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-Night Ventilation is a critical technique of passive cooling, as it combines a significant decrease of cooling demand and improvement of thermal comfort and indoor air quality.The aim of the present paper is to study the technical and legal aspects of night ventilation in urban climatic conditions. The technical part examines the efficiency of night ventilation techniques for urban residential buildings. Moreover, the influence of urban heat island on the night ventilation effectiveness is studied. Urban heat provokes the degradation of urban air quality and causes changes in the urban area microclimate which reduce the night ventilation effectiveness as a passive cooling technique. Moreover, this paper studies the legal framework of energy efficiency in buildings and pinpoints the institutional deficiencies of the existing regulation regarding energy efficiency and passive cooling techniques

Using remote sensing technologies to ensure environmental protection responds to the need of protection of a right and a public good and interest. However, the increasing introduction of these technologies has raised new challenges, such as their interference with the rights of privacy and personal data, which are also protected fundamental rights. In this paper the importance of remote sensing technologies as tools for environmental monitoring and environmental law enforcement is analyzed, while legal issues regarding privacy and data protection from their use for environmental purposes are presented. Existing legislation for reconciling emerging conflicts is also examined and major European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case law on the issue is approached. Finally, recent developments in Greek legislation and their application perspectives in environmental law are presented as a timely “case study”.

The objective of this paper is to explore and critically analyze the basic notions of landscape and their change through time, among Greek engineering students, from all academically formative years of their undergraduate studies, at the Technical University of Crete. Specifically, it probes into their perspectives vis-à-vis the landscape at large and their everyday-life landscapes in particular, regarding their landscape perceptions, behavior, and education. This study takes place in two stages (2012 and 2017) and is placed in the context of continued scientific investigation into the interrelationships of various “publics” with various types of landscapes and landscape development ideas, perceptions, and preferences—and specifically those professionals-in-the-making who are bound to become key future agents in Greek landscape stewardship. Our aims serve the European Landscape Convention’s purposes of landscape research, education, and awareness-raising; they also cater to the need for geographically targeted place-specific application of the European Landscape Convention (ELC). Our findings reaffirm widely and long-held landscape notions, emphasizing the natural, the visual, and the aesthetic in landscape perception and conceptualization, but also point to landscape education deficiencies in the Greek educational system. These constitute significant findings in the context of the country’s efforts to lay out the blueprints for its future landscapes, by contributing to Greek lay landscape awareness and conscience building, but especially by informing future landscape-related professionals.

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