Since people living in developed nations across Europe, North America, and Australia spend most of their lives indoors, protecting indoor environmental quality is critical for protecting human health. As stressors such as COVID-19 and climate change further complicate living conditions, conflicting system priorities underscore the need for resilience in all building systems. In the engineering and architectural fields, sustainability rating frameworks are used to note, reward, and motivate the use of sustainable practices. As such, it is crucial to ensure that these frameworks genuinely encourage resilience in building systems. This paper conducts a review of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design–Building Design and Construction (LEED BD+C v4.1) framework for New Construction through a credit-level analysis, to determine the extent to which the framework encourages the resilience of building systems beyond the scope of structure. Researchers identified, tabulated, and deconstructed relevant credits according to four key resilience factors: diversity, efficiency, adaptability, and cohesion. Findings indicated that, while efficiency is well supported, diversity, adaptability, and cohesion can be enhanced. The existing rating system provides a strong base upon which improvements can be made, but falls short of adequately encouraging the wide adoption of resilience needed for long-term sustainability. In short, while the LEED credits do reward resilient designs, they do not yet actively inspire them.

The social, economic, and environmental impacts associated with fuels used to power cities cause the sustainability of energy produced and consumed in our urban environment to be constantly challenged. In order to address the issue of urban energy sustainability, we propose a Framework for Assessing Urban Energy Sustainability (FAUES), whose main approach relies on defining a method for determining critical indices associated with the major criteria of sustainable energy generation and consumption. The framework is based on developing a three-step process that integrates historical data regarding energy consumption and production and forecasted parameters on energy sustainability and can be used both in urban energy operations and in planning new urban settlements. The framework was implemented in Brazil as a representative case study, given that its cities lack social inclusion, economic stability, and environmental protection when it comes to energy. The framework functions so that policy makers and managers can assess the sustainability of energy produced and consumed in urban environments on the basis of relevant criteria for the city in which the energy is being evaluated.