LECTURE-2

CLIMATE CHANGE, RESILIENCE AND ADAPTATION

Role of
resilience and
Affect of Impact on the Resilience
Parameters of adaptive
climate change building design required in the
climate change. building design
on and services. building design.
to mitigate
climate change.
 Climate Change and Building design
Climate Change
• IPCC states that climate change is any change in climate over time whether due to
natural variability or as a result of human activity.
Climate change is the main challenges of the 21st century.
• With serious and global consequences for the environment, human health, and the
economy.
Built environment is a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
• For typical developed nations, about 25–40% of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions
will be related to buildings; 40–95% of these emissions will be caused by operational
energy use with the remainder being caused by construction and demolition.
Performance of buildings depends on the exposed climate.
• Their long lifetime (in the range of 50–100 plus years) corresponds to the timescale
over which the climate is expected to show substantial change.
Buildings should work efficiently in current and future climate.
• With the aim of reducing the greenhouse emission burden they place on this and
future generations.
Climate Change and Building design
Role of Buildings in Contributing and Mitigating Climate Change

Role of resilience and

Climate change and Impact on the building Resilience required in adaptive building design
building design design and services. the building design. to mitigate climate
change.
 Impact of climate change
• According to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, many aspects of climate change and associated
impacts will continue for centuries, and it is very likely that:
• Heat waves will occur with a higher frequency and longer duration.
• Occasional cold winter extremes will continue to occur.
• Mean precipitation will decrease in dry regions.
• Sea level will rise in more than about 95% of the ocean’s total area.
• Food security will be threatened, and renewable surface water and ground water resources
will decline in most dry subtropical regions.
• An important attribute of smart cities of the future will be resilient infrastructure that can adapt
to the environmental changes with proactive design and planning strategies.
• Architects and engineers have a professional responsibility to design the built environment for
low environmental impact while also being resilient to the effects of climate change.
• Climate-resilient buildings will be designed to maintain comfortable indoor conditions during
extreme heat or cold events and to serve as utility bridges or generators when public
infrastructure is damaged.
• Resilience has also become an important strategy of city development, especially for coastal cities
that have suffered from hurricanes.
 Role of buildings in contributing and mitigating the climate change
Reports published by UN Environment, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Global Alliance for
Buildings and Construction (GABC) state that “building construction and operations accounts for 36% of global
final energy use and 39% of energy-related (CO2) emissions”.

Buildings have the IPCC states that “to

Building operations These emissions are a
potential to reduce GHG stablise the temperature
leading to GHG emissions. result of:
emissions. change to 1.5 °C

Account for 28% of
energy-related GHG
emissions.
Buildings
responsible for GHG emissions to be
massive amount of reduced by 80–90%
Heating/cooling, current GHG by 2050,
hot water supply, emission.
ventilation, air
conditioning, Have the potential
lighting. to reduce emissions Construction to be
through improved fossil-free and near-
operational energy zero energy by 2020.
efficiency.
 Impact Of Climate Change on the Building Services
• Outdoor environment (subject to climate change), and the indoor
Buildings are interface environment (maintained within a range to provide safety and comfort)
between:
• Allowing key processes to take place within.

• Which affects the environment which in turn impacts the buildings.

Climate change is a
driving force: • Has potential consequences for building occupants and key processes
taking place in buildings.

• Studies suggest climate change of approximately plus 1.5°C in annual

mean temperature by 2050 and 2–4°C by 2080.
Change in climate • When averaged over the planet’s surface.
• If atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide will increase only upto
600 ppm.

• Changing environmental effects have an impact on building behavior and

performance.
Climate change impacts • Energy use and emissions,
building performance • Inefficiency and malfunction caused by systems confronted with a shift in
operation conditions.
• Problems caused by overloading.
 Impact Of Climate Change on the Building Services

• Resulting in a reduction in building energy use of about 10% for buildings

in cold climates.
Impact of climate change
• An increase of energy use of up to 20% for buildings in the tropics.
on buildings
• A shift from heating energy to cooling energy for buildings in temperate
climates.

