Guiding principles for infrastructure climate change risk and adaptation studies

As global climate mitigation actions increasingly appear to be unable to curb global emissions, there has been a corresponding increase in climate adaptation planning undertaken by governments and communities. Along with an increasing number of adaptation studies, there has been an increasing complexity of adaptation studies as practitioners attempt to plan the adaptation of whole communities, cities and in some cases nations. These studies are commonly underpinned by increasingly complex climate change vulnerability studies that also attempt to encompass concepts such as resilience and adaptive capacity. Owners and operators of infrastructure assets and networks also need to consider climate change. This need has been met by an increasing number of climate change risk and adaptation studies of major infrastructure. The approaches used for these assessments are commonly derived from assessments of whole communities and policy development studies, and apply terminology that is often inconsistent with established engineering asset management methods and approaches. As a result the uptake of these studies has been less than desirable in many cases. To this end, the work presented here proposes a set of principles for undertaking the assessment of climate changes impacts on assets and infrastructure.     

Urban development and climate change

Cities around the US are promoting redevelopment efforts in central city neighborhoods in order to foster more-sustainable development patterns. In this paper, we argue that such plans must be grounded in an assessment of the current conditions and existing populations in these neighborhoods. We propose a new way to frame plans for existing communities, using the concept of vulnerability to help us connect current conditions and future goals. Through a case study of the planning process for a transit-oriented redevelopment plan for a central neighborhood in Austin, Texas, we illustrate the difference between current approaches and an alternative approach.     

Participation,scenarios and pathways in long-term planning for climate change adaptation

This article describes a climate change adaptation planning process triggered by a group of researchers and stakeholders in a context where no collective responses or long-term plans for protecting a vulnerable coastal system had been initiated, despite local perceptions of vulnerability and risk. The case study shows the application of two methods: scenario workshops and adaptation pathways in the context of a participatory action research methodological design. Participatory action research and qualitative scenario methods are highlighted as accelerators of climate change adaptation processes by calling to action, facilitating and connecting diverse social groups with a stake in a long-term plan towards a more adapted society. The experience leads to the conclusion that planning climate change adaptation has to go far beyond the technical dimension and take into account those affected (in the present and the future) by decisions made. A holistic approach to climate change adaptation planning will depend on the interrelations of managerial and top-down approaches with localized initiatives driven through an inclusive and collective action research process.     

Determination of strategic adaptation actions for public housing in Singapore

Although building adaptation finds it significant in combating building deterioration and delivering building sustainability, what level of adaptation a building shall receive always seems puzzling to property portfolio managers. This research aims to provide policy makers with a theoretical approach to choose strategically desired adaptation actions for buildings. Personal interviews with policy makers in Singapore public housing sector gave rise to the construction of an Attribute-Action database; this database was used to derive an Attribute-Action Matrix, which consists of a set of preference values for each adaptation action (i.e. retaining, renovating and rebuilding). This approach was then applied to a real public residential building in Singapore. The results show that the total preference values for the actions of retaining, renovating and rebuilding are 157.849, 111.609, and 90.575, respectively; the action of retaining with minor maintenance of building facades is found to be the most desired adaptation strategy for the case building, because compared with the other two, retaining has the maximum total preference value. The presented approach would therefore extend the understanding of how strategic adaptation actions can be made for existing buildings that require adaptation. Lessons learnt in Singapore public housing context may be useful for many other cities in face of similar problems.     

Hallmarks of organisations that are adapting to climate change

This paper explores the question as to ‘what do organisations that are adapting to climate change look like?’ Examples are drawn from a survey of statutory regulations, guiding principles and organisational documents shaping current practice, with particular emphasis on the water and conservation sectors of industrialised nations. In so far as it is possible to distil recurring themes into common traits, nine hallmarks are identified. These include visionary leadership, objective setting, risk and vulnerability assessment, guidance for practitioners, organisational learning, low‐regret adaptive management, multi‐partner working, monitoring and reporting progress and effective communication. Recognising that adaptation is highly context and scale dependent, an organisation might not necessarily exhibit all these features. However, our inventory provides a practical basis for reviewing the priorities and progress on adaptation capacity building within public and private sector organisations alike.     

