What makes homes and buildings climate resilient?
Climate change is leading to unprecedented pressure on building owners to conduct more frequent or unanticipated repairs, maintenance, and climate resilient upgrades, as well as other changes to their finances such as increasing insurance, fuel, and utility costs. Several Canadian jurisdictions will be facing concurrent risks related to climate change, such as heat waves and flooding, that will need to be either immediately or incrementally addressed. How can we prepare our homes and buildings to be climate resilient? This is a question facing communities across the globe.
We need to better understand how to adapt our built environment to withstand natural hazard events.
Once we know what makes buildings climate resilient, we can invest in retrofits as well as grey and natural infrastructure to reduce disaster risks and impacts on people. And, over the longer term, climate-resilient retrofits will save property owners money and result in co-benefits such as improved health and reduced carbon pollution.
Review of Resilient Retrofits for Adaptation Initiatives: Multi-Hazard, Residential and Non-Residential (2023)
Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) in Nova Scotia engaged Partners for Action at the University of Waterloo to do research on resilient retrofits for HRM specific natural hazards, which was carried out from January to July 2023.
We explored what building features can withstand floods (overland, coastal), extreme precipitation, extreme winds, extreme heat, wildfires, drought, and snow and ice.
Our research team developed a framework for thinking about the following:
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Resilient Retrofits: The implementation of measures so that residential, commercial and municipal buildings can withstand anticipated natural hazard events that are worsening with climate change.
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Initiatives that enable and encourage the adoption of resilient retrofits, such as programs, policies, financial incentives, and educational resources.
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Databases of the above were produced, guidance documents were drafted, and results were shared in a Climate Caucus webinar.
Database of Climate Resilient Residential Retrofits for Adaptation (2024)
Now in 2024, we are verifying and further developing one database produced for HRM – that of residential climate resilient measures for single-family homes and multi-residential units (such as condominiums, apartments, and townhomes) in partnership with National Research Council Canada as part of their Resilient Residential Retrofits Program.
The database includes adaptation measures (retrofits of existing buildings and things to include in new builds) for climate conditions and events of concern in Canada (floods/extreme precipitation, heat, wildfire, wind, and snow/ice).
Once publicly available, people will be able to search and filter by area of a home they are interested in and/or by which hazard(s) they want to protect against, and learn about how those measures help and which conflict with or go well together.
Climate Caucus Webinar: Climate Resilient Retrofits for Adaptation
- Climate Caucus and Partners for Action Webinar Resiliency Series. (2023). Climate Resilient Retrofits for Adaptation. Cameron McGlade Bourchard, Tyler Hull, Sharmalene Mendis-Millard.
- Local Resiliency Series - Climate Resilient Retrofits for Multi-Hazard Adaptation: Partners for Action at University of Waterloo has developed a framework to understand how different types of buildings (municipal, commercial and residential) can be adapted to better withstand 8 hazards: floods (overland, coastal), extreme precipitation, extreme winds, extreme heat, wildfires, drought, and snow and ice. In this webinar, Partners for Action's researchers shared their approach to tackling this big topic of how to make buildings climate resilient for adaptation - and of what enables those retrofits. You will hear examples of retrofits and initiatives that encourage their adoption such as programs, policies and financial incentives.
Resources and Publications
Chen, H. , Krueger, R., Mcglade-Bouchard, C., Jones, D., Mikhail, M., Hull, T., & Mendis-Millard, S. (2024). Review of Climate Resilient Building Retrofits for Adaptation to Floods, Extreme Heat, Wildfire, and Wind. Proceedings of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineering Annual Conference 2024. CSCE 2024. Niagara Falls, ON.
If you would like to access the article, please email Tyler Hull.
Contact
Learn more
If you have any questions about this study or are interested in collaborating on a project, please contact:
Sharmalene Mendis-Millard
Director
sharmalene.mendis-millard@uwaterloo.ca
Team
Sharmalene Mendis-Millard
Sharmalene Mendis-Millard (she/her) is a mixed-methods geographer who is passionate about non-profits and harnessing the resources of academia for community benefit. She worked for several interdisciplinary research centres that aim to advance community well-being and social justice through community partnerships, program evaluations, and learning opportunities, and helped develop the pilot RAIN program to engage communities in stormwater management at Reep Green Solutions Sharmalene now focuses on multi-hazard resilient retrofits, and equity in climate risk reduction and adaptation.
sharmalene.mendis-millard@uwaterloo.ca
Office: evolv1
Sharmalene's profile and LinkedIn
Tyler Hull
Tyler is a Ph.D. Candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering and part of the Structural Timber and Applied Research Team led by Dr. Daniel Lacroix. He led two winning structural design competition submissions, including the top prize in the student category of “Build the (Im)possible,” an international competition to increase the visibility of mass timber innovation. His research focuses on the advancement of the wood construction as a sustainable alternative to concrete and steel.
Sumana Mitra
Sumana completed a Masters in Climate Change in Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. With an interdisciplinary background in civil engineering and transport planning, she is helping to develop a database of climate change adaptation measures for retrofits applicable to Canadian residential buildings as a research assistant with Partners for Action. With an interdisciplinary background in civil engineering, transport planning and climate change, Sumana specialises in cost-benefit analysis of highway projects and has been involved in several such projects in Africa, India and UK funded by leading multilateral donor agencies. Sumana’s goal is to create connected communities with transportation systems that are both economic and environmentally sustainable.
Kalindi Shah
Kalindi Shah (she/her) graduated with a Masters of Climate Change (MCC) from the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo in the Fall 2022. She supports the Director, Manager of Research Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator in creating research project documentation, conducting targeted literature reviews and in all other logistical components of research.
Rachel Krueger
Rachel Krueger holds a University of Waterloo Master of Environmental Studies in Sustainability Management (Water, 2022) whose research focused on flood risk communications and who worked on P4A’s Inclusive Resilience project funded by Public Safety Canada via the Canadian Red Cross. Rachel has reviewed recent disaster studies literature and was a City of Mississauga stormwater drainage intern.
Monika Mikhail
Monika is an incoming Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria. She is curious about machine learning and how it can be applied to generate data-driven recommendations for energy policy. Her past interdisciplinary research during her Master’s in Sustainability Management from the University of Waterloo looked at analyzing net-zero energy performance of a case study office building. Her undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering inspires her systems thinking as she expands her perspective to create creative and sustainable energy solutions!
Cameron McGlade-Bouchard
Cameron recently completed her Master of Environmental Studies in Sustainability Management where her thesis explores the effectiveness of sustainability standards as governance mechanisms. Her background includes environmental governance, corporate sustainability, and implementing sustainability standards. Cameron supports Partners for Action by conducting literature reviews, organizing information, and producing communication pieces.
cmmcgladebouchard@uwaterloo.ca
Cameron's profile and LinkedIn
Devon Jones
Devon is a Master of Environmental Studies student whose research focuses on nature-based solutions in coastal areas, with City of Surrey as a case study. She is a Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) Scholar working on the Living With Water Project, and recently published a paper titled, “Encouraging co-benefits in climate-affected hazard adaptation: Developing and testing a scorecard for project design and evaluation.”