• Change in ventilation systems requirement ( wind speed, availability

would change with change in climate, thus affecting the prospects of
Impact of climate change naturally ventilated buildings or passive design features).
on building services: • Thermal mass of the building envelope ( Would be an enabler to reduce
the heat transfer during extreme heat waves as the climate changes).
• Prospects of evaporative cooling.
 Indicators of Climate Change
• Without mitigation measures, building sector-related emissions could significantly increase in the
future, considering that there is a high probability that outdoor temperatures will increase, with
peak heat waves occurring more often and lasting longer in the future (IPCC, 2014), increasing the
demand for cooling and thus building energy consumption.
• According to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), colder seasons are
warming at faster rate than warmer seasons (Arndt, 2014), which could result in reduced heating
and increased cooling season duration even for more temperate climates.
• Growth of urban environments is predicted in the decades to come due to a rapid population
increase (according to UN report (United Nations, 2015), the global population will reach 10
billion by 2056) and migrations from rural to urban areas (by 2050, the current urban population
of 3.9 billion could reach 6.4 billion (International Organization for Migration, 2015)). This aspect
is particularly important in developing countries—for example, in Qatar, the population grew
from 676,498 in 2002 to 2,529,048 in 2018 (out of which, 92% live in the capital city, Doha), which
is an increase of 245% over a 16-year period (Qatar Ministry of Development Planning and
Statistics, 2018).
 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
• For identifying realistic and measurable goals for avoiding or at least mitigating climatic change, it
is important to understand the important key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Key performance indicators are defined as the measures that are used to assess essential factors
to reducing the effects of climate change. They are defined as environmental performance
indicators (EPIs) used to measure impact on the environment, including ecosystems, land, air and
water.
• The role of KPI’s are:
• Stimulate the discussion and motivate more effort in quantifying climatic change.
• Environmental performance and sustainability at local and global level in a more complete,
inclusive, transparent and fair manner.
• Eight groups of KPI’s can be identified:
1.Pollution 2. Resource use 3.Climate hazards 4. Biodiversity 5.Transport 6.Land use 7.Health 8.
other.
 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF CLIMATE CHANGE:

POLLUTION
Pollution includes air Plastic pollution, waste, especially solid waste, water and soil contamination are major sources.
pollution and
emissions.
Greenhouse gases Gases absorbing and emitting infrared radiation.
(GHG) emissions are
Water vapor, CO2, CH4, nitrous oxide and O3 are important GHG.
the most important
type. Greenhouse effect has increased significantly since the industrial revolution.
Human activity is a key element in reducing major greenhouse gas emissions.
Plastics and micro- The production of plastic has grown and is expected to increase further in future.
plastics harm the
ecosystems and
contribute to pollution. Important to manage this plastic to prevent pollution.

Solid waste Its inappropriate treatment and transportation causes pollution of the air, water, & soil.
management is critical.
Leading to environmental and health risks.
Disposal methods includes landfill disposal, recycling, incineration.
Recycling involves reusing certain waste components, saving resources, reducing manufacturing
of new resources, and minimizing pollution.
 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF CLIMATE CHANGE:

RESOURCES
• Water is a critical resource.
• over 700 million people do not have access to basic drinking-water services.
• Half of the world's population is expected to be living in water-stressed areas by 2025
• A crucial aspect of climate change mitigation is to ensure accessibility to reliable water
services.
• Threats can include increased water stress or scarcity, droughts, water-borne diseases and
other events that affect the available water supply.
• The implementation of smart water resource management strategies can lead to an
increased resilience against the impacts of climate change, especially in developing countries.
• Energy as resource
• Use off fossil fuels has grown, between 1980 and 2019, global fossil fuel consumption almost
doubled.
• Despite the fact that 16% percent of primary energy came from low-carbon sources in 2019.
 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF CLIMATE CHANGE:

CLIMATE HAZARDS

Climate hazards are an important aspect of climate change.

• Extreme events will most likely change in frequency and severity as a result of
climate change. One example in North America, there is an increasing in frequency
of wildfires.
• Climate change can also cause changes in precipitation, resulting in more
precipitation-induced flooding.
• Important for cities and countries to know what climate hazards may pose a threat,
either today or in the future.

Public health systems are crucial for the quality of living, they can
also face several risks related to climate change.
• These risks include diseases and pandemics as a result of climate change.
• Threats to food security and safety.
 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF CLIMATE CHANGE:
BIODIVERSITY

Minor shift in climate Represents native

Climate change has an results in extinction of
impact on people and vulnerable and
also on physical endangered animal
ecosystems. species, as well as birds
and fish.
Biodiversity Intactness terrestrial species'
Index (BII) is an average abundance
important reference compared to their
parameter. abundance before
human intervention.

Comprehend
Necessary to use such interactions between Implementing strategies
indexes. plants, animals and to improve biodiversity.
biodiversity.

