
www.buildingsandcities.org/insights/news/pcs-series.html
Can the construction and property industries implement innovative practices and technologies to improve building performance and thermal comfort?
This series of perspectives considers personal comfort systems: decentralized building thermal control, in which occupants control their local environments with personal devices while the amount of central space conditioning (HVAC) is scaled back.
Personal Comfort Systems have been shown to improve thermal satisfaction and reduce energy demand. So why hasn't it been implemented? What are the barriers preventing its adoption? What can be done to overcome this?
In the context of the climate and energy crises, clothing can reduce the energy demand associated with thermal comfort.
Part of a a new series on Personal Comfort Systems: How barriers to this promising approach can be overcome.
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.