Roberts, S Effects of climate change on the built environment

Effects of climate change on the built environment Simon Roberts (ARUP) 2008

Energy Policy 36 (2008) 4552–4557

Abstract

New buildings will have to be designed to cope with the effects of climate change. These include

warmer weather in which keeping cool will be important, more extreme and wet weather, and

increased subsidence risk. Flood risk areas will increase, requiring measures for both resistance for

initial protection and resilience for rapid recovering.

At the same time, new buildings must use less fossil fuel in a low or zero-carbon world. Homes,

offices, schools and other buildings will need to maximise passive measures of more effective

insulation, improved airtightness and greater thermal mass. They will also need to make more use of

solar energy and other renewable inputs. New buildings will incorporate a range of new technologies toreduce their energy use, and to cut the energy needed to build them, including the embodied energy in the materials they contain.

This paper gives a good overview of how buildings (not just domestic) will be affected by climate change. Various adaptive techniques are discussed and their relative values. Predominantly looks at building design in a new –build context but many of the adaptive measures could be retrofitted.

Sets out the state of current science in the field – v useful