Assessing risk and resilience in the built environment requires a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic interactions between physical spaces and their users across multiple scales. The study aims to develop a framework to support such assessments by identifying and structuring quantitative Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for evaluating risk and resilience in the built environment. The study combines expert engagement and desk review to identify key factors influencing risk and resilience. It considers a wide range of hazards—both climate-related (e.g., floods, droughts, heat waves) and non-climate-related (e.g., earthquakes)—and examines their impacts on people, buildings, infrastructure, cultural heritage, and urban and territorial systems. Grounded in international guidelines and validated by experts, the proposed set of KPIs enables systematic assessment across scales, user groups, and systems. The KPIs cover risk components such as hazard, exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, as well as resilience qualities including robustness, rapidity, resourcefulness, and redundancy. Furthermore, the framework incorporates multiple resilience dimensions—environmental, economic, physical, digital, organisational, and human health and well-being—addressing critical gaps in existing assessment tools. By measuring both vulnerability characteristics and resilience qualities of built environment assets, the framework provides actionable insights to inform policies, planning strategies, and project design. This study contributes to advancing integrated and evidence-based approaches for disaster risk reduction and climate resilience, offering a tool to support decision-makers, designers, and practitioners in evaluating current conditions and shaping future development or regeneration pathways.

Earth is one of the oldest and till now intensively used natural building material. Around 30% of the world population still lives or works in buildings constructed out of earth. Most of them dwell in simple huts of rural communities or traditionally hand-crafted buildings. However, a growing number of people looking for healthy, environmentally friendly buildings in so called developed societies experience benefits of earthen construction materials. Due to the hygrothermal potential of clay, these benefits of earthen constructions include evaporative cooling during cooling periods and stable relative humidity levels indoors during the heating season. In addition, earthen building materials may contribute to the urgently needed circular economy, as earthen constructions like earth blocks or earth dry boards are reusable and earth plasters and mortars are replasticisable through the addition of water, as long as no chemical binder is added. Research gaps regarding physical properties, missing standardisation concerning building law and modern construction methods, and a limited number of manufacturers are hindering a wide application of earthen construction worldwide. Meanwhile, new digital production techniques evolve, which may elicit the potential of earth as future building material. Therefore, this Ten Questions article presents the state-of-the art and research gaps related to earth as building material in light of the potential of new digital production techniques like robotic fabrication or additive manufacturing. Such discussion includes new opportunities to combine the natural performance of the material with future-oriented construction systems and a new growing circular economy.

Additive production techniques such as 3D printing and robotics enable new production methods and possible uses for earth, as one of the most ancient building materials in the building industry. This study examines the potential of different building elements and components and their possible combinations made of or containing earthen building products. In addition to the 3D printing of lightweight, highly insulating external and heavy internal wall elements and load-bearing rammed earth walls for use as inner and outside walls are compared. Furthermore, the activation of the walls with water-based heating and cooling elements is taken into consideration. In particular, the sensitivity of earth to humidity and water has a positive effect on all life cycle phases from production through operation as a low-tech building to the end of use, i.e. the reuse as well as the possible return to natural cycles. The focus of the study is to assess the building material earth in light of modern production methodologies, the impact on indoor comfort and indoor air quality as well its life cycle assessment.

Literature sets personal control over indoor environmental conditions in relation to the gap between predicted and actual energy use, the gap between predicted and observed user satisfaction, and health aspects. A focus on building energy performance often leads to the proposal of more automated and less occupant control of the indoor environment. However, a high degree of personal control is desirable because research shows that a low degree (or no) personal control highly correlates with indoor environmental dissatisfaction and sick building syndrome symptoms. These two tendencies seem contradictory and optimisation almost impossible. Based on current efficiency classes describing the effect of room automation systems on building energy use during operation, fundamental thoughts related to thermophysiology and control, recent laboratory experiments, important lessons learnt from post-occupancy studies, and documented conceptual frameworks on the level of control perceived, we discuss the ambivalence of personal control and how much personal control is adequate. Often-proposed solutions ranging from fully automated controls, over manual controls to dummy controls are discussed according to their effect on a) building energy use during operation and b) occupants perceived control. The discussion points to the importance of adequate personal control. In order to meet the goals for nearly zero energy buildings and for a human-centric design, there is the need to establish design procedures for adequate personal control as part of the design process.