Voluntary Local Review Framework to Monitor and Evaluate the Progress towards Achieving Sustainable Development Goals at a City Level: Buraidah City, KSA and SDG11 as A Case Study

Around the world, cities are on the front lines of sustainable development. They are responsible for more than 70% of global carbon emissions. Many of these cities are experiencing dangerous levels of pollution, underemployment, and health disparities. Since 2015, 193 countries have endorsed the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), intended to help address a wide range of challenges affecting cities and ultimately secure the resources for their next generations. All states are expected to present the national progress towards the SDGs through a Voluntary National Review (VNR). Despite the importance of the cities within this framework, only a handful of them worldwide have actively begun to review and assess progress towards these SDGs on a city scale. This paper seeks to develop a Voluntary Local Review (VLR) framework to assess and evaluate the progress of cities towards contributing to the SDGs. This framework has been developed by localizing the international and national frameworks to measure the performance of cities as they advance towards achieving the SDGs. Such a framework can serve as a tool for benchmarking progress on different aspects of sustainable development and help urban planners and policymakers prioritize policies and actions to improve urban quality of life. This framework is applied to monitor and evaluate the progress of the city of Buraidah in Saudi Arabia, as it strives towards achieving the targets of SDG11 (“Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”).</jats:p

Multicriteria decision-making tool for investigating the feasibility of the green roof systems in Egypt

Abstract Urbanization in Egypt detracts from green spaces, reduces the per capita green ratio, and increases adverse effects such as heat islands, air pollution, and energy consumption. In addition, it affects social human comfort issues. In this context, building rooftops is a potential solution that could reduce the impact of green space scarcity. Such a solution has multiple evidence-based environmental, economic, and social benefits. Consequently, numerous governmental and private initiatives have spread the rooftop greening concept in Egypt. These initiatives have adopted several planting systems, such as soil-based, deep-water culture, and nutrient film technique systems. This manuscript examines these prevalent systems through environmental, economic and social lenses. This paper pioneers a user-centric tool to facilitate the system selection that aligns with individual needs. An analysis was conducted to ascertain the value of various factors influencing system choice, encompassing a literature review, expert opinion solicitation, market survey, and energy simulation. The Analytical Hierarchy Processes methodology was proposed to appraise the factors, aiding in arriving at an informed decision. The paper presents a novel contribution by studying many factors spanning diverse scientific domains. Furthermore, creating an accessible decision-support tool encapsulates a substantial addition to the body of knowledge

A Comparative Study for Forced Ventilation Systems in Industrial Buildings to Improve the Workers’ Thermal Comfort

The appropriate ventilation for factory spaces with regard to volume flow rate and air velocity inside the factory is one of the most important factors in the improvement of the thermal comfort of workers and in the reduction of the percentage of pollution they are exposed to, which in turn helps to improve the work environment and increase productivity. It also could improve the performance of machines. Hence, overheating can cause various problems and malfunctions. In this study, three types of mechanical ventilation systems are compared: the wall fan extract ventilation system, the roof fan extract ventilation system, and the spot cooling system. The Ansys software has been used to conduct the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for the different cases and the ventilation effectiveness factor (VEF) has been used to compare the performances of the three systems. The ventilation factor notably relies on the temperature distribution produced through the modeling and the results show that the most optimal system that can be used for similar factory spaces is the forced ventilation system. Finally, it is also the best in terms of energy consumption, despite the increase in the initial cost of its installation

The effect of lightweight geopolymer concrete containing air agent on building envelope performance and internal thermal comfort

Innovative building materials are the primary focus for researchers seeking to reduce energy consumption and advance global sustainability initiatives. This target could accomplished by addressing environmental issues and confronting the adverse impact of climate change. In this regard, this paper used a combined experimental and simulation approach to evaluate the effectiveness of lightweight geopolymer concrete (LWGC) incorporating industrial waste of aluminum powder (AP) and ferrosilicon waste powder (FWP) for reducing the energy consumption in the building envelop. Seven concrete mixes for LWGC were prepared using an air operator. Three mixtures contain 0.1 %, 0.2 %, and 0.3 % AP (FA), and three mixtures contain 0.1 %, 0.2 %, and 0.3 % FWP by weight of fly ash. The workability, unit volume weight, compressive strength, thermal conductivity, and microstructure analysis of the LWGC were examined. In addition, energy simulations were performed to evaluate their ability to reduce energy use in residential buildings. The inclusion of AP and FWP in LWGC resulted in a significant decrease in the density of the material, which amounts to 55 % for AP0.3 and 35 % for FWP0.3. The diameter of the LWGC pore structure increased as the Ca/Si ratio was reduced. The AP and FWP materials reduced energy consumption for building envelope elements such as external walls and roof insulation by 14.5 %, resulting in a 9.2 % overall reduction compared to the traditional concrete mix as a control sample

