Guest editorial: Paradigm shift towards sustainable resilient built environment

Citation

Hadiwattege, C., Fernando, N. and Ramachandra, T. (2024), "Guest editorial: Paradigm shift towards sustainable resilient built environment", Built Environment Project and Asset Management, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 329-332. https://doi.org/10.1108/BEPAM-07-2024-208

Introduction

The recent calamities that countries face have pitched the trajectory of sustainability and resilience themes towards more urgent applications. This urgency has been spurred by the implications of COVID-19, the resultant fiscal and economic crises and the special characteristics of the construction industry. The ever-changing social and economic conditions in the new normal require many novel studies to detail the required change in basic assumptions towards a sustainable resilient built environment. Accordingly, it is essential to elicit the expectations of a change in basic assumptions towards a sustainable resilient built environment and to propose smart modifications to the practices of sustainable development of buildings and infrastructure. Construction organisations’ investments in innovative technologies for sustainability, knowledge management and lessons learnt need to be proactively transformed at the national level to achieve the envisioned shifting paradigm for resilient sustainable construction.

Alleviations of the current strains on project delivery and competitiveness may be temporary and thus necessitate a new strategy. Hence, revisiting and reviewing the current roles of construction management, referring to modern construction methodologies, and enabling the transformation towards a sustainable resilient built environment is paramount. Globally, there is a lack of scientific guidance on methodologies of resilient sustainable construction. Therefore, researchers, together with practitioners where possible, should develop synergistic solutions propounding the proposed paradigm shift. Similarly, there is a disconnection between residual traditional practices and the new requirements for handling the operation and management of the built environment in the post-pandemic era. Hence, the key question this Special Issue (SI) focussed on is “How and to what extent should the built environment shift its principles and practices for establishing sustainable resilience from an optimal holistic paradigm shift?” Within this context, the SI also addresses these existing challenges and potential risks that would hinder the paradigm shift towards sustainable resilience and uncovers new models, methodologies and integrated ways forward to proactively smoothen the paradigm shift. Accordingly, in the context of this emerging landscape, this SI aims to:

1. To capture and synthesise emerging expectations of the shifting paradigm towards resilient sustainable construction with respect to resilience to pandemics; and, in terms of sustainable development of buildings and infrastructure, energy optimisation, retrofitting, green building systems and smart digital solutions;

2. To investigate, consolidate and unveil how innovative technologies and methodologies for sustainability, knowledge management and lessons learnt need to be proactively transformed and deployed at the national level to achieve the envisioned paradigm shift to resilient sustainable construction across the world;

3. To revisit the current roles of construction project management with a view to integrated improvements and performance evaluation tools including building information modelling (BIM) for facilitating and accelerating the transformation towards a sustainable resilient built environment and

4. To investigate, analyse and promote revised priorities, principles and practices in the built environment, for sustainable disaster resilience including from pandemics and epidemics, with resilience taken to include that of discrete built assets and construction supply chains.

The primary purpose of this special issue, therefore, is to promote and enhance the application of the new built environment trend of sustainable development of buildings and infrastructure, energy and retrofitting, green building systems, innovative technologies for sustainability, knowledge management, construction project management in the post-pandemic era and facilitating digital tools when shifting the current built environment sector paradigm to focus on a more sustainable and resilient built environment.

Overview of the special issue

This special issue (SI) contains ten papers that have been accepted for publication following the BEPAM review process. The guest editors of this issue revisited these papers with keen attention and reflected on the theme of this SI “Paradigm shift towards sustainable resilient built environment”. It was obvious that all ten papers aligned with the theme of this SI, considering the special call for papers issued to build environment sustainability researchers across the world and the rigorous screening and review process for papers submitted to this SI. Interestingly, the editors found that the knowledge conveyed by each paper is not isolated but interlinked. The scatter plot of the ten papers' knowledge contributions depicts a comprehensive portrayal of the theme of the SI when they are sequenced through the four chronological milestones that may be positioned to map the problem and its potential solution, i.e. (1) energy crisis, (2) sustainability, (3) global challenges and (4) smart resilience.

Accordingly, the first paper by Erdener et al. brings to the attention of energy researchers and practitioners that plant characteristics in living wall technologies have relative impacts on energy efficiency, which cannot be easily determined by experimental studies. Hence, this study focusses on the “energy crisis” on the environmental axis by presenting parametric simulation results of three plant characteristics to unveil the effect of living wall systems’ variables on the energy consumption of buildings in Turkey. The findings of this study have substantial implications for “sustainability” in terms of selecting plants for living walls considering the leaf area index (LAI), leaf's transmittance and albedo. Furthermore, this paper can serve as a pioneer in advancing applied research in the living wall field for more coherent and effective results based on successfully demonstrated methodological approaches. The second paper by Tilde and Fernando assesses residential energy consumption knowledge, attitudes and practices in a locale in Nigeria, providing insights into “energy crises” from a social perspective leading to effective conservation strategies, reducing costs and mitigating environmental impact towards “sustainability”. Accordingly, the study highlights the importance of considering socio-demographic profiles and building characteristics when assessing general energy utilisation practices. The third paper by Jayarathne et al. continues the “energy crisis” sectoral focus by addressing the economic aspects of retrofits. This paper portrays the “sustainability” of retrofit options in the form of a decision-making model focussing on conventional office buildings in Sri Lanka. The analysis has shown that HVAC retrofits save more energy, whilst lighting retrofits could be easily implemented in existing buildings. Hence, the first three papers symbolise the emergence of sustainable resilience in response to the energy crisis, with potential contributions to all three pillars of sustainability.

