Resilience Of Built Environment Research Articles

Effectiveness evaluation of Construction 4.0 technologies in improving built environment resilience

PurposeBuilt environments are highly vulnerable to climatic disasters such as extreme floods, droughts and storms. Inaccurate decisions in adopting emerging construction technologies can result in missed opportunities to improve the resilience of built environments. Therefore, understanding the effectiveness of emerging construction technologies in improving built environment resilience can help in making better strategic decisions at the national and organizational levels. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Construction 4.0 technologies in improving built environment resilience.Design/methodology/approachA list of Construction 4.0 technologies was adopted from a national strategic plan. Then, the data were collected using the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution technique from selected built environment experts to determine the relative effectiveness of Construction 4.0 technologies in improving built environment resilience.FindingsSix Construction 4.0 technologies are critical in improving built environment resilience (in rank order): building information modeling, autonomous construction, advanced building materials, big data and predictive analytics, internet of Things and prefabrication and modular construction. In addition, adopting Construction 4.0 technologies collectively is crucial, as moderate to strong connections exist among the technologies in improving built environment resilience.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first papers that evaluate the effectiveness of Construction 4.0 technologies in improving built environment resilience. Industry professionals, researchers and policymakers can use the study findings to make well-informed decisions on selecting Construction 4.0 technologies that improve built environment resilience to climatic disasters.

Analysis of mechanism and optimal value of urban built environment resilience in response to stormwater flooding

The concept of urban resilience focuses on understanding the process and mechanisms of disaster occurrence, providing innovative approaches to address stormwater flooding. However, existing studies primarily concentrate on enhancing overall system resilience, with limited research examining the temporal progression from stormwater disturbance to flood generation. To fill this gap, this study categorizes the development process of stormwater flooding into three periods: disturbance resistance (DR), adjustment and adaptation (AA), and rapid recovery (RR). Using the SWMM (Storm Water Management Model) software, 27 representative parcels in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China were simulated. By sequentially considering single-indicator control variables, resilience indicators that significantly impact the three periods were identified through the construction of a stormwater flooding resilience indicator library. Subsequently, resilience models for each disaster phase were constructed using the BP (Back Propagation) neural network, and genetic algorithms were employed to optimize the models and determine the optimal values of resilience indicators for each period. Finally, the research findings were summarized into a resilience design method for the built environment to address stormwater flooding, accompanied by a guide for improving stormwater flooding resilience.The study reveals the following key findings: (1) the influence of physical and spatial elements in the built environment on stormwater flooding formation varies across different stages of the disaster process; (2) distinct resilience indicators operate at different times and in different ways throughout the entire stormwater flooding resilience process; (3) enhancing stormwater flooding resilience in the built environment does not necessarily require setting specific threshold values for each influencing indicator; instead, an optimal single value emerges when multiple indicators interact. Moreover, when multiple indicators interact, an optimal combination module with the best value for a single indicator exists. This study investigates the complete cycle from storm disturbance to flood disaster formation, offering both solutions for cities to mitigate storm flood disasters and advancing theoretical research on urban storm flood resilience while fostering interdisciplinary integration.

Strengthening Resilient Built Environments through Human Social Capital: A Path to Post-COVID-19 Recovery

There are strong indications that the built environment has had a great influence on the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-disaster recovery. The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected both human and global development, while efforts to combat this menace call for an integrated human social capital index. This research seeks to enhance understanding of how the built environment can be enhanced through resilience against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to investigate the impact of a resilient built environment on increasing resilience in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. The quantitative studies test the impact of four built environment resilience indices (built environment capital, disaster management indices, awareness of the COVID-19 pandemic, and built environment adaptive strategies) on human social capital and COVID-19 pandemic indices. This study reveals the role of human social capital in achieving a resilient built environment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. Built environment capital, disaster management indices, and awareness of COVID-19 also indirectly affect the COVID-19 pandemic indices through human social capital. This study’s implications are useful for post-COVID-19 recovery, which is important for future planning of the built environment in Nigeria.