A Methodological Approach towards Sustainable Urban Densification for Urban Sprawl Control at the Microscale: Case Study of Tanta, Egypt

When a high need for new residences coincides with an insufficient area of obtainable land within cities, urban sprawl occurs. Although densification is a well-known policy for controlling urban sprawl, one of the main challenges faced by researchers is that of determining urban densification potentials and priorities at the city scale. This paper aims to establish a methodology to facilitate decision-making regarding urban densification using five different methods. The proposed methodology utilizes high-quality city strategic plans (CSPs) and urban regulation documents and adopts geographic information systems (GISs) to determine and map the potential areas for densification. Multiple sustainability parameters, including environmental, economic, and social parameters, are selected, and weighted using an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to prioritize the densification sites. The proposed method is tested in Tanta, Egypt, which has suffered due to agricultural losses of approximately 10 km2 within the last 50 years. The results credibly demonstrate the means by which to accommodate approximately 428% of the anticipated population increase in Tanta by 2027 and thereby save more than 53% of the approved deducted agricultural lands under the current urban regulations. Generally, this methodology offers a new model to optimize urban densification, which can be effective in urban management to achieve city resilience

A High-Resolution Wind Farms Suitability Mapping Using GIS and Fuzzy AHP Approach: A National-Level Case Study in Sudan

Wind energy is one of the most attractive sustainable energy resources since it has low operation, maintenance, and production costs and a relatively low impact on the environment. Identifying the optimal sites for installing wind power plants (WPPs) is considered an important challenge of wind energy development which requires careful and combined analyses of numerous criteria. This study introduces a high-resolution wind farms suitability mapping based on Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Geographic Information System (GIS) approaches considering technical, environmental, social, and spatial aspects, representing eight different criteria. First, a multi-criteria decision-making analysis based on the FAHP method is employed to assign appropriate weights for the addressed criteria with respect to their relative importance. Since the traditional AHP method, which was found employed in the majority of the relative case-studies, is not efficient in dealing with uncertainty when experts use a basic scale (0 to 1) for their assessments, the FAHP provides more flexible scales through the utilized fuzzy membership functions and the natural linguistic variables. Consequently, this helps to facilitate the assessments made by experts and increases the precision of the obtained results (weights). Next, the high-resolution GIS is used to carry out a spatial analysis and integrate various factors/criteria throughout the proposed index to produce the final suitability map and identify the unsuitable areas. The presented study emphasizes investigating the lightning strike flash rate due to its significant influences on the wind turbine&rsquo;s safety and operation, yet this crucial factor has been seldomly investigated in previous studies. The obtained findings revealed that the wind speed, the land slope, and the elevation had the highest weighted criteria with 33.1%, 24.8%, and 12.2%, respectively. Besides, the final-developed suitability map revealed that 23.22% and 8.31% of the Sudanese territory are of high and very high suitability, respectively, for wind farms installation which are considered sufficient to cover the electricity needs. The difficulty of acquiring real data and resources for the addressed location was the main challenge of the presented work. The work outlook addresses the suitability mapping of hybrid photovoltaic-wind turbine energy systems, which will require addressing new and significant criteria in the applied methodology

Integrated Methodology for Urban Flood Risk Mapping at the Microscale in Ungauged Regions: A Case Study of Hurghada, Egypt

Flood risk mapping forms the basis for disaster risk management and the associated decision-making systems. The effectiveness of this process is highly dependent on the quality of the input data of both hazard and vulnerability maps and the method utilized. On the one hand, for higher-quality hazard maps, the use of 2D models is generally suggested. However, in ungauged regions, such usage becomes a difficult task, especially at the microscale. On the other hand, vulnerability mapping at the microscale suffers limitations as a result of the failure to consider vulnerability components, the low spatial resolution of the input data, and the omission of urban planning aspects that have crucial impacts on the resulting quality. This paper aims to enhance the quality of both hazard and vulnerability maps at the urban microscale in ungauged regions. The proposed methodology integrates remote sensing data and high-quality city strategic plans (CSPs) using geographic information systems (GISs), a 2D rainfall-runoff-inundation (RRI) simulation model, and multicriteria decision-making analysis (MCDA, i.e., the analytic hierarchy process (AHP)). This method was implemented in Hurghada, Egypt, which from 1996 to 2019 was prone to several urban flood events. Current and future physical, social, and economic vulnerability maps were produced based on seven indicators (land use, building height, building conditions, building materials, total population, population density, and land value). The total vulnerability maps were combined with the hazard maps based on the Kron equation for three different return periods (REPs) 50, 10, and 5 years to create the corresponding flood risk maps. In general, this integrated methodology proved to be an economical tool to overcome the scarcity of data, to fill the gap between urban planning and flood risk management (FRM), and to produce comprehensive and high-quality flood risk maps that aid decision-making systems