The 48th International Congress and Exhibition on Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning

Towards healthy, sustainable and resilient buildings, settlements and cities with zero CO2 emission

The programme of  the 48^th international congress on heating, refrigeration and air-conditioning continues to deal with everything that was included, considered and proposed at the previous 47^th  congress and that was commended by many participants in their written and verbal messages.  These problems are related to buildings in the conditions of depletion of conventional sources of energy, environmental protection, natural disasters and extreme weather, but also to frequent impacts of human activity on human life and health, migrations towards large cities and living conditions in them. All these factors affect the lifestyle changes, health maintenance, bringing up new generations, their physical health and education, but they also affect the increased population density in the urban environments intensifying the construction of tall or high-rise buildings.  All these issues were discussed at the last year's congress and confirmed as topical by the participants.

With the increase of population concentration in large cities and tendency of tall or high-rise building construction, HVAC&R systems in buildings have an even more delicate task: to maintain health and  indoor comfort conditions with the precise and automatic control of additional equipment as power consumers: elevators, escalators, fire protection systems, artificial lighting, indoor acoustics, etc.  In this context the urban design of cities is important since, when it comes to buildings and cities, and especially the rurbanisation approach,   contribution is not only expected from the field of mechanical engineering, but from all other professions involved in the planning, construction, landscaping, and optimal operation of cities and buildings: architects, urban planners, civil and structural engineers, electrical engineers, forest and agricultural engineers, and certainly IT experts.