Zhonghua Gou

Wuhan University | WHU · School of Urban Design

Assessing BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaic) potential is of great significance for the comprehensive promotion and deployment of solar energy. Traditional models mostly rely on morphological parameters for PV potential assessment, presenting challenges such as subjective knowledge of urban forms and difficulty in generalization within dense u...

To address office vacancy and housing shortages, adaptive transformations of office buildings into residential spaces are proposed. While renovating old office buildings is prioritized, energy and socio-economic feasibility assessments are lacking. This study fills the research gap by using building performance simulations to create over 500 models...

The accuracy of occupancy and energy-consuming equipment schedules significantly influences building energy simulations. Existing standards provide generalized schedules that do not fully capture variations across different office building types and periods. This study utilizes questionnaire data from office buildings across four Chinese cities to...

In the face of global climate warming, outdoor thermal comfort in urban settings is increasingly critical. However, accurately predicting residents' thermal perceptions during outdoor activities remains challenging due to complex environmental dynamics. This study introduces a human-centered digital twin framework that integrates physiological data...

Harnessing energy surpluses and technological advances from positive energy buildings (PEBs) within a community offers a logical transition pathway from PEBs to positive energy communities (PECs). This study proposes a set of reasonable performance indicators (KPIs) for streamlining site planning assessments based on existing PEBs, aiming to transi...

The complexity of urban form can have a significant impact on the utilization of solar energy. While numerous studies have examined the influence of urban form on solar potential, the optimization of solar energy use in cities located at high latitudes remains a challenging subject. In this study, we focus on the high-latitude city of Glasgow, usin...

In the midst of a global energy crisis, fuel poverty has become increasingly prevalent. This study examines the effectiveness of energy efficiency retrofits (EERs) in alleviating fuel poverty in the United Kingdom. Using the England fuel poverty dataset with XGBoost and interpretive analyses like Individual Conditional Expectation (ICE) and SHapley...

With the rapid growth of cloud computing, the number of data centers (DCs) continuously increases, leading to a high-energy consumption dilemma. Cooling, apart from IT equipment, represents the largest energy consumption in DCs. Passive design (PD) and active design (AD) are two important approaches in architectural design to reduce energy consumpt...

This study investigated the climatic risks and vulnerabilities of informal settlements in the Global South, as well as the extent to which these risks impact the vulnerabilities. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2009 methodology and deductive content analysis, this study critically examined 69 do...

Environmental perception is a key indicator for evaluating green space preference and satisfaction. The shift in urban green space research towards emphasizing human benefits over functionality has caused a gradual increase in the number of articles on green space perception in recent years. Studying the relationship between the vegetation landscap...

In this study, an evaluation framework for retrofitting traditional electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) into photovoltaic-energy storage-integrated charging stations (PV-ES-I CSs) to improve green and low-carbon energy supply systems is proposed. Using existing EVCSs in the “10-minute living circle residential areas” of seven central urban d...

The popularity of urban parks with smart facilities is increasing, driven by technological advancements. However , existing research focuses on passive perceptions and lacks comprehensive insights into the dynamic relationships between smart park services and user interaction. To address this gap, this study aims to discuss classification standards...

Ceiling fans have been promoted as an alternative cooling technique to save energy, while their adoptions in the residential sector have yet to be investigated. This study analysed the adoption of ceiling fans in residential buildings and compared their energy-saving potential with that of airconditioning in Building Sustainability Index (BASIX) ce...

The increasing energy demand in commercial buildings has led to the adoption of photovoltaic (PV) systems as a viable solution. However, the gap between energy consumption and PV capacity in commercial buildings remains uncertain, and there is limited research on the potential for energy storage in different commercial building types. This study ut...

In recent years, the urgency to address climate challenges has driven the need to achieve net-zero carbon goals by 2050. The construction industry, as a major contributor to carbon emissions, plays a vital role in achieving this target. While numerous net-zero energy building approaches have been proposed globally, there is limited comparative rese...

The spread of COVID-19 and corresponding government interventions have changed residents' travel and mobility, and recent academic literatures suggests that this have had a positive impact on rural recreation. This study analyzed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural recreation from the perspective of population mobility, aiming to explore t...