TRANSPORT
In India about 10% of
GHG emissions are
One-fifths of global CO2
attributable to
emissions is attributed
transportation out of
to transportation.
which 87% is because of
road transportation.
Implementation of good
public transit networks is
Electrication of road
also important. If these
transport could make a
networks are of good
signicant impact on GHG
quality, being accessible
emissions, combined
to as many people as
with alternative ways to
possible, they can
produce electricity.
reduce the use of private
transport
 Indicators Of Climate Change

The performance indicators of impact of climate change on buildings are :

• Energy use for heating.

• Energy use for cooling.
• Building overheating.
• Resilience of passively cooled building to their life expectancy (defining the potential of a
building to perform without any active measures during their life expectancy for handling the
change in temperature because of climate change).
• Impact of thermal performance of building on the occupants health and functioning.
• Balance between the embodied CO2 and the CO2 emissions during the operational phase.
• Risk-based indicators like vulnerability, damage potential and reversibility.
 Climate resilient building design
• As a fundamental concept, resilience is gaining ground in future building design and city development.
• It has broad implications.
• How can a building remain operable without access to electrical and other utilities (passive survivability)?
• How can a building protect human life during an extreme event and quickly recover?
• Buildings and cities are affected by the changing environment, and their inhabitants continue contributing to global
climate change.
• Climate scientists agree that this increase in global temperature is likely caused by greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions from burning fossil fuels.
• With no effective actions to improve building energy efficiency, energy demand in buildings will rise globally by
50% by 2050.
• Limiting the rise in temperature to 3.6 ∘F above pre-industry levels has been discussed as a global goal.
• Representatives from 196 nations adopted climate agreement at COP21 (The 2015 United Nations Climate Change
Conference) in Paris, acknowledging the threat of climate change as urgent and potentially irreversible and
reinforcing the 3.6 degree F target.
• It recognizes that limiting the temperature increase to 2.7 ∘F would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of
climate change.
• In addition to the Paris agreement, state and local governments around the world are developing climate action
plans to assist in mitigating the socioeconomic, public health, infrastructure, and energy impacts from the
changing climate. Although the outcomes of these efforts in controlling global warming are difficult to quantify,
building designs in the future will need to be adaptable to the future climate conditions.
 Climate resilient building design

• One important aspect of developing smart buildings and cities is to reduce GHG emissions through a
combination of technology and policy actions.
• To achieve the 3.6 ∘F goal, building GHG emissions need to be reduced to a quarter of the current level by
2050.
• To reach the aggressive goals of reducing GHG emissions by 75%, we need to explore new building
paradigms.
• With climate change as the future context, the solutions to a sustainable and resilient built environment
might be more effective at the community or urban level.
• For instance, not every building can achieve a zero-net-energy goal due to the limitations of their geographic
locations, available roof areas, energy demand associated with building functions, and economic constraints.
• A zero-net-energy campus, neighborhood, or community may be more feasible, although this requires
supporting infrastructure and transaction platforms.
 Climate resilient building design
The top 10 most implemented actions for climate resilient building design include:
1. Adding insulation to buildings.
2. Performing energy audits and providing advice.
3. Certifying energy performance through a rating system.
4. Benchmarking energy use.
5. Improving heating and cooling efficiency.
6. Installing smart meters.
7. Installing efficient lighting systems.
8. Purchasing green electricity.
9. Implementing building energy management systems.
10. Submetering
 Climate resilient building design
• Reducing energy use offers an optimum path to build resilience to changing climate by lowering
grid dependency for normal building operation.
• Improving the energy performance of new and existing buildings should be one of the focus areas
of smart city developments.
• This effort should first begin with the design community – architects and engineers should be
aware of the impact of regional climate on building energy performance.
• Understanding the interaction between climate and energy consumption is essential because
energy conservation measures (ECMs) will result in widely varying energy performance outcomes,
depending on the climatic profile of the region.
• Designers should have the knowledge and the tools to incorporate the most climate adaptive and
resilient features in their designs.
• High performance building design should be based on customized local strategies rather than
one-size-fits-all approach.
 Climate resilient building design
ROLE OF ENERGY MODELS IN CLIMATE RESILIENT DESIGN
1. Energy simulation is a commonly used method for estimating building energy consumption, peak demands, and
energy cost. The process uses sophisticated software, which can be used to analyze whole building energy models.
2. Whole building energy simulation typically involves the process of creating two models with the same geometry,
weather data, and operational schedules – a baseline, which represents a code-compliant building, and a proposed
model, which captures design and energy efficiency upgrades.
• The difference in annual energy consumption between the two models is the estimated annual energy savings for
the proposed building compared with the baseline.
3. Simulations are typically done on hourly time steps for annual energy use estimates but can also be computed for
shorter time steps depending on the level of detail and accuracy that is required.
4. Energy models serve as testbeds for building designers to test multiple design parameters – such as building massing,
orientation, materials, and different HVAC system choices – and obtain energy and cost implications for each design
iteration.
5. The simulation software uses regional climate data such as temperature, humidity, solar radiation, and wind speed
from weather files either from private sources or from weather stations.
6. As building performance is closely tied to climate, higher temperatures and increased climate variability will impact
building energy consumption and demand. However, a limitation of current energy analysis practices is the uncertainty
resulting from not factoring in future climate predictions.
7. Mainstream building simulation practices do not incorporate future climate predictions in building energy analysis. To
overcome this limitation, Seventh wave developed a method of using building energy models coupled with future
climate data in an effort to improve estimates of energy consumption over the building’s lifespan.
 Policies and programmes for climate resilient design

