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This article deals with conceptual design and experimental implementation of active shading system to reduce building heat gains. First, the problem of building overheating in the summer period and the requirement of lighting in the building interior is explained. Then, the concept of the automated shading system is presented as an efficient yet simple solution to this problem. Along with that, the initial phase of experimental verification, namely the design and additives used, is described. In conclusion, the results of the initial phase are discussed and the future stages of the project along with its significance for the industry are explored. Research background: The issue of overheating of utility buildings in the summer period and the requirement of sufficient lighting of their interior. Measurements in the respective literature and on-site in industrial buildings. Purpose of the article: Explaining the conceptual design of an automated shading system as a remedy to the overheating problem and also to raise awareness of this widespread issue. Methods: Direct measurements of the respective quantities in the industrial sites were conducted. Laboratory experiments along with measurements of several used shading solutions were conducted. Findings & Value added: Some substances showed promising results in creating a translucent heat barrier for sunlight. Further solutions are planned to be tested.

The role and influence of building services engineers are undergoing rapid change and are pivotal to achieving low-carbon buildings. However, textbooks in the field have tended to remain fairly traditional with a detailed focus on the technicalities of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, often with little wider context. This book addresses that need by embracing a contemporary understanding of the urgent challenge to address climate change, together with practical approaches to energy efficiency and carbon mitigation for mechanical and electrical systems, in a concise manner. The essential conceptual design issues for planning the principal building services systems that influence energy efficiency are examined in detail. These are HVAC and electrical systems. In addition, the following issues are addressed: background issues on climate change, whole-life performance and design collaboration generic strategies for energy-efficient, low-carbon design health and wellbeing and post occupancy evaluation building ventilation air conditioning and HVAC system selection thermal energy generation and distribution systems low-energy approaches for thermal control electrical systems, data collection, controls and monitoring building thermal load assessment building electric power load assessment space planning and design integration with other disciplines. In order to deliver buildings that help mitigate climate change impacts, a new perspective is required for building services engineers, from the initial conceptual design and throughout the design collaboration with other disciplines. This book provides a contemporary introduction and guide to this new approach, for students and practitioners alike.

Cost estimation is the process of creating cost forecasts by quantitative determination and pricing of the necessary resources for a project’s implementation. This process is iterative, where estimates are regularly updated based on the available information. Studying the relationship between the costs of construction projects is crucial for establishing reliable practices of cost estimation and management. Variability in construction costs can significantly impact investors’ or clients’ decisions. Greater coherence and confirmed relationships between construction costs and factors influencing them can assist investors, developers, and contractors in making informed decisions and ensuring effective cost management. Therefore, the aim of this article is to identify the factors shaping the costs of facade systems of public utility buildings and to examine the mutual influences and dependencies that occur between these factors. The factors were selected based on an analysis of project documentation, and then their assessment was made through expert opinions. The DEMATEL method was used to investigate the mutual relationships and dependencies between the factors as one of the tools of multi-criteria analysis. Through the analysis, it can be pointed out that factors such as the height of the building, the type of facade analyzed, and the level of complexity of the facade have the greatest impact on the cost of facade systems. Moreover, the type of facade analyzed and the number of floors are the factors showing the greatest direct influence on the other factors of the cost of facade systems. The identification and prioritization of factors carried out by the authors provide a basis for future research, which are models that support the prediction of the cost of making facade systems.

The building sector consumes one-third of global final energy and emits nearly 40% of total CO emission. To decrease those numbers, it is necessary to design sustainable buildings, which have low heat and cooling demand. The Passive House standard was designed to meet these requirements however, some imperfections were observed. Therefore, a new approach the “be 2226” standard was put forward. This paper presents major architectural differences of those concepts and discusses their advantages and disadvantages. The main purpose is to develop guidelines how to design energy-efficient passive architecture. The Author used own mixed research method that included literature studies, analyses of technical documentation, in situ examinations, own measurements, and infrared tests. The comparison of two passive standards established strong, proven solutions, as well as incompatibilities and flows of each standard. The research main findings are that all buildings should be built in the passive manner and it would be beneficial to implement mixed standard. The main conclusion is that architectural creation has a great impact on passive solutions in buildings.

Aim: The aim of this publication is to present the most important aspects concerning the conditions for evacuation of people with various types of disabilities – from mobility problems, to reduced perception in the event of a threat, and to indicate the most important challenges both in terms of legal regulations, as well as organizational and technological conditions for ensuring effective evacuation of disabled people. Introduction: People with disabilities are a group that requires special consideration when planning evacuation from public utility facilities, because many of these people – depending on the type and degree of their dysfunction – will not be able to evacuate from the danger zone on their own. The inspection carried out in 2019 by the Delegation of the Supreme Audit Office in Poznań confirmed the need to adapt the applicable legal regulations in this regard (in practice, fire safety instructions, evacuation plans, staff training and equipping facilities with adequate equipment supporting the evacuation of people with disabilities) [1]. In addition to legal and technological aspects, a very important factor in the effective evacuation of disabled people are organizational solutions adopted in a given facility, which should take into account the individual specificity (cubature) and functions of a given facility. Methodology: As part of the research process, theoretical research was used, such as: analysis of literature and legal documents, synthesis, general- ization, inference, comparison and analogy. During the research, national and foreign sources (from the United States and Great Britain) were analyzed. The selection of individual countries was guided by the level of development of the solutions adopted in these countries dedicated to supporting the evacuation of disabled people in a situation of threat to their life or health, as well as the availability of data sources. Conclusions: The presented analysis of the conditions for the evacuation of people with disabilities from public utility buildings shows the challenges that both the legislator and managers of facilities in the country face in this area, as well as the emergency services. The latter – similarly to people with disabilities – are the systemic beneficiaries of the desired changes in the area of law and tactics of rescue operations, from the moment of alerting about an event in the facility where there are people who are unable to evacuate themselves. Introducing good practices, verified in other countries, into common application, should significantly improve rescue operations. The expected effect will be to shorten the time of providing help to all people unable to evacuate themselves in an emergency – regardless of their number, as well as the type and specificity of the public facility in which the life or health threatening situation occurred. Keywords: evacuation of disabled people, public utility buildings, intelligent construction, modelling and computer simulations, individual evacuation plan Type of article: review article

Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems integrated into industrial and institutional buildings are critical components of sustainable built environments, where accurate real-time power estimation underpins smart energy management, demand–supply balancing, and reduced dependence on the utility grid. This study develops and validates an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) for predicting of the flexible power point (FPP) in a 117.76 kWp rooftop PV plant serving a technical workshop facility in northwestern Algeria. The proposed model uses environmental inputs (solar irradiance, ambient temperature, module temperature) and electrical inputs (load power, grid power) acquired from a supervisory monitoring infrastructure to predict the PV system’s FPP under real operating conditions in the built environment. A dataset of 24,479 valid samples spanning 85 distinct calendar days (1 May to 24 July 2025) was collected and preprocessed through cleaning, filtering, and feature-specific normalization. To ensure rigorous out-of-sample evaluation, three complementary validation strategies were implemented: (S1) a random day-based split (60 train/11 test days), (S2) a strictly chronological 70/15/15% split (50/11/10 days), and (S3) an external 14-day hold-out (11–24 July 2025) excised before any training, tuning or model selection step. Statistical analysis reveals strong nonlinear dependence of PV power on solar irradiance and module temperature, with correlations r≈0.93 between irradiance and module temperature, r≈0.82 between irradiance and PV power, and r≈0.95 between load and grid power, highlighting the importance of accurate predicting for facility-level energy management. The ANFIS model achieves R[sup.2]=0.9992, RMSE =653.62 W and MAE =276.90 W on the random-split test set; R[sup.2]=0.9998, RMSE =325.40 W and MAE =119.17 W on the chronological test set and R[sup.2]=0.9997–0.9998, RMSE =363.45–408.50 W on the external 14-day hold-out that was never seen during training. Comparative experiments with k-Nearest Neighbors, Decision Tree, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and a Deep Neural Network show that ANFIS is the only model maintaining sub-700 W RMSE on every split, whereas all five benchmarks degrade sharply under chronological and external evaluation (e.g., SVM 2225 → 5198 W; Decision Tree 7440 → 8058 W; DNN 1576 → 2576 W). The persistence of test/external RMSE below the training RMSE on data never used during model construction empirically rules out data leakage as a cause of the high accuracy. These results demonstrate that the proposed, interpretable neuro-fuzzy framework offers a robust and accurate tool for PV power estimation in building-integrated systems, supporting smart energy management and improved performance of energy-intensive built environments.

The historic Jewish Purification House Bet Tahara was erected in Olsztyn in 1913 on the basis of the debut design of Erich Mendelsohn, a world-famous architect born in Olsztyn. The most valuable element of the building is a self-supporting pyramid vault above a mourning hall. The paper presents the interesting structure of the building, its technical condition before renovation, as well as the scope of work involved in adapting it into a public utility building - MENDELSOHN HOUSE Intercultural Dialogue Centre. The undertaking was executed thanks to the commitment of the building’s leaseholder - “Borussia” Cultural Community Association, which raised money for this goal from public funds.

Since the relative weight of form to function has been increasing in urban planning, from the esthetic viewpoint, many cities in the world have been actively pursuing the undergrounding of overhead utility lines. Esthetic factors are urban externalities in the sense that they are not directly traded in markets. Therefore, we need to control them optimally based on their benefits. In this study, we appraise the benefits of undergrounding utility lines in Japan and clarify the dependency of the residents’ willingness to pay (WTP) on the road width and building height. Our results show that the WTP for undergrounding utility lines is lower as the road becomes wider and the buildings along the road become higher. However, when the road is wide, the WTP does not change much regardless of the height of the buildings. In addition, the average value of the benefit–cost ratios of previous undergrounding projects is from approximately 2.27 to 2.65. However, 3–17% of these projects have benefit–cost ratios of less than 1.

This chapter reviews the Android Studio menu items and tools and explores questions one might have about why and when to use or access them. It focuses on code refactoring with Android Studio and Live Templates. The Android Studio menu lists the main menu items, which provide access to updates and window management, along with the hide, quit, and show options. The most important item in this menu is Preferences, which one may need to access many times to configure Android Studio. The File menu gives one access to file operations such as saving a file, adding a new file, selecting templates, opening existing files, and closing a project folder. The Code menu provides access to functions to easily generate code snippets, arrange code lines, add block comments, access Live Templates, add getters and setters, and similar activities. The chapter concludes with a focus on Android Studio's APK building utilities.

With the scientific and technical support of construction, reconstruction of buildings, structures and unique objects, the issue of assessing the development of deformation processes in newly erected elements, in buildings of surrounding buildings, underground utilities falling into the zone of influence of construction and transport infrastructure facilities is very acute. This task is now being successfully solved by combined methods using traditional geodetic methods and laser scanning using high-precision total stations with the ability to scan.