Over the last decade, rapidly growing world energy consumption is leading to supply difficulties, exhaustion of fossil energy resources, and global environmental deterioration. More than one-third of energy expenditure is attributable to buildings. Urbanization is intensifying these trends with tighter spatial interrelationships among buildings. This is escalating building energy consumption due to the mutual impact of buildings on each other and, as a result, exacerbating Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects. I sought solutions to this significant engineering issue from nature, and discovered a similar heat island effect in flowers, namely the micro-greenhouse effect. However, a special cooling effect has been observed in a peculiar temperate flower, Galanthus nivalis, which generates cooler intrafloral temperatures. In this research, I studied the special retro-reflectance of the flower petals, which has been suggested as a possible contributor to this cooling effect, and implemented a bio-inspired retro-reflective pattern for building envelopes. I conducted cross-regional energy simulation of building networks in a dynamic simulation environment in order to examine its thermal-energy impact. I found that building surface temperatures dropped considerably when neighboring buildings were retrofitted with my bio-inspired retro-reflective facade. I concluded that my bio-inspired retro-reflective pattern for building envelopes; (1) lessens the reflected heat of solar radiation in spatially-proximal buildings leading to reduced UHI, and (2) reduces the energy required for cooling and, therefore, energy consumption. The research has further implications and contributions on building design, urban planning, development of retro-reflective technology, and environmental conservation. / Master of Science

Cities occupy 2% of the earth's surface, and yet consume 75% of the world's resources. As a major contributor to rapidly growing global energy expenditures, urban buildings are often designed and operated inefficiently despite their significant contributions to carbon emissions, triggering environmental deterioration locally and worldwide. Moreover, ongoing industrialization and urbanization pose challenges for achieving a more sustained and resilient built environment. The goal of this PhD research is to advance our understanding of urban building networks' thermal-energy dynamics in order to achieve sustainable energy conservation in the built environment. Considering buildings as networks rather than as stand-alone entities highlights the inextricably linked and interwoven relationship between urban micro-climates and buildings. With this approach, I strive to explore, mitigate, and optimize the mutual influences of the Inter-Building Effect (IBE) in dense urban settings through numerical and empirical analyses. My research also draws inspiration for investigating solutions to complex engineering problems from nature, as I seek to understand synergies between building and biological systems to discover innovative connections and integrate biology to transform buildings through sustainable building network designs. This dissertation contains three interdependent projects to explore, mitigate and optimize the IBE, respectively. I first developed a systematic approach to separately assess the complex interactions that constitute the IBE in dense urban settings and conducted cross-regional analyses in a dynamic simulation environment. Having disaggregated, quantified and understood the effects of mutual shading and mutual reflection within a network of buildings, I then, in the second project, examined different measures to mitigate the negative IBE impact under certain circumstances (e.g. directional reflective optical properties of building facades and thermal storage technologies). These two projects extended prior work that examined the potential for a biological system retroreflective surface to reduce IBE in urban building networks. Therefore, in my third project, I introduced a broad framework that draws parallels between natural and built environment systems through a levels-of-organization perspective leading to the search for an optimal status of the IBE. Inspired from a self-regulating phenomenon of plant density, I presented and discussed an approach to determine optimal urban building network density as an example for how this framework can support cross-level assessment. The findings expand and deepen our understanding of the IBE and provide insights on the strategies to mitigate the negative mutual impact within dense urban building networks. This research contributes a unique and holistic perspective on the interdependencies in the urban building network system. To design density-optimal building networks will become increasingly important to sustainable urban development and smart growth as clusters of dense urban settings continue to grow due to rapid urbanization and population migration in the next few decades. / Ph. D.

La presenta Tesis Doctoral encuentra su ámbito de aplicación en redes de acceso ópticas de fibra hasta el hogar o FTTH (del inglés fibre-to-the-home). Las redes FTTH han sido ampliamente desplegadas en todo el mundo y se prevé que evolucionen hasta arquitecturas de multiplexación por división en longitud de onda o WDM(dle inglés wavelength division multiplexing). Conforme los requerimientos de capacidady ancho de banda por usuario para servicios de comunicación de banda ancha se incrementan continuamente, tecnologías tales como hybrid wireless-optical, radio de banda ultra ancha o UWB(del inglés ultra-wideband), y radio de onda milimétrica se están investigando como soluciones viables para proporcionar tasas de datos excediendo Gigabit por segundo por usuario. Las redes híbridas inalámbrico-óptico pueden proporcionar backhaul más simple y se prevé que desempeñen un papel importante en redes de acceso de próxima generación que requerirán despliegue flexible, alta capacidad, habilidad de ampliación, escalable en número de usuarios y demanda, y factible económicamente. Las técnicas radio sobre fibra combinadas con sistemas inalámbricos multigigabit que proporcionen capacidades comparables a sistemas de comunicaciones de fibra óptica se ve como una solución rápidamente desplegable y efectiva en coste para proporcionar acceso transparente cableado/inalámbrico integrado a servicios de banda ancha para el usuario final. Los sistemas inalámbricos UWB y de onda milimétrica son capaces de proporcionar comunicaciones multigigabit. UWB en particular permite un uso eficiente del esprectro 3.1-10.6 GHz debido a sus características únicas de coexistencia y tiene madurez de mercado. Sin embargo, la tecnología UWB está restringida por regulación en todo el mundo. Esta restricción de regulación hace de gran interés a la radio de onda milimétrica en 60 GHz debido al aproximadamente 7 GHz de ancho de banda regulado consistentemente en todo el mundo, sin restricciones de coexistencia. / Beltrán Ramírez, M. (2012). Photonic Techniques for Next-Generation Integrated Optical Networks Based on Ultra-Wideband Radio / Técnicas Fotónicas para Redes Ópticas Integradas de Próxima Generación Basadas en Radio de Banda Ultra Ancha [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/15576 / Palancia