More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and this figure is expected to increase. The worldwide trend is in the direction of urbanization. Building sustainable cities is one of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) initiated by United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. In the anthropocene of human induced climate change, what makes a city sustainable? This paper takes Beijing as the case study, uses building smart infrastructures and lowering ecological footprints as the main thread, uses a mixed research method of questionnaires, interviews and site survey, and discusses four aspects -- transportation, waste management, green spaces and energy saving buildings -- from employees’ perspectives of how to a build a sustainable city. This paper also discusses the relations between smart infrastructure and the resilience of a city, and relations between lowering ecological footprints and a green city, and draws a conclusion that a resilient and green city is a sustainable city. We can build a sustainable Beijing only through vigorously developed public transportation, well managed waste, the development of diversified green spaces, and buildings that efficiently use natural resources as energy supplies.

The doctoral thesis pays attention to the system approach to the nonstationary computational modelling of heat transfer for energy saving buildings. The created computational tool supports the optimization of selected design parameters.

Human efforts to increase their comfort rise in density of population in congested city areas, rapid growth of traffic and electric smog created due to constantly transforming communication technologies all resulted in an increase of stress in the immediate human environment. All of this, along with frequent reports about changes in global climate, gradually contributes to an alteration of thinking of the whole society, which is forced to face the consequences of economic damages caused by climatic changes. If we want to tenably assert adequate economic and social living conditions, we have to approach the natural environment in a more profound way. In accordance with the trend of substantional development for the purpose of enhancement of the quality of the living environment in the field of building industry, it is logical to concentrate on buildings, which are conceptually focused on saving of the energy. That is on energy-efficient houses. Pathway to sustainable building is not based on discovering one or several multipurpose technological solutions, but on usage of new designing principles, new materials and methods of processing them as well as new techniques of construction. For an effective creation of a building concept it is essential to have that kind of device which quickly responds to changes performed on a design, enables an easier work on variants and produces the most accurate results. Consistent application of energy optimizing methods is necessary particularly for designs of energy saving houses. Beginning efficient building design is the most “abstract factor of concept linked with very uncertain inputs,” because a lot of parameters in that moment is still unknown. Many mutually connected factors are invoked during designing passive house e.g. trajectory of the sun and the shielding effect of the surroundings, the aspect of sunlight and interior lighting, power quality construction, etc. Currently, the architect has no choice, he can use only well-known precepts, such as large windows are facing the South not the North. Unfortunately this "empirical formula" for the design of a real passive house is not enough. And yet the first draft of the house is most affected by not only its shape, form, but user´s comfortable, cost, feasibility and future energy behavior of buildings and related operating costs of the house too. It is obvious that this stage should not be underestimated, because “minor variation of the initial inputs greatly influence the outcomes.” With this reasoning, the work focuses on early stage design decision, i.e. the architectural concept of a passive house (an idea, vision). Therefore the aim of this work is to simplify the issue into understandable form, i.e. the creation of relatively simple and illustrative sketches, which generalize the issue satisfactorily, show the individual parameters (glazing, shading, shape, size, etc.) and change need of heat for heating passive house. The results of the work will be useful when the architect picks up the pencil and starts to think about his future house. At this point, he will have on hand sketches, which give him an idea and streamline his further design. Therefore the main goal is to create new outcomes and identify energy behaviour of buildings with a computational tool. This research works with virtual idealized mathematical model in the software PHPP 2007 CZ and uses "phenomenon" of parametric equations and sensitivity analysis.