Dear Colleagues,

There is a growing scientific consensus that we are now in a new geological age known as the Anthropocene, where human activity is the dominant influence on the global climate and the natural environment. In this context, the future evolution of our cities and built environment, with increasing urbanisation and densification, will play a key role in this new and important interdependent relationship between society and the climate. Buildings, both new and existing, will need resource-efficient and low-carbon solutions that are resilient to a changing climate and uncertain energy sector to ensure they are meeting the increasingly demanding expectations by occupants for enhanced comfort and wellbeing. Resilient solutions to heating, cooling and ventilation of buildings will strengthen the ability of individuals and communities as a whole to withstand, and also prevent, thermal and other impacts of changes in global and local climates.

With this in mind, this Special Issue focuses on solutions that demonstrate adaptive and resistive capacity to deal with known and unknown changes and disturbances in the successful operation of buildings and their energy and environmental systems, which can include solutions that increase resilience and performance through retrofit, replacement, diversity, redundancy, buffer capacity, coupling and other improved design and control mechanisms to ensure good-quality indoor environments. This can also include examples of an absence of resilience in current buildings and their thermal systems and recommendations for improvements. The Special Issue welcomes submissions addressing case studies, new methodologies and numerical analysis including but not limited to the following areas:

• Solutions that reduce dependence on energy intensive technologies to maintain satisfactory indoor environments;
• Energy technologies and applications that increase operational robustness and system capacities in buildings;
• Good practice in future proofing of thermal system design demonstrating high energy and resource efficiency;
• Control and operation of resilient heating, cooling and ventilation systems;
• Resilient architectural, envelope and local microclimate design and operation;
• Occupant behavioural strategies that build adaptation to the effects of climate change in buildings.

Original papers related to the above topics and also dealing generally with methodologies, numerical and experimental investigations and case-studies addressing resilience in buildings are welcome.

Dr. Paul D. O’Sullivan
Dr. Michael D. Murphy
Guest Editors

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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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.

• Resilience
• Indoor thermal comfort
• Heating and cooling systems
• Ventilation systems
• Low-energy performance
• Low carbon
• Adaptive capacity
• Resistive capacity
• Building retrofit
• Future climate change