Assessing the Built Environment’s Reflectivity, Flexibility, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity Resilience Qualities against Climate Change Impacts from the Perspective of Different Stakeholders

The frequency and severity of climate change are projected to increase, leading to more disasters, increased built environment system (BES) vulnerability, and decreased coping capacity. Achieving resilience objectives in the built environment is challenging and requires the collaboration of all relevant sectors and professionals. In this study, various stakeholders were engaged, including governmental authorities, regulatory bodies, engineering firms, professionals, contractors, and non-governmental and non-profit organizations (NGOs and NPOs, respectively). The engagement was carried out through the answering of a questionnaire survey that reflects their perceptions about climate change adaptation, the built environment resilience qualities (RQs), and the degree of resilience of the existing built environment and their perceived capacities. The results were analyzed using several statistical tests. The results revealed that advancing public understanding and management tools, reducing economic losses, and developing necessary plans still require improvement. Additionally, the BESs were ranked concerning accepting the change and uncertainty inherited from the past or generated over time. This study emphasized the perception that the decision-making domain is crucial for delivering a reflective built environment. Additionally, features such as advancing public understanding and management tools, reducing economic losses, and developing necessary plans still require improvement. Furthermore, there is a belief in the importance of the task forces within the community as part of an emergency response plan, and a less reflective system would have less recovery speed. Therefore, the rapidity characteristic of a built environmental system to accept the change and uncertainty inherited from the past or generated over time is correlated to the system’s reflectivity quality. This study emphasizes the significant correlation between the different RQ traits. It also encourages researchers to formulate more objective methods to reach a set form for measuring RQs as an engineering standard.

Climate Change Adaptation and Built Environment Resilience: East Kolkata Wetland Strategies

In developing countries, poverty alleviation and development are key policy drivers, and ideally these strategies should align with climate change adaptation and resilience as well. This study explores those challenges through an inductive investigation into the East Kolkata Wetland (EKW), the 'wise-use' of wastewater, alignment with climate change adaptation, resilience and poverty alleviation. EKW is a 12,500 ha Ramsar site, close to Kolkata Metropolitan Area in eastern India and connected to Sunderban and the Bay of Bengal. While there are illegal demand-driven developments within EKW, the study explores how planning might provide for development while preserving the critical functions of a wetland. The study addresses three topics: (1) the socio-ecological model; (2) planning approaches to the wetland; and (3) how those might contribute to poverty alleviation. This study of EKW centres on the past and present ecological history of the city and includes analysis of future physical and institutional relations between the city and the wetland. The study benefits from participatory mapping exercises involving indigenous fishing and farming communities.

Understanding multisector stakeholder value systems on housing resilience in the City of Miami

Despite a growing literature on housing resilience, there is limited understanding of multisector stakeholder value systems on housing resilience. To allow for more effective collaboration among multisector stakeholders in facilitating housing resilience, there is a need to understand how these stakeholders’ values are similar to or different from one another. To address this need, this study aims to (1) understand housing resilience values and value priorities among public, private, nonprofit, and academic stakeholders, and (2) analyze the similarities and differences of stakeholder value priorities across multiple sectors. The study is based on the case study of the City of Miami (CoM), a city that is extremely vulnerable to disasters. The primary data collection methods include in-depth, semi-structured interviews (n = 50) with multisector stakeholder representatives. The values that were most frequently discussed by the stakeholders include affordability, structural robustness and integrity, comfort and health, connectivity, and contingency and adaptability. While there is a consensus on the values, there are some substantial disparities in the value priorities of stakeholders across different sectors. Physical and built environment resilience values were emphasized more by academic stakeholders, while environmental and social resilience values were more of a concern to the public sector. Social and economic resilience values were highlighted more by nonprofit sector stakeholders. The findings from this study offer insights to policy makers on how they can find common ground among multisector stakeholders and promote more collaborative and human-centered housing resilience practices in cities vulnerable to disasters.

