Opportunities in the Sustainable Built Environment: Perspectives on Human-Centric Approaches

Cheng Siew Goh and Heap-Yih Chong ()
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Cheng Siew Goh: School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, Heriot-Watt University Malaysia, Putrajaya 62200, Malaysia
Heap-Yih Chong: School of Engineering Audit, Nanjing Audit University, Nanjing 211815, China

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-8

Abstract: Climate change and natural disasters have brought threats to humanity greater than ever. The built environment is a critical part of the climate action plan in terms of its resilience and sustainability. The growing awareness of sustainability in the built environment has led to the increased uptake of sustainable buildings and infrastructure projects. However, a growing number of studies reported some forms of performance gaps in achieving sustainability, in which the actual outcomes and performance of buildings were far from the expected goals. Researchers started to question the alleged benefits of the sustainable built environment. Apart from being overoptimistic in setting the environmental goals, some studies suggested that the gaps could arise from a negligence of the interplay between humans and the environment for delivering the sustainability goals. Hence, this paper intends to highlight opportunities in optimizing sustainability performance in the built environment via human-centric approaches. By placing human needs at the focal point, human-centric solutions would empower stakeholders to harness sustainable goals in the built environment effectively. A conceptual framework has been proposed to consolidate the findings and highlight human-centric solutions in between research gaps and opportunities in sustainable built environment research.

Keywords: sustainable development; sustainable built environment; human-centric; gaps; opportunities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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