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This study aims to examine the challenges for green retrofitting implementation in existing residential buildings to lower the running cost and achieve a better energy-efficient system.

This study adopted a qualitative approach by interviewing conveniently selected 16 construction professionals, made up of architects, quantity surveyors and engineers. Data received were analysed using the content analysis method.

The findings revealed that the main barriers to incorporating green retrofitting in the existing residential buildings as the nature of the existing structures, limited knowledge, not being a priority and high costs involved in the process. Moreover, other factors influencing property developers’ decision to apply energy-efficient principles in a residential home include cost (initial capital and maintenance), level of knowledge, nature of the climate in the area, local legislation, more independence and increasing the property’s market value and environmental aspect.

This study is limited to South Africa; thus, the literature available was limited.

People’s perceptions, either wrong or correct, affect their ability to make an informed decision to adopt green retrofitting principles, thereby denying them the opportunity to reap the associated benefits. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the construction industry stakeholders and government to increase educational opportunities for property owners on the importance of green retrofitting.

This study provides the occupants with the possible barriers and problem areas with implementing these principles. They will thus make an informed decision when implementing sustainable design methods.

The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant literature in order to identify trends and suggest some possible directions for future research in the framework of humanitarian aid distribution logistics with accessibility constraints.

The authors developed a systematic literature review to study the state of the art on distribution logistics considering accessibility constraints. The electronic databases used were Web of science, Scopus, Science Direct, Jstor, Emerald, EBSCO, Scielo and Redalyc. As a result, 49 articles were reviewed in detail.

This study identified some gaps, as well as some research opportunities. The main conclusions are the need for further studies on the interrelationships and hierarchies of multiple actors, explore intermodality, transshipment options and redistribution relief goods to avoid severe shortages in some nodes and excess inventory in others, studies of the vulnerability of transport networks, correlational analysis of road failures and other future lines.

The bibliography is limited to peer-reviewed academic journals due to their academic relevance, accessibility and ease of searching. Most of the studies included in the review were conducted in high-income countries, which may limit the generalizability of the results to low-income countries. However, the authors focused on databases covering important journals on humanitarian logistics.

This paper contextualises and synthesises research into humanitarian aid distribution logistics with accessibility constrains, highlights key themes and suggests areas for further research.

After the identification of a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) at Wuhan, China, a pandemic was widely spread worldwide. In Italy, about 240,000 people were infected because of this virus including 34,721 deaths until the end of June 2020. To control this new pandemic, epidemiologists recommend the enforcement of serious mitigation measures like country lockdown, contact tracing or testing, social distancing and self-isolation.

This paper presents the most popular epidemic model of susceptible (S), exposed (E), infected (I) and recovered (R) collectively called SEIR to understand the virus spreading among the Italian population.

Developed SEIR model explains the infection growth across Italy and presents epidemic rates after and before country lockdown. The results demonstrated that follow-up of strict measures such that country lockdown along with high testing is making Italy practically a pandemic-free country.

These models largely help to estimate and understand how an infectious agent spreads in a particular country and how individual factors can affect the dynamics. Further studies like classical SEIR modeling can improve the quality of data and implementation of this modeling could represent a novelty of epidemic models.