This study examines the potential of green roofs and solar roofs to contribute to sustainable development in cities. While previous research has focused on individual locations and small-scale studies, this study takes a broader approach by comparing the current state of these roof types in 26 global cities. By analyzing the relationship between ci...

This study aims to examine the impact of land use variations on carbon emissions by incorporating the development of photovoltaics as a scenario. To meet this end, we investigate the carbon emissions fluctuations resulting from different development scenarios: natural development, low-carbon strategies, and widespread adoption of photovoltaic techn...

Occupant behavior plays a crucial role in enhancing indoor thermal comfort and achieving energy efficiency by influencing the operational modes of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems as well as windows. However, accurately quantifying the impact of occupant behavior on the indoor environment presents significant challenges in...

The morphology of urban areas plays a crucial role in determining solar potential, which directly affects photovoltaic capacity and the achievement of net-zero outcomes. This study focuses on the City of Melbourne to investigate the utilization of solar energy across different urban densities and proposes optimized morphologies. The analysis encomp...

Global warming and the urban heat island effect have led to a decline in the quality of urban open spaces. Although many studies have been conducted on the thermal environment of urban open spaces, there is a lack of a detailed analysis of the time dimension. This study is to propose a method for analyzing long-term time series data on thermal envi...

Buildings have undergone a significant transformation in their energy role, from consumers to prosumers and now to flexumers-a concept that signifies the flexible nature of modern buildings in the energy domain. However, existing research lacks a comprehensive definition of the transformative features of flexumers, as well as limited knowledge abou...

Achieving net-zero energy (NZE) in buildings involves laying down photovoltaics (PV) over large building areas, and the issue of dissipating surplus PV capacity has been a challenge. With the popularity of electric vehicles (EVs), parking lots attached to buildings offer such a possible solution. In order to assess the possibility of applying PV su...

Due to COVID-19, the urban lockdown has caused a significant impact on the mental health of residents. However, limited research investigates the role of neighborhood factors on residents' mental health during and after the lockdown. This study examines Wuhan, the first city to experience the COVID-19 outbreak, employing multiple linear regression...

Background The health of office workers has become a major concern under the pressure of increasingly fierce job competition. As countries have gradually promoted healthy buildings, there is an urgent need to create and construct healthy office environments. Although the WELL Building Standard proposed management and design strategies based on the...

The metro transportation network in large cities is one of the most important factors affecting urban spatial structure. To further understand the role of a metro network in the optimization of an urban spatial structure, the panel data of 10 main districts in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 are selected for the study of Wuhan's metro network. The...

In the context of climate change and rural revitalization, numerous solar photovoltaic (PV) panels are being installed on village roofs and lands, impacting the enjoyment of the new rural landscape characterized by PV panels. However, the visual acceptance of PV panels in rural areas of China is not yet fully understood. This study aims to identify...

The photovoltaic-energy storage-integrated charging station (PV-ES-I CS), as an emerging electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, plays a crucial role in carbon reduction and alleviating distribution grid pressure. To promote the widespread adoption of PV-ES-I CS in urban residential areas (mainly EV parking and charging locations), this stud...

Urban air quality is a global concern, and while numerous studies have examined the impact of geography, climate, and urban development on air quality, few have considered the role of electric vehicles (EVs) in predictive models. Furthermore, little attention has been paid to the spatial heterogeneity of EVs. Given the rapid growth of the EV indust...

Green building development is a global strategic plan aimed at addressing environmental burdens and reducing energy consumption in the building sector. Currently, research does not adequately reveal the spatiotemporal patterns of green-certified building development and the factors that influence it. To address this gap, this study investigates the...

Passivhaus has gained recognition as a reliable solution for low-energy residential housing. However, existing studies lack comprehensive quantitative analysis of real-life cases, restricting the availability of evidence and experience from certified buildings. This study addresses this gap by examining the relationship between characteristics of c...

The decarbonization of urban energy systems relies heavily on Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) technology, which harnesses solar energy from building envelopes. While rooftops have been the focus of solar potential studies, walls also hold significant potential despite receiving less solar radiation. This study aims to quantify the solar pot...

Introduction Although governments have launched energy performance certification (EPC) programs to increase residential energy efficiency, residents’ perception and acceptance of these programs have been little studied. This study contextualizes residents’ intentions to participate in EPC programs in terms of their attributions to and attitudes tow...

