The Sustainable Smart Urbanism Lab is a research initiative in the University of Bahrain founded in 2019. The lab is led by multi-disciplinary Assistant Professors at the department along Research assistants and external international collaborators
Mission
The research lab seeks to fulfil Bahrain’s future vision for sustainability through its intensive research on the quality, processes and impact of the designed built environment. Our research and collaborations with the industry is to explore smart and sustainable design methodologies, materials, and spaces. Furthermore, the lab focuses on technological interventions in urban areas to achieve sustainable habitats. Our work also focuses on urban liveability and monitors change in urban environments and we aspire to evaluate smart city intervention plans in relation to the wellbeing of urban communities.
Vision
The Sustainable Smart Urbanism Lab seeks to explore, co-design and promote sustainable and smart built environments.
Services
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Review strategic sustainable plans of regional projects and cities and compare them to international standards
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Research problems within smart cities and provide short and long-term solutions to current urbanism challenges.
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Design and test smart technologies and manufacturing strategies for smart and sustainable cities.
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Research and document sustainable and smart initiates and publish results in international conferences and journals.
Aims
- To design and demonstrate digital interventions to improve urban liveability.
- To facilitate multidisciplinary sustainable smart cities conversations that traverse university and urban policies.
- To design and evaluate new design solutions to support well-being and quality of life, healthy living, behaviour change and lifestyles in home environments, at work, and in cities.
- To build multidisciplinary teams to better understand cities as complex systems, and employ the richly available “big data” on urban systems to design and plan for resilient, sustainable, productive and equitable cities.
Current Topics
- Visual Discomfort and Architecture
- Sustainable and smart design education
- Sustainability Assessment Tools
- Smart Cities
- Hybrid Crafts
Our Publication
- Visual Discomfort Health Concerns in the Future Cities of the Arabian Gulf: Case of Bahrain
- 2016 Al Khalifa, F. (2016). Achieving Urban Sustainability in the Island City of Bahrain: University Education, Skilled Labor, and Dependence on Expatriates. Urban Island Studies, 2, 95-120.
- 2017 Al Khalifa, F. (2017). In Urban Sustainability: Towards a civilized Sustainable Bahrain. Gulf News, Al Nisr Publishing, p.9. Available at: http://www.akhbar-alkhaleej.com/source/14256/pdf/3-MAIN/9.pdf.
- 2017 Al Khalifa, F. (2017). Autonomy in Architectural Education: A Bahrain Prespective. Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, 11(2), 24–33.
- 2018 Al Khalifa, F. (2018). Hope, utopia, and creativity in higher education: pedagogical tactics for alternative futures. Journal of Higher Education Research & Development. http://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1467589[/bsf-info-box]
- 2018 Al khalifa, F. (2018). Bahrain World Trade Center: an Environmental Experimental Design. In S. N. Samman (Ed.), Human Factors and Ergonomics for the Gulf Cooperation Council: Processes, Technologies, and Practices. London & New York: CRC Press.
- 2018 Al-Khalifa, F. A. (2018) ‘International Sustainability Rating Tools: A Methodology for Adoption to Local Contexts’, in Sustainability and Resilience Conference: Mitigating Risks and Emergency Planning. KnE Engineering, pp. 274–297. doi: 10.18502/keg.v3i7.3109.
- 2018 Alkhalifa, F., Almurbati, N., Silva, J. P. and Wilkins, A. (2018) ‘Visual Discomfort Health Concerns in the Future Cities of the Arabian Gulf: Case of Bahrain’, in Sustainability and Resilience Conference: Mitigating Risks and Emergency Planning. KnE Life Sciences, pp. 128–138. doi: 10.18502/kls.v4i6.3096.
- 2019 Alkhalifa, F. A. (2019) ‘Adaptation of international sustainability rating tools to Bahrain: A comparative analysis of eleven systems’, Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, Vol. 13 Issue: 1, pp.169-193, https://doi.org/10.1108/ARCH-12-2018-0022.
Our Latest Updates
Our Team
