What makes homes and buildings climate resilient?
Climate change is contributing to the frequency and severity of extreme weather events across Canada. 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.
About the study
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.
We are exploring what building features can withstand floods (overland, coastal), extreme precipitation, extreme winds, extreme heat, wildfires, drought, and snow and ice.
Our research team will provide a framework for thinking about the following:
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Resilient retrofits: Elements of municipal, commercial and residential buildings that can withstand anticipated natural hazard events.
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Initiatives that enable and encourage the adoption of resilient retrofits, such as programs, policies, financial incentives, stakeholder engagement, and education.
Contact
Learn more
If you have any questions about this study or are interested in collaborating on a project, please contact:
Sharmalene Mendis-Millard
Senior Manager, Research Partnerships and Evaluation
sharmalene.mendis-millard@uwaterloo.ca
Team
Sharmalene Mendis-Millard
Sharmalene Mendis-Millard (she/her) is a mixed-methods geographer whose research focused on adaptive capacity in Canadian UNESCO Biosphere Reserves and who worked at Reep Green Solutions to engage people on stormwater management. Sharmalene has 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 now focuses on equity in climate risk reduction and adaptation.
sharmalene.mendis-millard@uwaterloo.ca
Office: evolv1
Sharmalene's profile and LinkedIn
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.
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.
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 is in the last semester of her Master's of 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.”