Book excerpt: This book sheds light on recent advances in sustainable construction and building materials with special emphasis on the characterization of natural and composite hydraulic mortars, advanced concrete technology, green building materials, and application of nanotechnology to the improvement of the design of building materials. The book covers in detail the characterization of natural hydraulic lime mortars, a decade of research on self-healing concrete, biocomposite cement binding process and performance, development of sustainable building materials from agro-industrial wastes, applications of sugarcane biomass ash for developing sustainable construction materials, oil-contaminated sand: sources, properties, remediation, and engineering applications, oil shale ash addition effect in concrete to freezing/thawing, connection node design and performance optimization of girders, functionally graded concrete structures, cumulative tensile damage and consolidation effects on fracture properties of sandstone, key performance criteria influencing the selection of construction methods used for the fabrication of building components in the Middle East, fly ash as a resource material for the construction industry, degradation monitoring systems for a building information modeling maintenance approach, durability of composite-modified asphalt mixtures based on inherent and improved performance, and bitumen and its modifiers.