Adaptation of the built environment towards achieving improved resilience to climate change

Citation

Lamond, J., Proverbs, D. and Booth, C. (2013), "Adaptation of the built environment towards achieving improved resilience to climate change", Structural Survey, Vol. 31 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ss.2013.11031daa.001

Adaptation of the built environment towards achieving improved resilience to climate change

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Structural Survey, Volume 31, Issue 4.

Changes to world climates are predicted to result in an array of challenges to both natural and man-made habitats, chiefly because they have evolved or been designed to operate under different climate conditions. The buildings we have now will still dominate most urban spaces in the future therefore adaptation of our existing built environment has become a key priority. Adaptive approaches need to be balanced against economic constraints, competing priorities, social norms and aesthetic tastes of people and society. Changes to perceptions and habits may need to be encouraged and perhaps accelerated by alterations to relevant legislation and guidance. However, within these challenges lie the seeds of an opportunity to transform our existing and new buildings for the better and to adopt new technologies and practices that improve the quality of the built environment for generations to come.

The papers submitted for this special issue reflect the theme of managing the transformation of the built environment for an uncertain future. Major challenges are expected to be seen in terms of increased levels of natural disasters, particularly flooding and heat waves. Long-term environmental change is also expected to result in sea level rise and increased storminess. However, the scale and timing of such changes are far from predictable and the responses chosen must be sensitive to this uncertainty as well as take into account the views of multiple stakeholders.

Two papers address the choices around adaptation for increased temperature based on climate predictions. As the global climate gets warmer, the issue of overheating in buildings becomes an increasing concern for building designers faced with designing new buildings and adapting existing buildings. This is a complex process with multiple factors to consider including the risks involved (such as threats to life and health), the probabilities associated with climate change projections and the myriad of building types, building forms and building technologies.

In “Evaluative application of UKCP09-based downscaled future weather years to simulate overheating risk in typical English homes” by Gupta et al., the difficulties in downscaling already wide projections of future temperatures is addressed. The need to perform downscaling is made clear from buildings simulations of typical UK housing stock that may need retrofitting to cope with increased temperatures in the future. Downscaling is both spatial, to a 5 km grid, and temporal to identify peak overheating scenarios during the day or night. The paper demonstrates that the choice of downscaling method can lead to radically different outcomes and calls for a unification of methods and data sets to give building designers a robust and consistent set of predictions to work with. The authors acknowledge that this is not a trivial task but their analysis of the very real differences in simulated impacts adds greatly to the ongoing debate.

The second paper under this theme by Banfill et al. draws on funded research supported by the EPSRC as part of the Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate research programme. “Towards an overheating risk tool for building design” describes the design and development of an overheating risk tool using the latest generation of climate projections (UKCP09) for use by design professionals. This innovative study combines a statistical analysis of the climate projections to simplify this complex data set, with a combination of empirical methods to elicit feedback from potential users. The tool makes use of building performance simulation software in a practical and accessible way to ensure that design professionals are able to make use of the tool. While the authors acknowledge the limitations of the study, the findings presented demonstrate the use and efficiency of the prototype tool.

Roders et al. focus on the perspective of landlords in their paper “Climate change adaptation measures evaluated by Dutch landlords”. The paper provides valuable insights into the opinions of policy makers and decision makers from Dutch housing associations on climate change adaptation measures in the existing building stock. Interviews were conducted with property managers and policy staff and reveal they have a relatively good awareness of climate change, together with the impacts and associated risks. However, they have poor awareness of climate change adaptation measures and see them as a low priority. Furthermore, findings indicate that even though some measures could be implemented directly, landlords would be deterred from doing so because the financing of climate change adaptation measures are costly. As such, it is presumed that the likelihood of landlords implementing adaptations is low.

The views of multiple stakeholders, towards adaptation alternatives to reduce vulnerability of sea level rise, for improving the resilience of the Australian Gold Coast to climate change, are taken into account in the paper by Sahin et al. “Evaluating sea level rise adaptation options on the Gold Coast, Australia: an MCDA approach” uses multi-criteria analysis (an Analytical Hierarchy Process) to explore stakeholders’ opinions The approach converts subjective assessments to a set of overall weightings, which reveal stakeholders have a variety of preferences; whereby, residents desire to “improve building design” and “build protective structures”, experts favour “improve public awareness” and “improve building design”, whilst politicians prefer “improve building design” and “retreat” from the coast. Participants from the three groups agreed that adaptation alternatives should be both effective and sustainable, and cost should not be a major concern. Moreover, there was unanimous agreement for action.

The paper by Smith et al., “Suburban neighbourhood adaptation to climate change: professional and institutional stakeholders’ views on potential pathways for change as the title suggests concentrates on the views of built environment professionals, policy officers and campaigners. The setting is three environmentally active British cities and the possibilities for integrated adaptive change to multiple climate change aspects are examined using facilitated workshops. Worryingly the paper concludes that integration of adaptation and mitigation is lacking and that local stakeholders view it as the role of national government to drive the integration through policy and regulation. The feeling emerged that this would not happen until negative impacts of climate change are more regularly and devestatingly felt. However, the local stakeholders stressed the benefits of partnership working and recognised their pivotal role in implementing change.

In the final paper by Mannakkara and Wilkinson, the opportunity to improve resilience in the aftermath of a natural disaster is discussed. “Build back better principles for post-disaster structural improvements” urges the consideration of climate adaptation in any reconstruction after disaster to increase future resilience. The paper presents an interesting international comparison of the development of build back better (BBB) principles for post-disaster structural improvements in two different countries centred on two very different hazards (Indian Ocean Tsunami and Victorian Bushfires). The authors highlight the further differences in aspects such as economic situation, population density, governmental and administrative structures and so forth. The study draws on evidence from published work combined with primary evidence elicited through a series of interviews with a well informed range of stakeholders including governmental officials, reconstruction practitioners and local communities. The authors conclude that the principles for structural changes drawn from the literature, namely Building Codes and Regulations, Cost, Time and Quality were equally applicable in both cases, despite the economic, political and cultural differences. Recommendations are provided to further aid the practical implementation of the BBB principles.

Taken in the round these papers demonstrate quite clearly that the challenges surrounding adaptation to climate change are real and complex and go beyond the technical aspects of building design. The uncertainty of the future conditions and the need to integrate the requirements and views of multiple stakeholders are just as important. Researchers in the built environment are seeking to address the issues in deep theoretical and practical ways as shown here. This special issue points the way for future research as well as suggesting practical solutions for the here and now.

Jessica Lamond, David Proverbs and Colin BoothGuest Editors