www.buildingsandcities.org/about/rihab-khalid.html
Rihab Khalid
Dr Rihab Khalid is an interdisciplinary, socio-technical researcher specialising in problem-driven and human-centred research in sustainable energy, climate and housing infrastructure. She primarily investigates the intersections between gender equity, energy access, and spatial justice in architecture and urban spaces in the Global South, operating at the nexus of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals 5, 7 and 11.
She has been working as the Isaac Newton Trust Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK these past three years, and currently serves as a climate science advisor at ECIU and gender specialist for the UNDP in Asia and Pacific region.
Latest Commentaries
Remote Sensing for Urban Development Policies
At the 2026 Sustainable Buildings and Construction Summit Magnus Andersson, David Muthui & Reza Roodaki (Malmö University) argued that remote sensing should be a core evidence infrastructure for sustainable urban governance. Satellite derived and geospatial analysis can observe and monitor urban expansion, densification, land consumption, building form and material demand across jurisdictions and over time. A shift from two-dimensional to three-dimensional sensing and analysis provides new data to inform policies for housing, land-use efficiency, disaster exposure, public space, resource efficiency and resilient construction.
Disaster Reconstruction: Practitioner Insights Improve Outcomes
Regan Potangaroa (Auckland University of Technology - AUT), Kelvin Zuo (Massey University), Suzanne Wilkinson (AUT) explain why experience-led knowledge from the field, when triangulated with contemporaneous documentation, can constitute evidence for understanding post-disaster reconstruction systems. People working within reconstruction environments (engineers, builders, logisticians and community actors) provide crucial observations about how reconstruction systems function in practice, particularly supply chains, material flows, procurement and governance in post-disaster rebuilding. Integrating this knowledge can lead to better outcomes.