Many studies have demonstrated the importance of green spaces in promoting human physical and mental health. However, traditional static green space assessment and planning methods with core indicators, such as green space ratio, cannot effectively assess an individual’s level of green space exposure. This study explores a method to calculate dynam...

Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) is a quasi-rigid composite engineered timber product that can assist the building industry in reducing embodied carbon emissions. The adoption of CLT in architectural design is of great importance to help to achieve China's dual carbon goals. This study aims to understand the factors and their effects on influencing arc...

Reducing school energy costs has become an important issue, while the energy saving should consider different school systems and student backgrounds. This study investigated the impact of student demographics on energy consumption in elementary and secondary schools and explores the difference of energy consumption in different types and levels of...

Airport buildings can significantly impact the environment throughout their life cycle. With over 40,000 existing numbers worldwide, airport buildings pose a serious threat that is unacknowledged either in the built environment or the aviation sector. This gap along with the lack of specific frameworks highlights the need for more airport-based res...

At present, the structural transformation of energy demand of public buildings in the post-pandemic era is not well known, and there is also a lack of fine-grained research on energy consumption pattern identification of public buildings. To fill this gap, this research used the electricity dataset of public buildings in Scotland, and applied Gauss...

COVID-19 has made working from home (WFH) a widely prevalent mode of work, resulting in highly complex changes of energy and water consumption in buildings. To understand these changes, this study applies the concept of water-energy nexus (WEN) in the analysis of energy and water data in residential and non-residential buildings in Ontario, Canada,...

The availability of the global thermal open database means that machine learning models have been increasingly applied in thermal comfort studies in order to understand the factors and mechanisms that affect human thermal sensation. Previous global database analyses focused less on classroom thermal comfort, however, and more on model accuracy,...

The negative effects of long working hours and shift work on the physical and mental health of blue-collar groups should not be underestimated. Under intense stress, they have limited time to access recreational green space, and their own health is thus affected. In this study, a conceptual model of recreational satisfaction among blue-collar worke...

Residents were suffering from climatic issues resulting from global warming and urban heat islands (UHI). Researchers have explored ways of mitigating these issues. They have discovered several factors that adjust micro-climate, including vegetation. Vegetation, especially trees, can significantly mitigate heat stress, often by providing canopied s...

Although rainwater tanks have been used in households to save water consumption, their performance is yet to be fully validated. This study analysed the rainwater tank adoption and water-saving performance of 239,269 households in NSW in Australia, via K-means, ANOVA, random forest, and linear regression methods. Four types of rainwater tanks were...

The high energy consumption of data centers (DCs) has become a global issue that needs to be addressed, and as a result, their development of green rating systems (GBRSs) has been widely emphasized. Although GBRSs have been the subject of many studies for various building types, there has been few studies for DCs. This is the first study to compreh...

With the rapid increase in urbanization and the number of residents living in high-rise apartment buildings, the quality of living environments in terms of the facility, safety and hygiene of high-rise housing has become an important topic. Although numerous studies have investigated occupant satisfaction through subjective assessment, only few stu...

Green buildings (GBs) and green spaces (GSs) play a key foundational role as important drivers of urban Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There have been many studies on the spatial distribution of GBs and GSs, but relevant studies exploring the spatial relationship between GBs and GSs are lacking. The research questions were: whether GBs are m...

The global spread of green roofs is becoming increasingly important in the context of increasing urbanization and climate change as they provide multiple benefits, including urban heat island effect (UHI) mitigation, stormwater retention and urban flood risk reduction. However, current research provides little insight into how green roofs are used...

Numerous studies have demonstrated that commercial activities have significantly reduced during COVID-19, while there are few studies disclosing the consequent impacts on the energy consumption of commercial buildings. This study explores the changes in energy consumption of different types of commercial buildings in Singapore under the impact of t...

People in outdoor areas suffer from more heat stress than indoors during warm seasons due to the lack of shelters or cooling facilities. This problem is pressing with urban heat island and continuous global warming. Researchers have explored various strategies for ameliorating thermal stress, coining the term ‘outdoor thermal environment (OTE)’ for...

