An Integrated Framework for the Design of Climate-Resilient Buildings in Canada

With a rapidly changing climate, resilience of buildings has become an important consideration for Canada’s built environment. Buildings are a complex system composed of many different components that are interdependent. As such, enabling resilience in buildings requires understanding of interdependent building components that are affected by changing climate. In this paper, we discuss the role of three major building components—structure, building systems, and occupants and their interdependencies in building resilience in the context of Canada’s climate risks. We also propose an integrated framework to the resilience paradigm that complements and maximizes the performance of individual building components in climate response. Based on this proposed framework, future work will investigate specific relationship between building components and develop integrated solutions that can establish best practices for resilient building design and operation and inform building standards and regulations.