in urban environments (and thus mitigate the UHI effect) because of the substantial area covered by rooftops within cities (Imran et al . Citation 2019 , Vahmani et al . Citation 2019 ). Green walls provide shading on otherwise exposed surfaces and are able to protect the building wall from overheating, lowering both indoor air and ambient air temperatures. These effects can increase thermal comfort for citizens and reduce the energy demand for cooling. However, local climate (along with season and orientation) should be considered in order to integrate the most suitable structure and plant species to avoid increase in heating needs (Imran et al . Citation 2019 ) or wind speed reduction and ventilation impediments (Koch et al . Citation 2020 ). Many NBSs also entail increased water demand, which may be problematic in dry cities experiencing water scarcity (Frumkin et al . Citation 2020 ). The resilience of urban vegetation must therefore be planned under alternative future climate-change scenarios to ensure that the benefits can continue to be delivered (Lin et al . Citation 2021 ).

Very few studies explored the effects of combined strategies. One study using a multistrategies model suggested that combinations of four thermal-sensitive strategies (tree planting, grass planting, albedo reduction of building walls and albedo reduction of sidewalks) can provide synergistic benefits (Koch et al . Citation 2020 ). A study of two neighbourhoods in Toronto, Canada, during extreme heat events found that, according to a predicted energy budget model, ‘cooling’ design strategies (addition of deciduous trees, maximising shading of the parking lot, increasing albedo in pavements by replacing darker asphalt with lighter concrete and replacement of roofing material with either green roof or light coloured material with high albedo) could significantly reduce the energy overload on people (Graham et al . Citation 2017 ).

Table 12. Summary of challenges and local responses related to green infrastructure and NBSs.

This review, by identifying concrete urban planning, design and management interventions for improving preparedness and resilience, contributes to consolidating the knowledge on urban resilience and informs localisation efforts. The following subsections discuss (i) the relevance of the findings to seek synergies and co-benefits among strategies and actions; (ii) the importance of adopting an all-hazards multi-risk approach (versus single-hazard approaches); (iii) the links between the findings and international reports, agreements and agendas; and (iv) the limitations of the study.

Seeking synergies and co-benefits

Many cities are confronted with multiple hazards – sometimes with concurring, compounding or cascading effects. Footnote 3 Possible silos do not take into account win – wins (such as collecting rainwater both for stormwater management and to mitigate dry periods) or consider maladaptive consequences (such as a solution like wetlands, which reduce flood risk but can also be habitats of vector-borne diseases). This poses the challenge of moving from a hazard-by-hazard approach to an all-hazards and multirisk approach in prevention, planning and development.

Much of the literature found for this review focused on particular hazards (approximately 60%, in addition to 30% focused solely on climate change-related hazards). The presence of such a high volume of hazard-specific articles might have been influenced by the search method, as some of the search terms selected referred to specific hazards – for instance, fire, flood, storm, earthquake, heatwave, power outage and pandemic – but literature investigating a single hazard type is common (especially case studies and lessons learned from past disaster experience, which was a topic of particular interest). Nevertheless, a significant number of the papers reviewed (especially the most recent) mentioned the importance of establishing multihazard thinking and methods (Feng and Xiang-Yang Citation 2018 , Pourghasemi et al . Citation 2020 , Butsch et al . Citation 2023 ), and of considering cascading effects, even if the main focus of the paper was on a specific hazard (Tang et al . Citation 2019 , Nishant et al . Citation 2020 , Almeida et al . Citation 2020 ).

Analysis of the findings reveals how multiple strategies are important for all hazards, while others have synergies and co-benefits across several hazard types. For instance, the hazard-specific findings showed redundancies especially in those strategies/actions related to governance (e.g. institutional innovation, breaking down silos) and communication (e.g. transparency and public participation). Interestingly, in addition to nature-based solutions (e.g. Raymond et al . Citation 2017 , Schubert et al . Citation 2017 , Mabon Citation 2019 , Monteiro and Carlos Ferreira Citation 2020 ), actions related to transportation planning, such as identifying the most critical links and efficient itineraries and promoting public transportation infrastructure (including cycling lanes) was also found to have synergies and co-benefits across several hazard types (Houghton and Castillo-Salgado Citation 2017 , Di Ludovico and Rizzi Citation 2019 , Francini et al . Citation 2018 , Garschagen and Sandholz Citation 2018 , Nasrollahi and Behnam Citation 2018 , Armaghan and Yaghoobi Pazani Citation 2019 , Mera and Balijepalli Citation 2020 , Soleimani and Poorzahedy Citation 2021 ).

Table 13. Summary of issues, challenges and strategies for improving resilience, with links to urban management and planning dimensions, and relevance for hazards.

Towards an all-hazards, multirisk approach.