The built environment resilience qualities to climate change impact: Concepts, frameworks, and directions for future research

• Incorporating resilience requirements into built environment systems’ is crucial. • The most common built environment resilience qualities have been investigated. • A grouping matrix is proposed for the qualities based on the influencing factors. • Dimensions, relevant capacities, and boundaries of the qualities are discussed. • The conceptual framework of resilient built environment performance is plotted. The exposure of built environment systems to climate-related disturbances increases over time. As such, the resilience of the built environment against climate change shocks and stresses has increasingly become a concern on the local, national, and global levels. Therefore, there is a need to measure the impact, build coping and adaptive capacities, and improve the functionality of the vulnerable systems. In addition, the systems must adopt the minimum resilience functioning methods and practices. Hence, this paper reviewed the most common resilience qualities (RQs), capacities, and dimensions of the built environment and their interdependencies. The research method is based on analyzing the relevant peer-reviewed journal papers published in renowned international journal papers and databases during the past two decades. The scope of the study is narrowed down by following specific guidelines to ensure a proper selection of up-to-date research articles to provide a precise understanding of the research progress on the built environment RQs. It provides an overview of the different definitions and indicators in which RQs have been applied to built environment planning, analysis, and design, emphasizing the various dimensions and relevant capacities. The study concludes that integrated resilience indicators, planning, and design methodology are crucial for incorporating RQs into the framework that influences the built environment. The built environment RQs demonstrated by this study include reflectivity ( Rf ), robustness ( Rb ), redundancy ( Rd ), flexibility ( Fx ), resourcefulness ( Rs ), rapidity ( Rp ), inclusivity ( Ic ), and integration ( It ). Nevertheless, the built environment RQs are still growing, requiring further study to develop plans and policies for effective and timely responses to climate change effects.

Sustainable High-Rise Buildings: Toward Resilient Built Environment

This article examines outstanding “sustainable” skyscrapers that received international recognition, including LEED certification. It identifies vital green features in each building and summarizes the prominent elements for informing future projects. Overall, this research is significant because, given the mega-scale of skyscrapers, any improvement in their design, engineering, and construction will have mega impacts and major savings (e.g., structural materials, potable water, energy, etc.). Therefore, the extracted design elements, principles, and recommendations from the reviewed case studies are substantial. Further, the article debates controversial design elements such as wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, glass skin, green roofs, aerodynamic forms, and mixed-use schemes. Finally, it discusses greenwashing and the impact of COVID-19 on sustainable design.

A REVIEW ON THE RESILIENCE MODELS AND ATTRIBUTES WITHIN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Resilience is considered as the ability of systems to cope (or adapt) with adversity over time. However, there is an ongoing debate around the resilience paradigm, and similarly, most resilience descriptions are often application specific. This article reviews various resilience models in the built environment such as the representation of resiliency and its characteristics (e.g., sociocultural networks), objectives (e.g., enhancing knowledge systems), challenges (e.g., adaption), and applications (e.g., climate resiliency and disaster). This paper aims to establish a foundation for further investigation in built environment resilience. Open issues are drawn toward the end of this article to reveal new research avenues to shed light and spark new interest in this research field.

Resilient Built Environment: Critical Review of the Strategies Released by the Sustainability Rating Systems in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, buildings have been viewed as a facilitator of disease spread, where the three main transmission routes (contact, droplets, aerosols) are more likely to happen. However, with proper policies and measures, buildings can be better prepared for re-occupancy and beyond. This study reviews the strategies developed by several Sustainability Rating Systems (SRS, namely WELL, Fitwel and LEED) to respond to any infectious disease and ensure that building occupants protect and maintain their health. The best practices, that are similar between each SRS, highlight that the overall sustainability of the spaces increases if they are resilient. Results indicate that SRS promote a weak sustainability approach since they accept that economic development can reduce natural capitals. SRS are also characterized by an aggregated level of assessment of different criteria that does not allow to map different choices. However, the decomposition of the concept of sustainability in its three bottom lines (i.e., environmental, social and economic) shows that preventive strategies are likely to be systematically adopted as the state-of-the-art. Finally, even if the latest research points out the airborne transmission as the major infection route, the SRS lack analytical measures to address issues such as social distancing.