• Regulations such as building codes can effectively reduce GHG emissions if enforced well enough,
and can ensure new buildings incorporate designs that are both cost and energy effective.
• Required codes, including the European Union’s zero energy mandate by 2021, Australia’s
NatHERS 5-star standard, volunteer certificates such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) which is required for all new federal government construction projects and
renovations in the USA but voluntary for private construction, and the Building Research
Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), would force designers and
contractors to reconsider material usage that has a high embodied carbon content and also to
rethink way they conduct their operations [9,10].
• Another instrument for the mitigation of GHG emission is the carbon tax. Carbon taxes are
simpler to design, have relatively low administration costs, and are attractive to stakeholders in
the building sector due to their familiarity with the tax mechanism [11,12]. Carbon taxes
encourage industry and the general public to help reduce GHG emissions by using energy
efficiently and opting for cleaner, renewable sources of energy which in turn leads to innovations
in technology and processes [13]. In terms of ETS, the cumulative amount of GHG emissions
mitigated can be quantified with ETS and emission permits can be distributed for free or
auctioned off [7,14]. As both energy supply and demand have equal weights, an ETS can be
especially useful in the construction industry, thereby, encouraging the use of technologies that
are energy efficient [15].
 Policies and programmes for climate resilient design
CARBON INVENTORY:
• To set achievable goals for emissions reductions and to develop apt methods to reach these goals,
policymakers should have the knowledge of existing emissions estimates.
• This process of identifying all emissions sources and estimating emissions is referred to as
“greenhouse gas inventorying.”
• The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) (WRI, C40,
ICLEI) lays out a comprehensive accounting framework and reporting method of inventorying GHG
emissions.
1. Cities are the source of 70% GHG emissions worldwide.
2. This framework addresses many gaps and inconsistencies that currently exist in accurately
estimating and reporting the carbon footprint of cities.
3. Like an energy code that offers a stringent framework for building design and retrofit, this
resource serves as a common global standard for accounting and reporting principles,
calculating emissions, setting goals, and monitoring performance.
 Reducing the impact of climate change
• Another instrument for the mitigation of GHG emission is the carbon tax. Carbon taxes are
simpler to design, have relatively low administration costs, and are attractive to stakeholders in
the building sector due to their familiarity with the tax mechanism [11,12]. Carbon taxes
encourage industry and the general public to help reduce GHG emissions by using energy
efficiently and opting for cleaner, renewable sources of energy which in turn leads to innovations
in technology and processes [13]. In terms of ETS, the cumulative amount of GHG emissions
mitigated can be quantified with ETS and emission permits can be distributed for free or
auctioned off [7,14]. As both energy supply and demand have equal weights, an ETS can be
especially useful in the construction industry, thereby, encouraging the use of technologies that
are energy efficient [15].
• Studies have shown that a variety of factors slow down the move towards a carbon neutral
construction industry. A study conducted in Singapore and Hong Kong found that lack of
awareness, education, incentives, and high initial costs are the obstacles to such a move [16]. In
another study that focused on commercial buildings in the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai,
the barriers were identified to be lack of regulations and financial incentives, ineffective
monitoring, and lack of awareness around energy saving
 Indicators Of Climate Change

Parameters to examine how individual building and site characteristics affect the magnitude of the
embodied GHG emissions or contribute to life cycle GHG emissions are :

• The type of building and its use.

• Site-specific properties (country, climate zone)
• Energy performance standards.
• Construction method (choice of the main building materials, e.g. structural system, envelope,
internal walls).
• Size and shape of the building (e.g. floor area, no. of stories, general shape).