Health should be thought of not just as an outcome, but also as an essential input into the process of building resilience (UN-Habitat and WHO Citation 2020 ); and local actors are in the best position to activate such change through urban planning, design and management strategies. This rapid review examines a wide array of strategies to respond to the challenges raised by different types of hazards. It identifies synergies and co-benefits of these strategies across multiple hazard types, and draws links to urban management and planning dimensions such as institutional capacity, community involvement, mobility, built infrastructure, or plans and regulations.

Findings show that multiple local-level strategies are important for all hazards. Examples of these are institutional innovation, improving early warning systems, raising awareness and understanding risks and cascading effects. Other strategies show synergies and co-benefits across multiple hazard types, as in the case of promoting compact urban models and controlling urban sprawl, or by protecting and promoting an equitable distribution of green infrastructure and NBSs. Thus, individual and sectoral urban planning solutions are probably not the best method to achieve healthier and more resilient cities. Urban strategies (even hazard-specific ones) must be integrated to enable structural or systemic transformation, based on an all-hazards and multirisk approach (United Nations Citation 2015b ), ensuring that unforeseen consequences are minimised and that the benefits derived are multidimensional.

Most strategies and actions identified in this review are particularly relevant or aimed at public local government action (for example, in the case of institutional innovation, communication, transparency, or transportation planning). However, many other strategies identified call for involvement from the private sector, NGOs, the research community, or citizens in general. In fact, the literature review highlighted the significant role that private organisations and households play in successful implementation of resilience actions – particularly in the case of climate change-related projects (Huang-Lachmann and Lovett Citation 2016 , Klein et al . Citation 2018 , Hatvani-Kovacs et al . Citation 2018 , Soleimani and Poorzahedy Citation 2021 , Axelsson et al . Citation 2021 ).

Relationship of review findings to international reports, agreements and agendas

Few papers (19%) included in the review contained references to international framework documents such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (United Nations Citation 2015b ), the SDGs (United Nations Citation 2015c ) or the Paris Agreement (United Nations Citation 2015a ). International reports (e.g. (ICLEI Citation 2019 )) highlight the importance of local action, and note that implementation of global goals should be adapted to the specificities and needs of each individual urban space and its communities. This can be overwhelming for cities, which often operate within limited capacities and resources.

Implementation barriers that came up in the literature review mainly focused on climate-change adaptation, noting the difficulty of managing hazards of a cross-sectoral nature with a sector-minded, single-issue approach (hence the need for institutional innovation and improved cross-sectoral and cross-level collaboration), and the lack of defined roles and responsibilities at the local level (Bowen and Ebi Citation 2015 , Chu et al . Citation 2017 , Göpfert et al . Citation 2019 , Grafakos et al . Citation 2020 , Sharifi Citation 2021 ). The literature reviewed also touched on the difficulty of collecting and accessing locally-relevant disaggregated data to inform decision-making processes and better target vulnerable groups (Allam and Jones Citation 2020 , Birkmann et al . Citation 2021 ). This suggests that national-level blanket approaches will not be effective, nor will they achieve the desired outcomes without risk assessment at the local level based on relevant hazard exposure, vulnerabilities and capacity information (ICLEI Citation 2019 , UNDRR Citation 2019 ).

Significant advancements are needed at the city level to build urban resilience to multiple hazards, and at the same time create healthier and more sustainable urban environments, in line with global agendas such as those referenced here. The compilation of strategies and actions derived from this study could contribute to these efforts; for instance, to reducing the gap or lag that remains between climate-change planning and implementation in Europe, particularly in smaller cities and towns (European Environment Agency Citation 2020 , UNEPDU Citation 2021 ).

Limitations of the study

This study has several limitations that should be noted. Overall, being a rapid review that addresses a broad question with a short timeline for evidence synthesis, it is intended to provide a general overview of available strategies and actions to build resilience through urban planning, design and management. It therefore constitutes a first piece of work aimed at consolidating knowledge and informing localisation efforts, that more detailed reviews could build on in order to, for example, assess the effectiveness of each strategy through quantification of health outcomes.

The focus of the review is on cities, as most population lives in urban settings, and infrastructure connections and overall density make resilience and preparedness issues more relevant due to cascading effects and dependency on basic supply systems. This does not necessarily exclude smaller or more rural municipalities, however some strategies and actions, as well as challenges and barriers identified in the literature, could be considered particularly relevant and applicable to larger cities. In addition to this, limiting the eligibility criteria to content applicable to the cities in the WHO European Region could have invisibilized other potentially relevant approaches, particularly from the Global South.

In terms of hazard types covered in the review, no papers were found on cold extremes, food security, or on forest fires related to heatwaves. The lack of identified papers on forest fires may be related with the fact that these fires tend to be located outside cities. Thus, although they threaten cities, they may not be a priority issue for urban planning. In the case of cold extremes or food security, the scarcity of results might be more related to the final selection of keywords for the searches.

