Today, in alignment with London Climate Action Week, the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) launch their Climate Resilience Roadmap – the first guidance of its kind to set out practical, industry-wide actions for building long-term climate resilience across the built environment.
As longstanding UKGBC partners and members, we welcome this forward-thinking framework as a call for collective action, and continue to explore how resilient, sustainable buildings can create lasting value for our clients and communities.
To mark the launch, Eliot Powell, Sustainability Consultant – a member of the UKGBC'S Solutions & Innovation Advisory panel – reflects on the key climate risks facing our buildings, the tools available to mitigate them, and why framing buildings as generational assets is essential to creating sustainable urban environments with longstanding identity.
Why is it important for our buildings to be resilient to a changing climate?
Urban areas are an important component of our ecosystem. Around the world, 4.4 billion people live in cities. In the United Kingdom, we spend approximately 85% of our time indoors. To understand the relationship between sustainability, urban areas and resilience, we should consider that, at its core, sustainability means meeting present needs while allowing future generations to meet theirs. In this regard, resilience is a core component of sustainable urban development; if our work in the built environment is to be truly sustainable, we should consider buildings as generational assets, that create healthy, liveable and enduring urban environments for future populations. Where this approach is successful, we develop urban environments that amplify the identity of a place – longstanding and resilient architecture is a treasured component of positive placemaking.
What climatic trends do we expect to see in the UK?
In the UK, climate change is expected to bring:
- Warmer and wetter winters
- Hotter and drier summers
- More frequent and intense weather extremes.
Our buildings should be designed and maintained to be thermally efficient and resilient to rising temperatures, without developing an overreliance on unsustainable energy sources or placing undue financial pressure on owners and occupiers.
To mitigate physical risks, such as flooding and storms, robust and timely risk profiling is a meaningful undertaking. Early interventions help prevent environmental degradation and avoidable weathering, reducing unnecessary costs and conserving materials.
A building’s climate-related risk profile should be regularly reassessed, to preserve asset value and provide confidence in its long-term viability.
What tools are available to develop resilience in buildings?
Sustainability certifications are a useful framework to begin climate-related risk profiling. Resilience is a core component of operational assessments (e.g. BREEAM In-Use), encouraging proactive management of transitional, social and physical risks. Benchmarking a building against robust assessment programmes can highlight areas to improve and identify future risks, bespoke to the building under review.
Engineering analyses, such as CIBSE TM52 and TM59 assessments, are essential tools for implementing climate resilience. TM52 assesses the risk of overheating in naturally ventilated buildings. TM59 is used in residential buildings to assess passive design strategies, internal gains and climate scenarios.
Embracing circular economy principles – designing for disassembly, material reuse and durability – is a positive way to bring resilience into the architectural design process.
Finally, a Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is a useful tool to capture the real-world performance of buildings, usually at least one year into operation. Real-time digital twins (virtual building models) and sensors are further tools for the integration of resilient thinking into operational buildings.
Eliot Powell
Sustainability Consultant