The next cohort of papers in this SI discusses the establishment of sustainability concepts at the global, national and industry levels, focussing on the built environment. Accordingly, the fourth paper by Watts examines the global “sustainability” achievement targets, i.e. sustainable development goals (SDGs) from a local perspective referring to the UK context. Based on the qualitative content analysis (QCA) and narrative analysis, the paper has reveals that there are only two SDGs: (1) decent work and economic growth and (2) responsible consumption and production, i.e. SDG-8 and SDG-12, of which the construction professionals have detailed awareness. This paper serves as a platform for future research agendas on how the SDGs can be better understood and actioned in a construction management context. The fifth paper by Abdulsalam et al. examines the challenges and benefits of implementing green building development in the Nigerian context. The study is imperative to bridge the knowledge gaps and provide empirical information for green building policy guidelines specific to Northeast Nigeria's built environment sector. The sixth paper by Senaratne et al. offers valuable strategies for project teams of megaprojects to develop a proactive stakeholder management plan, addressing unavoidable sustainability challenges in Australia. This paper can be referenced by policymakers when developing regulations to ensure that stakeholders are an integral part of decision-making and implementation, even in the case of megaprojects with larger carbon footprints, through stakeholder-oriented sustainability management. Hence, the three papers, when taken together, provide a cross-sectional understanding of different levels and speeds of absorption of the desired/targeted sustainability into built environments at the country level.

The next two papers draw attention to the changing landscape of “global challenges” under this SI theme, highlighting the need for a paradigm shift towards resilient sustainability in the post-pandemic era, referring to the Australian context. The authors of the seventh paper, Gupta et al., identify and expand on the role of leagility and resilience in developing sustainable global supply chains and mitigating short-term disruptions and long-term economic impacts from various disasters in the context of civil infrastructure projects. The paper underscores the need to enhance supply chain leagility and resilience to achieve sustainability by developing skills needed to plan across project phases and time frames, aligning with short- and long-term organisational goals and assuming smart risks in the face of uncertainty. The eighth paper by Seneviratne et al. investigates the impacts of COVID-19 on construction enterprises and good practices adopted by them in reducing COVID-19 risks with special reference to the Sendai Framework. The findings show that the studied construction enterprises adopted good practices in identifying, managing and investing in resilience and recovery that aligned with The Sendai Framework priorities.

Finally, the last two papers unveil the “smart resilience” solutions to the “global challenges” of built environments in the post-pandemic new normal, placing particular emphasis on BIM. Accordingly, the authors of the ninth paper, Gaur and Tawalare from India, assessed the implications of BIM in smoothening the design process and mitigating the risks, thus holistically enhancing the sustainability of the project. It presents a substantially different picture of the impact of BIM on all three dimensions of sustainability, i.e. social, economic and environmental, when compared with other studies that have mainly been dominated by using BIM to achieve environmental sustainability. The tenth paper authored by Doan et al. developed a BIM adoption framework to determine the key factors affecting the success of a BIM project in New Zealand, where BIM prevalence is still in its early stages and hence faces many challenges. The research, therefore, lays a precedent for subsequent studies to develop more comprehensive models and refined strategies that can further enhance the success rates of BIM adoption as a smart solution for boosting sustainable resilience in the new normal built environment via an optimal holistic paradigm shift.

Conclusion

The articles published in this SI broadened contextual perspectives from green construction, energy utilisation behaviours and retrofits, sustainable approaches of stakeholder management, supply chain management and BIM, SDGs, COVID-19 risk reduction and BIM adoption. These can also provide panoramic overviews in framing an innovative sustainable resilience agenda for the built environment context. The call for a shifting paradigm towards the new normal is a global phenomenon. Consequently, the articles published in this SI present a wide spectrum of global contexts authored from Europe (Turkey, the UK and Ireland), sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria), Asia (Sri Lanka, Malaysia and India) and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand). The authors of papers in this SI produced multiple transdisciplinary perspectives covering bioengineering, behavioural science, energy, green construction, sustainability, resilience, risk management and BIM in their contributions to knowledge and furtherance of implications for future studies and policy-making. The substantial added value from the papers in this SI will benefit the targeted audience: academics, researchers, policymakers, industry practitioners and research students.

The guest editors are grateful for the efforts and contributions of all authors in this SI. The reviewers who supported this SI by providing constructive comments were tremendously valuable to the overall process. The guest editors exclusively thank Professor Mohan Kumaraswamy, the Editor-in-Chief of Built Environment, Project and Asset Management (BEPAM) Journal, Professor Yasangika Sandanayake, the Co-Editor-in-Chief of BEPAM Journal and the Emerald Publishing team for the opportunity and logistics support that facilitated a successful special issue.