Calibrated methodology for assessing climate change adaptation costs for urban drainage systems

Changes in precipitation patterns associated with climate change may pose significant challenges for storm water management systems across the U.S. In particular, adapting these systems to more intense rainfall events will require significant investment, though no method currently exists for estimating the costs of these investments on a national scale. To support assessment of these costs at the national level, this paper presents a reduced-form approach for estimating changes in normalized flood depth (the volume of node flooding normalized by the area of the catchment) and the associated costs of flood prevention. This reduced form approach is calibrated to results generated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) for city-wide or neighborhood-level catchments in seven cities across the U.S. Estimates derived from this approach represent a reasonable approximation of storm water management adaptation costs and exhibit no systematic bias relative to results derived from SWMM.     

Climate change adaptation pathways for Australian residential buildings

Climate change can significantly impact on the total energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of residential buildings. Therefore, climate adaptation should be properly considered in both building design and operation stages to reduce the impact. This paper identified the potential adaptation pathways for existing and new residential buildings, by enhancing their adaptive capacity to accommodate the impact and maintain total energy consumption and GHG emissions no more than the current level in the period of their service life. The feasibility of adaptations was demonstrated by building energy simulations using both representative existing and new housing in eight climate zones varying from cold, temperate to hot humid in Australia. It was found that, in heating dominated climates, a proper level of adaptive capacity of residential buildings could be achieved simply by improving the energy efficiency of building envelop. However, in cooling dominated regions, it could only be achieved by introducing additional measures, such as the use of high energy efficient (EE) appliances and the adoption of renewable energy. The initial costs to implement the adaptations were assessed, suggesting that it is more cost-effective to accommodate future climate change impacts for existing and new houses by improving building envelop energy efficiency in cooling dominated regions, but installing on-site solar PVs instead in heating and cooling balanced regions.     

Assessing impacts of summertime overheating: some adaptation strategies

The UK is predicted to experience warmer summers in the future, but the domestic building stock in England was not designed to cope with this change. The Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) 2009 is used to assess the current state of the English building stock in terms of its vulnerability to overheating. The English Housing Survey 2009 provided data for 16 150 dwellings which are weighted to represent the housing stock. SAP predicts 82% of dwellings are currently at ‘slight’ risk of overheating and 41% at medium to high risk. If summer temperatures become 1.4°C warmer, then 99% of properties are predicted to have a medium to high risk of overheating. Several potential adaptations to the housing stock were considered to reduce overheating. Although ventilation strategies had the largest positive effect, the use of solar shading and shutters which allow secure ventilation could reduce vulnerability to overheating in the current climate. In a warmer climate, although some dwellings would still be at slight risk, the results suggest that solar shading strategies could reduce the percentage of those at medium to high risk to 6%. Future energy efficiency programmes will need to include adaptation measures to prevent overheating.     

Design support tools to sustain climate change adaptation at the local level: A review and reflection on their suitability

For mid-latitude cities, higher summer temperatures due to climate change are a cause for concern because they aggravate the urban heat island phenomenon and reduce thermal comfort inside buildings. By acquiring the appropriate knowledge and skills, architects and urban designers can become key actors in adaptation to climate change. Two workshops bringing together architects and urban designers provided evidence of deficiencies in this area. We hypothesize that a design support tool (DST) focused on the issue of adaptation of mid-latitude cities to rising summer temperatures could help improve knowledge and skills of professionals in the field. The first section presents the results taken from a review and classification of DSTs, which highlight the tools' features that are likely to reach this goal. Tools of the “hybrid” category seem most appropriate. To verify this, seven DSTs were selected and tested by fourteen students enrolled in a graduate-level architecture design studio. The second section presents the results from this test, including an analysis of the final projects, a web-based questionnaire and two focus groups. The relevance of hybrid approaches is established, but the results bring into question the capacity of a single DST to meet the individual and multiple needs of professionals.     

Regional development and climate change mitigation modelling of municipal solid waste emissions in the middle east

This study adapts a climate change mitigation model to assess impacts of municipal solid wastes in the Middle East and North Africa region, taking into account the future development of integrated waste management infrastructure involving collection, treatment and disposal. Mitigated and unmitigated disposal scenarios including waste growth reduction are used to estimate disposal methane emission changes at regional and subregional level. This study shows that unmitigated regional emissions by 2050 could rise to 296 542 GgCO_2eq from a current level in 2015 of 128 184 GgCO_2eq additionally decreasing annually by up to 8.75% falling to 10.16% due to waste characterisation changes as developing countries in the region progress to developed country status. A further annual rise, due to hotter drier climate conditions experienced as desertification, of up to a range of 1.70% increasing to 2.29% is also demonstrated. The findings enable regional planners to better assess and develop plans for implementation of integrated waste management policies.     

