Evaporative Cooling (EC) is increasingly regarded as a powerful and effective method for building cooling, mitigation of Urban Heat Islands (UHI) and for urban adaptation to climate change (Kitano et al., 2011; Saneinejad et al., 2014).

Precipitation is a relevant climatic variable for building and urban design in hot climates, because of its potential to naturally mitigate heat excess in buildings and cities by evaporative cooling; and as a primary source of water to artificially reproduce this cooling mechanism, particularly in the humid tropics and subtropics.

Research activities previously performed on shorter simulation timeframe had shown that building-integrated photovoltaic/thermal double-skin façade (BIPV/T-DSF) could maintain a comfort temperature within a building, by adopting a fan-assisted ventilated air cavity in summer, and a non-ventilated air cavity during winter in order to reduce overheating phenomena in the air cavity and consequentl

This paper outlines opportunities for, and barriers to, increasing PV deployment on apartment buildings in Australia. With PV penetration reaching 40% of residential dwellings in some parts of the country, access to renewable energy for the 14% of Australians who live in apartments has lagged behind.

14% of Australians live in apartments, predominantly in urban centres, yet few of these have PV systems, despite high levels of PV deployment on separate and semi-detached residential buildings.

Over 1.7 Australian households have taken the opportunity to generate some of their own power and reduce both their electricity bills and carbon emissions by installing rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems on their homes.

Despite potential advantages of load aggregation and scale discounts, few of Australia's 2.3 million apartment residents are amongst the country's 1.8 million solar prosumers. However, embedded networks can be used to distribute rooftop photovoltaic generation to households if split incentives and regulatory barriers are overcome.

Parenting responsibilities in the context of children’s mobility have been subject to a substantial change over the last few decades. Children’s current activities and travel patterns are significantly different to the previous generations when they were at the same age. Today’s children are exposed to increased car use and are chauffeured for the majority of their trips.

Smart grid components such as smart home and battery energy management systems, high penetration of renewable energy systems, and demand response activities, require accurate electricity demand forecasts for the successful operation of the electricity distribution networks.

Conventionally in building performance simulations (BPS), it is assumed that air entering outdoor HVAC equipment is at the outdoor ‘ambient’ temperature, obtained from a weather file. However, significant spatial variations exist in outdoor air temperature fields, especially within the thermal boundary layers that form near exposed surfaces like roofs.