[Special Issue] Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation and Thermal Comfort

🌿 Can nature-based solutions deliver measurable thermal comfort improvements in real buildings and cities under real climate stress?

We often assume that green roofs, living walls, urban trees, and blue-green infrastructure make cities cooler and more resilient. But how strong is the evidence?

Do we have long-term observations, validated models, and reusable datasets demonstrating their performance across seasons and during heatwaves? Or are nature-based solutions sometimes adopted as a recurring design trend without sufficient measurement of their actual impacts?

Invited by Daniel Sánchez García, and together with Alberto Cerezo Narváez , María Rico Delgado and Shady Attia, I am pleased to serve as Guest Editor of the Special Issue:

📗 “Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation and Thermal Comfort in Buildings and Urban Spaces”

Our ambition is straightforward: solid science, not slogans.We welcome studies that examine nature-based solutions across both building and urban scales, particularly research addressing:

• Indoor and outdoor thermal comfort supported by measurements or validated models • Green roofs, living walls, and green façades evaluated across seasons • Urban vegetation assessed through biometeorological and microclimatic indicators • Climate-change scenarios applied to buildings, streets, and public spaces • Passive cooling performance during extreme heat and heatwaves • Interactions among shading, evapotranspiration, airflow, energy use, and human comfort • Transparent methods, reproducible workflows, and datasets that others can compare and reuse

The important question is not simply whether nature-based solutions can reduce temperature. We need to understand where they work, by how much, for whom, under which climatic conditions, and whether their benefits remain reliable during extreme events.

A strong thematic collection can bring fragmented evidence together, connect building science with urban climatology, and help translate research findings into better design and climate-adaptation decisions.

If you have a rigorous, quantitative, and relevant manuscript, we would be pleased to consider it.

📆 Submission deadline: October 31, 2026

📨 APC support: Authors requiring an APC waiver or reduction may contact the Assistant Editor, Ms. Joy Yang, at joy.yang@mdpi.com. Requests are evaluated individually.

🔗 Special Issue https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/9S4JP46TSA

📚 Learn more about our research: https://www.sbd.uliege.be/

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