Towards Implementation of Sustainability Concepts in Developing Countries

Chaham Alalouch is an architect, researcher and educator with a background in urbanism. He writes and speaks on how to improve people's quality of life through sustainable and smart built environment. He holds a Ph.D. from Heriot-Watt University (HWU), UK; and a PG Dip. in Architectural Design; and B.Sc. in Architectural Engineering from the University of Aleppo, Syria. His research was awarded the MacFarlane Prize by HWU, and the Highly Commended Award by the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence, UK. In 2019, he received the Distinguished Academician Award from Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited a large number of peer-reviewed articles, technical reports, and books covering a wide range of topics, including the sustainable and smart design and construction of buildings and cities. He is involved in the Oman Eco House project and currently undertaking research in architectural pedagogy and the "livability" of eco-architecture. He is also one of the editors of the Springer book series: Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation. He has held invited talks and keynote speeches at international conferences in Spain and Italy. He serves as a reviewer for several respected journals, and has reviewed papers for various international conferences. He currently works at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman.
Cristina Piselli received her master's degree in Building Engineering - Architecture from the University of Perugia, Italy, in 2014, and her Ph.D. in Energy and Sustainable Development from the University of Perugia, Italy, in 2018. She is currently a research fellow at CIRIAF - Interuniversity Research Centre on Pollution and Environment "Mauro Felli", Department of Engineering, at the same university, where she is a member of the EAP Lab (Environmental Applied Physics Laboratory) team, investigating building energy efficiency and, specifically, dynamic analysis of building energy performance, occupant behaviour, human comfort in the built environment, urban heat island mitigation, and energy systems.
Francesco Cappa is a post-doctoral researcher at the "ReBooT - Research Centre in Business Transformation" and at the "Centre for Research in Leadership, Innovation, and Organization", LUISS Guido Carli University, Italy. He holds a Ph.D. in Management from LUISS Guido Carli University and, during his Ph.D. studies, was a visiting researcher at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering (USA) and Pace University Seidenberg School of Computer Science (USA). His main research interests are in areas of crowd involvement, with a particular focus on innovation and sustainability issues. His papers have been published in Research Policy, Business Horizons, Computers in Human Behaviour, Journal of Environmental Management, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Sustainability, PloS One, and Energy.