Role of the Smart Technology and Users’ Involvement in Building Renovation Programs

Recently, many countries worldwide have imposed new regulations concerning buildings' environmental performance, for both new buildings and renovation programs. The new requirements include transforming buildings into energy-positive buildings, which means that buildings should generate more energy than they consume to achieve thermal comfort levels. The achievement of this objective is challenging. In addition to buildings’ insulation and efficient equipment, engineers have to use additional performance strategies such as renewable energy, smart technology, and users’ involvement in the energy performance program.

Smart technology offers many opportunities for improving buildings' performance strategy. Through digital supervision, data analysis, and automation, it could help with high-performing energy management, editing regular reports and recommendations, and improving the users’ involvement in energy management.  User behavior also has a vital role in energy consumption. Any valuable building renovation strategy should involve users in the program's design, construction, and operating phases.

This Special Issue aims at sharing the latest scientific and innovation developments in the use of smart technology and users’ involvement in building renovation programs. Papers could cover different areas, such as:

• Use of smart monitoring in building performance programs;
• Use of machine learning in building performance programs;
• Impact of users’ involvement in building performance programs;
• The role of smart technology in improving building performance;
• Feedback from renovation programs.

Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to invite you to submit papers to this Special Issue of the Buildings journal, concerning a hot topic around the contribution of research and innovation to achieving new requirements in building renovation programs.

Prof. Dr. Isam Shahrour
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• building renovation
• energy performance
• smart technology
• user involvement
• machine learning
• smart monitoring
• positive energy building