Extant studies on urban morphology and solar energy potential have mainly focused on the overall urban (macro) level or the individual building (micro) level, mostly using traditional linear regression methods. This paper takes a typical mixed-use developed city, Adelaide, as an example and demonstrates a complete workflow (data collection, data pa...

In recent years, semi-outdoor space has become an important research subject in the field of thermal comfort. Overhead space located on the ground floor is a common type of semi-outdoor space in China’s Lingnan region with a hot and humid climate. Its thermal comfort has been scarcely studied. This study aims to reveal the importance and influencin...

The quality of residents’ lives have been negatively affected by problems resulting from global warming and urban heat island. Investigators have explored several ways to mitigate those problems. They found that vegetation (especially trees) and water surfaces played a significant role in the adjustments of climate. Sites with more vegetation and l...

The energy-efficient behaviour of occupants in residential buildings is critical to reducing the carbon emissions of buildings. However, it is not clear how to motivate occupants, especially the younger generation, who are considered to be more environmentally concerned than previous generations, to engage in energy-saving behaviour and increase th...

Although healthy building rating systems include health strategies in the building design and management, they insufficiently consider occupants' motivations to engage in and the execution of health strategies. This study aims 1) to classify the design and management strategies of healthy building rating systems according to occupants’ subjective m...

A growing number of studies have showed energy demand changes during COVID-19; this study aims to further disclose the impact of the restriction and easing policies on the energy consumption of public buildings where occupants’ usage and activities are regulated in response to the pandemic. This study analyzes half-hourly electricity consumption da...

The metro (or underground railways) has become a backbone in the transit systems of many cities. It has numerous externalities, such as ameliorating traffic congestion and enhancing nearby property prices. Previous studies extensively focused on the relationship between metro accessibility and property prices and obtained various interesting findin...

This research examines household energy technologies adopted in the past decade in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The examination addresses regional differences that need to be considered in the promotion of clean, renewable energy. The study analyses a longitudinal dataset (2011-2019) of Building-Sustainability-Index-certificated dwellin...

Airports are a vital part of the aviation infrastructure that promotes socio-economic development and environmental pollution. Arguably there are no mature green building rating tools for assessing the construction and operation of airports. There is a justified and imminent need for developing such a green rating tool for airports considering the...

Outdoor thermal comfort is significantly affected by climate, including macroclimate, local climate, and microclimate. However, the combined impacts of macroclimate and microclimate factors are less understood in previous thermal comfort studies. This paper employed 43 previously published studies to comprehensively explore the impacts of macro- an...

Bicycle-metro integration is an efficient method of solving the “last mile” issue around metro stations. Built environment is believed to have a significant effect on cycling behavior. However, transfer cycling around metro stations, as a specific type of cycling behavior, has often been overlooked in transport research. In addition, static context...

The evaluation of rooftop solar energy potential in cities has a fundamental role in the development and utilization of solar energy. The irradiance-based approach of evaluation is a repetitive calculation process combined with the complex geometry of urban forms. This research paper proposes a framework that utilizes urban streetscapes to quickly...

This study focused on thermal acceptability and related adaptive behavioral characteristics of university students in mixed-mode and natural ventilated classrooms. From October 2018 to January 2019, an indoor field investigation was carried out in a university in Beijing, which is located in the Cold Climate Zone of China. A total of 158 student vo...

Table of Content 04 Editorial: The Association Between Greenness, Health, and Well-Being in Urban Environments Zhonghua Gou, Ye Liu, Yi Lu and Wenjie Wu 06 Characterizing Horizontal and Vertical Perspectives of Spatial Equity for Various Urban Green Spaces: A Case Study of Wuhan, China Sanwei He, Yilin Wu and Lei Wang 17 Evaluating Cultural Ecosyst...

White-collar workers, with tremendous work pressure, excessive working hours, and poor physical condition, need green spaces not only to have physical exercise and social gatherings, but also to become closer to nature and to relieve stress for their mental health. In China, the 996 office schedule, working from 09:00 to 17:00 six days a week, has...

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.732876/full The collected articles address a wide range of critical issues, such as accessibility, environmental satisfaction, air pollution, social-cultural values, and ecosystems, which link urban greenness and urban residents’ health and wellbeing in multifaceted perspectives. Several art...

