Improving the overall performance of residential buildings means exploring and understanding users’ needs, expectations and aspirations, as these greatly affect human comfort, health and well-being. This paper investigates thermal comfort conditions, based on quantitative measurements of typical residential multi-story apartment buildings in Palestine, and a qualitative survey of inhabitants’ satisfaction with the indoor environment of their apartments. From these data, average perceived comfort indices (APCI) were calculated. The survey shows that inhabitants of each building have different comfort conditions, especially in summer, according to the orientation of the space. Sunshine, air exchange and temperature are perceived as the most influential parameters for apartment comfort. Although the APCI shows a good level of comfort globally, most inhabitants very often feel hot in summer, mainly during the day, and cold in winter, mainly at night. Measurements confirm that inside air temperature always remains below 16°C in winter, below the comfort level. In summer, it remains between 25 and 32°C, outside the comfort zone. The perceived comfort level seems more related to the inhabitants’ feeling of powerlessness than to real thermal conditions.
Purpose
This study aims to evaluate the current state of sustainability education and research capacity at engineering faculties. More specifically, this research is intended to provide new and much-needed information about sustainability knowledge, teaching and research activities.
Design/methodology/approach
The first method used is a questionnaire survey completed by teachers and researchers about their activities dealing with sustainability and the second is based on a systematic literature review at the SCOPUS database for scientific publications on sustainability by Palestinian universities in the Palestinian context, and the number of publications in fields related to sustainability in Scopus indexed journals.
Findings
Some institutions include more sustainability topics in their teaching courses and research activities than others. The number of courses per teaching staff and department and the sustainability contents vary among the selected universities. Teaching activities focus on environmental sustainability, especially on energy, thermal and water efficiency. The number of Scopus indexed publications in fields related to sustainability in the past 20 years is low. The highest number of published papers was those focused on environmental sustainability.
Practical implications
This study has implications for university researchers and educators by identifying the gaps between the teaching and research conducted and the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. For policymakers, the study shows that the status of sustainability in higher education, mainly at engineering schools, is still in great need for universities’ and government’s support, for example, to increase the number of published papers, number of courses and master programmes addressing sustainability.
Originality/value
This paper provides a current status for integrating sustainability education and research at engineering schools. The output of this study can be useful for future research to analyse higher education institutions’ impacts on sustainable development.
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