中国住宅产业化发展

对中国住宅产业化的发展作了简要的介绍。通过实施科技示范项目可以极大的促进住宅产业化的发展,从而推动国民经济的发展。同时通过这些研究项目的实施,可以在关键技术研究方面取得突破,从而有效地提高住宅产业的科技含量,确保工程质量和经济、社会、环境综合效益,使住宅产业成为一个现代化的产业。要实现这一目的,我们还有大量的工作要做。     

阆中古城传统建筑的气候适应性分析研究

通过对阆中古城传统民居在造型风格、布局和建造使用过程等多方面所体现的与自然环境的良好适应性加以分析,指出阆中民居将传统建筑成熟且成功的气候适应性设计手法与现代建筑技术手段相结合,能够创造出具有适应地域气候特点的节能建筑。     

对福建省城镇住房发展思路的探讨

城镇住房是群众关注的焦点,也是当前政府加快实现“住有所居”目标的落脚点。本文立足福建省情,在总结“十一五”建设成就与经验的基础上,根据相关规划纲要,针对“十二五”城镇住房发展环境、主要任务、保障措施等进行了思考和剖析,探讨如何结合实际进一步完善若干政策措施,以期提供有益借鉴。     

Climate change and urban development in Africa

This paper analyses the relationship between climate change and urban development in Africa, especially in sub‐Saharan Africa, and discusses potential adaptation policies for moderating the consequences of climatic changes on urban development in the region.     

浅谈轻钢龙骨结构住宅体系

提出了一种新型的住宅结构体系——轻钢龙骨结构住宅体系,介绍了其构造、特点、在国内的发展现状及发展前景等,指出轻钢龙骨结构住宅体系是一种绿色、环保、可持续发展的新型住宅体系,具有良好的综合效益。     

循环经济与住宅产业--以3R原则促进住宅产业发展

文章从循环经济和住宅产业的相互关系着手,围绕住宅全生命周期,提出住宅产业必须走循环经济之路,并应采取的措施.     

Building a better future: An exploration of beliefs about climate change and perceived need for adaptation within the building industry

The present research explored beliefs about climate change among an important yet relatively understudied population: representatives of the building industry. We also assessed the perceived adequacy of current climate-related actions within the industry and the perceived need for developing new practices. The results of a survey administered within a large engineering firm suggest a fairly high level of concern about climate issues within this sector: participants perceived climate change to be an important issue, current practices to be inadequate, and a need to develop new ways of addressing climate change. Despite this, there was notable and consequential variability in how participants thought about climate change. Higher levels of seniority were associated with greater satisfaction with current practices, and the belief that climate change was a natural rather than man-made phenomena was associated with a reduced support for the idea that changes to current practices were necessary. In addition, when thinking about climate relevant actions (whether current practices or the alternatives) participants focussed almost exclusively on mitigation rather than adaptation. The implications of these patterns for innovation around climate change within the building industry are discussed.     

谈农村住宅建设的产业化发展

分析了农村住宅建设存在的问题，阐述了农村住宅建设的产业化发展的设想，提出了适合产业化发展的农村住宅设计方案，对促进我国村镇的全面小康建设具有十分重要的意义。     

Institutional perspectives on operationalising climate adaptation through planning

Adaptation to climate change is an imperative and an institutional challenge. This paper argues that the operationalisation of climate adaptation is a crucial element of a comprehensive response to the impacts of climate change on human settlements, including major cities and metropolitan areas. In this instance, the operationalisation of climate adaptation refers to climate adaptation becoming institutionally codified and implemented through planning policies and objectives, making it a central tenet of planning governance. This paper has three key purposes. First, it develops conceptual understandings of climate adaptation as an institutional challenge. Second, it identifies the intersection of this problem with planning and examines how planning regimes, as institutions, can better manage stress created by climate change impacts in human settlements. Third, it reports empirical findings focused on how the metro-regional planning regime in Southeast Queensland (SEQ), Australia, has institutionally responded to the challenge of operationalising climate adaptation. Drawing on key social scientific theories of institutionalism, it is argued that the success or failure of the SEQ planning regime's response to the imperative of climate adaptation is contingent on its ability to undergo institutional change. It is further argued that a capacity for institutional change is heavily conditioned by the influence of internal and external pathways and barriers to change, which facilitate or hinder change processes. The paper concludes that the SEQ metro-regional planning regime has undergone some institutional change but has not yet undergone change sufficient to fully operationalise climate adaptation as a central tenet of planning governance in the region.