Sarah A. Elariane

Buildings are considered one of the main causes of increasing CO₂ emissions due to their excessive consumption of energy. The drive towards sustainability represents a challenge especially in existing buildings. The aim of the research is to support the built environment’s move onto a low-carbon path using smart technologies. This research highlights the role of smart building technologies in increasing energy savings of office buildings in Egypt, taking into consideration their incremental cost. Based upon data available on Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies (EDGE) website, association rule has been applied using Apriori Algorithm to identify the most used smart technologies in EDGE-certified office buildings, in addition to the different smart-orientated retrofitting scenarios that could be applied. Using EDGE software, energy assessment of an existing office building in Egypt was performed. This assessment acts as a “reference point” to quantify the impact of each smart technology and retrofitting scenario on the energy savings, incremental costs, and payback period. Limitations of the application of the different smart technologies impacted the selection process for the different scenarios. These limitations can be summarized in the suitability of application in the existing building’s systems, the availability and cost in the local market, and the potential of the building’s infrastructure adaptation to the proposed technologies. Based upon the above limitations, the best scenario was selected. Results showed that smart technologies have a great role in retrofitting of office buildings reaching more than 20% energy savings. In addition, the high initial cost of applying smart technologies could be covered within around 3 years of operation. This research could be used as a guide for improving energy performance of existing office buildings in Egypt using smart technologies.

Green building rating systems are important tools widely used to assess buildings’ sustainability and certify a building as “green”. Some of these tools are applied in different regions regardless of the weights or the priority of different indicators within a specific region. The Analytical Hierarchy Process method is used to weight sustainability assessment categories as part of the process of developing a green building rating system for healthcare facilities in Egypt. An expert survey has been conducted and Team Expert Choice software was used to calculate the relative weight of the weighting criteria and assessment categories based on the relative importance of the challenges and pressing environmental issues in Egypt. The results showed that resource efficiency and economic viability are the challenges with high relative importance and the final weights of assessment categories determined the highest weights for three categories: energy efficiency, indoor quality, and materials and resources. أصبح تقييم المباني الخضراء أمر ضروري لا سيما مباني الرعاية الصحية لما لها من تأثير على صحة الإنسان والبيئة. تعد أنظمة تقييم المباني الخضراء من الأدوات الهامة المستخدمة على نطاق واسع لتقييم استدامة المباني واعتمادها كمباني "خضراء". يتم تطبيق بعض هذه الأدوات في مناطق مختلفة بغض النظر عن أولوية المؤشرات المختلفة داخل منطقة معينة. يستخدم البحث عملية التحليل الهرمي لتحديد الوزن النسبي لعناصر تقييم استدامة المستشفيات كجزء من عملية تطوير نظام تقييم المباني الخضراء للمنشآت الصحية في مصر. تم تصميم استبيان للخبراء لتحديد العلاقة بين عناصر تقييم المستشفيات الخضراء والقضايا والتحديات الملحة في مصر. تم تحديد الوزن النسبي بناء على تقييم الخبراء للأهمية النسبية للتحديات، وتقييم تأثير كل عنصر من عناصر التقييم على تلك التحديات. أظهرت النتائج أن كفاءة استهلاك الموارد والجدوى الاقتصادية هي التحديات ذات الأهمية النسبية الأعلى، وجاءت...

The world is witnessing a shifting toward smart cities and the use of technology in cities. There are many rating systems to measure the smart readiness of existing buildings and cities, but they are not suitable in the Egyptian context. However, Egypt promotes sustainable and smart development through many codes, guidelines and rating systems. This research aims to develop a tool to measure the smart readiness of existing buildings and cities to help decision-makers determine the level of intervention needed for a building or a city to be smart. An induction research approach is used to deduce the smart readiness indicators for existing buildings and cities. The research ends by proposing ‘Checklists’ for measuring the smart readiness of Egyptian existing buildings and cities stock.

The smart cities are considered to be an engine of economic and social growth. Most countries started to convert their existing cities into smart cities or construct new smart cities in order to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants. However, the problem that facing those countries while applying the concept of smart cities is the costs, especially for the residential sector. Despite the high initial and even operation costs for adopting different technologies in smart housing; the benefits could exceed those costs within the lifespan of the project. This article is shedding the light on the economics of smart housing. This study aims to evaluate the net present value (NPV) of a smart economic housing model to check the viability and feasibility of such projects. The calculation of the NPV based on Monte Carlo simulation provides an interesting methodological framework to evaluate the robustness of the results as well as providing a simple way to test for statistical significance of the results. This analysis helps to evaluate the potential profitability of smart housing solutions. The research ends up by proving the feasibility of this type of project.

Carbon Dioxide emission per capita reached 2.6 metric tons in Egypt in the year 2011 according to the World Bank and this is because our main source of energy depends on burning fossil fuel releasing more Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and trapping more heat. Building sector is one of the greatest sectors in consuming energy hence releasing more carbon dioxide into the air. With this in mind, architects should now seek more passive solutions. In recent years the use of thermal energy storage with Phase Change Materials has become a topic with a lot of interest within the research community, it has proven to be a successful solution that stores latent heat, thermo regulating the indoor temperature and therefore decreasing the electrical energy consumption used. But still the researches held on applications of PCMs within local building materials in Egypt is not yet well studied which in turns affects its wide use and spread in the building industry. This paper will review classification, properties, advantages and disadvantages of Phase Change Materials (PCM). It will also review available local Phase Change Materials found abundantly in Egypt in order to take a step further in integrating this technology within building industry.

Productive urban landscape is a design concept integrating food growing and animal raising into the design of cities through public and private open spaces in an attempt to support local economic development. This research focuses on farm animals’ husbandry in cities as a type of local food production. Debates about governance tools for sustaining such economic sector arise frequently especially in Egypt, as one of the developing countries, striving to maintain urban quality of life, satisfy the community needs, and compensate the food prices’ increment. Accordingly, field questionnaires for residents of two rapidly expanding informal areas in Cairo (Zabaleen area in Agouza city) and (Masaken Osman in 6th of October city), together with questionnaires for experts and officials who are working in Urban Upgrading Units and those with experiences in the field of upgrading informal settlements were performed. This research thus aims at studying the feasibility and integration of such economic activities informally developing in unplanned areas in Egypt, as ‘new ruralism’, within the strategic and action planning of low-income and informal areas in a legalized regulatory system to tackle their challenges and enhance their economic role. Further, this research ends up with deducing specific values for prioritizing the types of governmental support (financial, space facilitations, social, and medical), as proposed by officials and residents representing the main incorporated stakeholders. This article also highlighted the unwillingness and the on-purpose ignorance of officials to sustain animal husbandry in cities, constituting a challenge that needs to be tackled in all developing countries not only in Egypt.

Urban quality of life is a notion that has been discussed recently in various studies as a response to many problems facing the new towns all over the world as well as in Egypt. The purpose of this paper is to decompose the term urban quality of life into other more precise terms such as quality, quality of life and urban/urban planning. The paper also aims to address the notion of sustainable development and tries to understand its relationship with the notion of quality of life. Further, it deduces urban quality of life definition and dimensions. On the other hand this paper discusses contemporary urban planning theories and approaches raised in the late of twentieth century in order to provide a high and sustainable quality of life and protect the natural environment. Finally, a matrix concluding the relationship between the principles of these contemporary urban planning theories and approaches and urban quality of life dimensions is developed, in order to achieve a set of principles that address environmental, physical, mobility, social, psychological, economical and political concerns called urban quality of life principles. These principles represent a guide useful for participants of the design process and for policy makers