Welcome to ISU Sustainable cities

We are an inter-disciplinary research team driven by a common goal of making our cities sustainable. Sustainable Cities project is currently funded by ISU PIIR (Presidential Initiative for Interdisciplinary Research).

Sustainable architecture requires integrating human behavior and decision-making about the built environment within an ever-larger range of spatial, political, and cultural contexts. In addition to building-occupant interaction, we are increasingly considering the roles of microclimate and social dynamics in supporting cities as they develop policies and incentives for improved energy utilization.

Blogs

Diba Malekpour Koupaei presents at 2019 SimAUD conference

20 Apr 2019 - Diba Malekpour Koupaei, PhD student in the Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering, presented the team’s research findings on the impact of occupancy schedules on energy consumption of residential neighborhoods at the 2019 Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD) at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta on April 8th. In her presentation, titled “A Technique for Developing High-Resolution Residential Occupancy Schedules for Urban Energy Models”, Malekpour showcased the team’s newest findings in term of using the energy-use survey results to enhance the accuracy of current energy modelling approaches. For more information about the conference, refer to: http://www.simaud.org/2019/program.php You can now access the full article from SimAUD proceedings, available at: http://www.simaud.org/proceedings/download.php?f=SimAUD2019_Proceedings_HiRes.pdf

Professor Ulrike Passe presents at 2019 C.A.T.E. Conference

20 Apr 2019 - Ulrike Passe, associate professor of architecture and director of the Iowa State University Center for Building Energy Research, was invited to lead a natural ventilation workshop at CATE 2019, Comfort at the Extremes: Energy, Economy, Climate conference April 10-11 at Heriot Watt University in Dubai, UAE. She also presented current research by her Sustainable Cities Research Group in the paper “Impact of trees on passive survivability in extreme heat events in warm and humid regions,” co-authored with Janette Thompson, Morrill Professor of natural resource ecology and management; Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, professor of mechanical engineering; and two doctoral students: Breanna Marmur, NREM, and Boshun Gao, mechanical engineering. Passe received a travel scholarship from the Charitable Jeffrey Cook Trust to attend the meeting, which was organized by the international NCEUB (Network for Comfort and Energy Use in Buildings) and brought together experts from across the world from fields as diverse as architecture, engineering and health sciences for the first time “to discuss crucial questions and ways forward on how to best provide Comfort at the Extremes in the complex political and economic environments we occupy.”

Sustainable Cities team members present at 2019 ISU Research Day

01 Apr 2019 - The Sustainable Cities Team was well represented at the 2019 ISU Research Day with informative presentations by team members Diba Malekpour-Koupaei (presenting 'A technique for developing High-resolution occupancy schedules'), Breanna Marmur (presenting, 'The Impact of Trees on Urban Climate, Neighborhoods and Building Energy in Warm and Humid Regions), and Ulrike Passe, who gave a a Lightning Talk about the team's progress in reaching it's research objectives, and future goal setting. Thank you for your hard work and for sharing our teams work!  

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