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Climate Change and Concrete – How are they related?

Much has been written about climate change, yet it is often difficult to pin down exactly what it means for our way of life as well as the future of our economy.

Most people accept that things are changing. Weather patterns are different and less predictable. Coastal communities are at greater risk from tidal surges. And many thousands have been touched by devastating wildland fires, floods, and other disasters.

The link between climate change and extreme weather events has been conclusively proven.

There is little room for doubt about the need for change. But what does this mean for those in the construction sector?

The answer is not so simple. It means that how we build, where we build, and what we build with must change.

Here are the simple facts. Weather patterns are changing, and catastrophic disasters from floods, wildland fires, cyclones and periods of bitter cold have become new realities driving the need for adaptation.

Climate change will affect agriculture, food production, transportation systems, and living conditions in our cities and towns.

That’s just for starters. Lives have been lost, thousands of homes have been destroyed, and untold billions of dollars in property damages have been incurred by people, communities and businesses ill-equipped and financially unable to cope with these events.

This means that the rule book for how we rebuild for the future must also change. Existing building codes, existing land use plans, existing emergency response systems simply won’t do.

Our buildings must be more resilient. Our critical infrastructure must be able to withstand more extreme environmental conditions.

Our cities and towns must be better able to rapidly recover from disasters, and we must be better able to sustain critical civic services such as transit, health care, emergency response capabilities and communications following catastrophic events.

This will not be easy. Our cities and towns are becoming larger and more densely populated. Our capacity to provide housing and other critical infrastructure is growing faster than our already tight budgets.

build-environment-planning

So where to begin?

The first steps begin with us. We cannot afford to wait for someone else to solve these problems. There is a need to change public awareness, as well as policy, of the need for more durable and resilient buildings and infrastructure.

We must work within the science, with the facts and means, to engage consumers, investors and public officials about the need for greater resiliency planning.

This means we must design buildings to be more structurally resilient, more energy-efficient, and built with due attention to minimize flood, fire, as well as seismic risks.

It also means urban planning measures such as building codes, transportation planning, zoning regulations, land-use plans, water supply management, green infrastructure initiatives, health care planning, and disaster mitigation efforts must also adapt to the changing environment.

What we build with must also change. Concrete, the building block of modern societies, must also become more competitive, less carbon-intensive, and more easily deployed.

Already, changes are affecting how we produce and use concrete. Prefabrication, modular construction, and design/build approaches are changing the very fabric of the industry.

There are no easy answers to designing and constructing more sustainable and resilient buildings.

For example, laying waste to our forests – the true lungs of our planet – to build high-rise structures with mass timber is not an environmentally sane solution for dealing with climate change.

Adaptation to preserve our way of life and to protect the safety and well-being of our citizens will be an ongoing challenge for many years to come. We may have choices in how we adapt, but there is no option but to adapt.

For those of us who spend our days designing, building and replacing the places where we live, work, and play, there is no greater challenge.

This is what climate change means for us. It’s more than a business. It’s our mission.

Read more:

Reducing The Carbon Footprint Of The Built Environment https://bityl.co/8QMQ [Link will change]

Climate Change – What does it mean for us, the people who build buildings? [Link will change]

Resilient Buildings – MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub Fact Sheet https://bityl.co/8QOM

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