Reviewing Sustainable building renovation considering indoor environmental quality

This paper reviews the state of the art for sustainable building renovation (SBR) shedding light on indoor air quality (IAQ). Data analysis investigates the trends in the number of published papers, citation numbers and countries to explore the hotspots and frontier topics. The findings showed that it is a current necessity to address this research gap in the Arab countries compared to other countries with good track record therein. It was found that that the definition of an SBR varies according to different contexts, building type and condition as well as the aims and scope of the renovation undertaken. This has received increasing worldwide attention from many research institutions and different proposed approaches, nevertheless, the majority of published papers point to more concern for energy efficiency at the expense of other sustainable parameters. This is particularly important to consider in public buildings with special concerns for educational facilities following the COVID outbreak. Nevertheless, renovation activities may greatly impact occupants’ health in the long and short terms due to excessive pollutants’ release. Eventually, this shall enable better exchange of knowledge and lessons learnt.