Assessing the climate change adaptability of buildings

Buildings present a significant amount of opportunity for climate mitigation. Since they are long-lived assets, they also present great challenges for adaptation to projected as well as unexpected climate change impacts. These impacts will have consequences for building design and fabric, as well as for people in and around buildings and for their health and well-being. It is essential that we identify the nature and extent of their vulnerabilities and resilience if they are to be adapted in a timely and effective manner. There are many assessment tools and methods being developed and used for identifying vulnerability and adaptive capacity of various systems from planning to urban governance. However, there appears to be a knowledge and policy gap in the area of assessment of buildings in particular measuring their vulnerability and aiding in creating climate-adaptable and resilient buildings. This paper aims to identify knowledge and policy gaps for climate-adaptable buildings. The specific objectives of this research are: ▪ To identify major issues and challenges with regard to existing and new buildings ▪ To identify what measures have already been proposed or implemented ▪ To outline past, current and planned research activities ▪ To identify knowledge gaps and priority areas of research and polic