Although COVID-19 has significantly changed the higher educational sector, there are few studies revealing how this pandemic has changed the energy use of higher education buildings. This study was conducted not only to disclose the energy use change under COVID-19 but also to identify the corresponding facilities management strategies for future l...

Australia is one of the regions with the highest solar energy adoption rate per capita in the world. This study investigated the spatial distribution and related socioeconomic factors behind residential solar energy adoption. Residential solar panel installation data were collected for the 2,563 postal areas of Australia. Through spatial autocorrel...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and related social distancing measures have altered the daily lifestyles of people worldwide. Although studies on this disease are emerging rapidly, less is known about the impacts of COVID-19 and urban greenery on leisure-time physical activity, which is critical to maintain health for urban residen...

This study aims to determine the regional differences in household water technology adoption in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The study is based on the analysis of a longitudinal dataset (2011-2019) of Building Sustainability Index-certified dwelling units in metropolitan (n=167,883) and rural (n=100,675) areas. The sampled units adopted...

Various social distancing measures carried out in many cities worldwide during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic (COVID-19). These measures have led to decreased physical activity levels and higher health risks among urban populations. Strong evidence has been established that built environment characteristics can stimulate physical activity an...

Urban parks have well-documented health benefits for urban residents. To increase the use of parks and enhance the physical activity level of city-dwellers, recent studies have explored the link between the amount of greenery in parks and the level of park usage. However, the results have been inconsistent, partly due to different measurements of p...

Today, "walkability" is considered a critical component of an aging-friendly neighborhood. This study examined the relationships between the neighborhood physical environment, walkability, and physical activity levels of older residents in Singapore. Five neighborhoods notable for their "aging in place" strategies were selected for a site survey. A...

Purpose Aiming to find out how to incorporate green building into the architectural curriculum, this study aims to explore the psychological path for cultivating architectural students’ awareness and motivation to learn the green design concepts and related technologies. Design/methodology/approach Based on a global review of relevant architectura...

Although Australia has been successful in increasing the total number of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, the disparity of PV adoption among regions has raised concerns about energy justice. To understand the regional difference of PV adoption in relation to the socioeconomic variance, this research introduced a machine learning approach...

To understand the relationship between green building energy performance and regional commercial estates, this study analysed Australia’s Commercial Building Disclosure (CBD) program database. This database discloses the annual energy use intensity (EUI) and the corresponding energy rating (1–6 stars) of 2,460 National Australian Built Environment...

Purpose In the rise of offices designed to support activity-based working (ABW), parts of industry have fully transitioned to open-plan environments and then later to unassigned seating, whereas other parts, such as tertiary education, are still in the process of moving away from individual offices. There are a few relevant studies to understand ho...

With a strong commitment to sustainability, numerous universities set their carbon reduction targets, with the common measure being energy retrofitting of their campus buildings. Based on a complex understanding of the higher educational buildings’ energy consumption characteristics, this study addresses the role of the academic calendar that regul...

Trees have significant shading and cooling effects because of their crowns. This study investigated the cooling effects of their crown attribute on urban microclimate adjustment and thermal comfort improvement. These attributes included the ratio of crown diameter to branching position height (D/PH) and crown porosity, which were measured using the...

In building energy research, there is a lack of behavioral models for understanding energy consumption of large apartment buildings. This study aims to understand energy use characteristics and influential behavioral factors in the dormitory buildings, a type of large apartment buildings with dense occupancy condition. The study collected the month...

A green building has a long lasting benefit through cultivating the occupants' energy and resource-saving behaviours. To understand how green buildings can cultivate occupants' pro-environment behaviours, the research applied the value-belief-norm model to investigate 17 pro-environmental behaviours which are related to a variety of green building...

Trees have been found to have significant cooling effect on outdoor thermal environment. This study explores the characteristics of a tree component (crown) that accounts for a large portion of the cooling effect. A field measurement was conducted in the Gold Coast, Australia, which has a subtropical climate (Cfa), according to the Köppen climate c...

Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems have mushroomed worldwide in the last few decades. An enriched understanding of BRT capitalization effects is essential. Although the BRT accessibility effect on housing prices has been extensively explored, the effect of proximity to the BRT corridor (which may be related to unattractive landscape and noise pollutio...