Cities can contribute a lot to health protection and wellbeing through urban resilience strategies and action. This is reflected by recent resilience guides and frameworks (WHO Citation 2021 , Citation 2022 ), which highlight the key role of cities and local authorities in preventing, preparing for, and responding to environment and health emergencies.

This compilation of evidence is aligned with such global efforts in an aim to support local administrations and communities in further integrating health protection considerations into mainstream urban planning and management, and preparedness and response to hazards; particularly through multihazard thinking and methods. By learning about a wide array of strategies, identifying synergies and co-benefits among them, and controlling for dis-benefits or unwanted consequences, resilient planning and preparedness for emergencies and disasters can also make for better and healthier cities in general.

The authors affiliated with the World Health Organization (WHO) are alone responsible for the views expressed in this publication and they do not necessarily represent the decisions or policies of the WHO.

Urban planning is concerned with the social, economic, and environmental consequences of delineating spatial boundaries and influencing spatial distributions of resources. It encompasses the preparation of plans for and the regulation and management of towns, cities, and metropolitan regions, and attempts to organise socio-spatial relations across different scales of government and governance. In this work, ‘urban planning’ includes urban management aspects (such as city maintenance, governance and intersectoral coordination), as well as urban and infrastructure design and planning.

In addition, the following terminology is used in relation to disaster risk reduction, as defined by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Footnote 4 :

Disaster risk reduction is aimed at preventing new and reducing existing disaster risk and managing residual risk, all of which contribute to strengthening resilience and therefore to the achievement of sustainable development.

Hazard is a process, phenomenon or human activity that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation. Hazards may be natural, anthropogenic or socionatural in origin. Natural hazards are predominantly associated with natural processes and phenomena. Anthropogenic hazards, or human-induced hazards, are induced entirely or predominantly by human activities and choices. Several hazards are socionatural, in that they are associated with a combination of natural and anthropogenic factors, including environmental degradation and climate change.

Mitigation is the lessening or minimising of the adverse impacts of a hazardous event.

Preparedness is the knowledge and capacities developed by governments, response and recovery organisations, communities and individuals to effectively anticipate, respond to and recover from the impacts of likely, imminent or current disasters. Preparedness is based on a sound analysis of disaster risks and good linkages with early warning systems, and includes such activities as contingency planning, the stockpiling of equipment and supplies, the development of arrangements for coordination, evacuation and public information, and associated training and field exercises.

Resilience is the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions through risk management.

Vulnerability reflects the conditions determined by physical, social, economic and environmental factors or processes which increase the susceptibility of an individual, a community, assets or systems to the impacts of hazards.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Sinaia netanyahu.

Sinaia Netanyahu (Programme Manager/PhD) and Matthias Braubach (Technical Officer/MSc) both work in the Environment and Health Impact Assessment Programme at the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health (WHO Regional Office for Europe). One work area of the programme is the assessment of health impacts of environmental risks in urban environments, and the integration of environmental health considerations in urban planning. Recent work has focused on urban strategies towards improved preparedness and resilience in relation to health impacts from environmental disasters and extreme events.

The Urban Planning, Environment and Health (UPEH) Initiative at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) aims to apply rigorous scientific evidence, tools and indicators to promote sustainable and healthy urban development. Mark Nieuwenhuijsen (Initiative Director), Carolyn Daher (Initiative Coordinator), Carlota Sáenz de Tejada (Postdoctoral Researcher), and Laura Hidalgo (Research Assistant), collaborate within the UPEH Initiative to inform urban design and planning decisions and provide the data needed to evaluate interventions, with a focus on the relationship between population health, urban and transport planning and environmental exposures.

1. The Protecting environments and health by building urban resilience project was led by the European Centre for Environment and Health of the WHO Regional Office for Europe. The project supports local authorities and decision-makers in building urban resilience, and findings were presented in three reports. This paper summarises the work carried out for the first project report, entitled Urban planning, design and management approaches to building resilience – an evidence review . Further information on the project can be found here: https://www.who.int/europe/activities/protecting-environments-and-health-by-building-urban-resilience .

2. The tables presented for this have been produced by authors as a structured overview of challenges and responses identified in the literature reviewed for each cross-cutting issue.

3. Annex 2 of the second project report, entitled Urban planning for health – experiences of building resilience in 12 cities (available here: https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/WHO-10665-355762 .) presents a list of cities in the WHO European Region with selected emergency events, indicating how emergencies are a relevant urban challenge across the WHO European Region.

4. UNDRR ( Citation 2021 ). Understanding disaster risk: terminology [website]. Geneva: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction ( https://www.preventionweb.net/drr-glossary/terminology , accessed 7 March 2024).

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