Built Environment Typologies Prone to Risk: A Cluster Analysis of Open Spaces in Italian Cities

Planning for preparedness, in terms of multi-hazard disasters, involves testing the relevant abilities to mitigate damage and build resilience, through the assessment of deterministic disaster scenarios. Among risk-prone assets, open spaces (OSs) play a significant role in the characterization of the built environment (BE) and represent the relevant urban portion on which to develop multi-risk scenarios. The aim of this paper is to elaborate ideal scenarios—namely, Built Environment Typologies (BETs)—for simulation-based risk assessment actions, considering the safety and resilience of BEs in emergency conditions. The investigation is conducted through the GIS data collection of the common characteristics of OSs (i.e., squares), identified through five parameters considered significant in the scientific literature. These data were processed through a non-hierarchical cluster analysis. The results of the cluster analysis identified five groups of OSs, characterized by specific morphological, functional, and physical characteristics. Combining the outcomes of the cluster analysis with a critical analysis, nine final BETs were identified. The resulting BETs were linked to characteristic risk combinations, according to the analysed parameters. Thus, the multi-risk scenarios identified through the statistical analysis lay the basis for future risk assessments of BEs, based on the peculiar characteristics of Italian towns.

An evidence-based framework validation for building code improvement in New Zealand

PurposeNew Zealand building code may be serving its purpose to an extent, there is still a need to develop a framework to improve the use and application of building code for better building performance and services. This study aims to validate the identified parameters in the developed framework to improve building code practice in New Zealand.Design/methodology/approachSubject matter experts interview was conducted with key stakeholders that use building code, standards and other associated compliance documents.FindingsThe findings from this study establish the importance of improving the building code, and the efficacy of validated framework helps to identify the areas with the most pressing needs within the building regulatory system. All the subject matter experts unanimously agreed on educating and training the building code users. Besides, the validated framework will enable the policy decision-makers in the building regulatory system to promote the use of building code and the utilisation of its potentials in reducing disaster while increasing the built environment resilience. The study concludes that the designed framework will create more robust strategy implementations to enhance innovative solutions embedded in performance-based building code.Originality/valueThis study originality centres on the practical application of an evidence-based framework for performance-based building code, standards and other related compliance documents.

How to assess ecodistrict resilience to urban heat stress under future heatwaves? A case study for the city of Paris

It is now well-known that the frequency, intensity and duration of heatwaves will strongly increase along the XXIth century, which introduces the urban built environment resilience as a new paradigm. In Paris, the intense 2003 heatwave demonstrated that warm urban temperatures could result in serious adverse health issues. Temperatures were particularly elevated during nighttime, due to the urban heat island effect. Since air-conditioning has not penetrated yet in residential French buildings, studying the potential of combined mitigation strategies at the district and building scale to increase the neighbourhood and buildings resilience in strong urbanized areas under future heatwaves is a key subject matter. The climate change aspect is integrated through a future heatwave weather file, re-assembled from dynamically downscaled multi-year regional climate change projections from the EURO-CORDEX project. The new ecodistrict Clichy-Batignolles in central Paris is chosen as a case study, recognized as innovative for low-energy and environmental solutions. It is composed of high-rise residential and commercial buildings, large green areas, cool surfaces, and reduced anthropogenic sources. We used an Urban Canyon Model (Urban Weather Generator) to model the neighbourhood and different design configurations (building height and density, green and cool surfaces). The designs and measures were evaluated through a sensitivity analysis to analyse their potential to mitigate the urban local microclimate air temperature during the heatwaves. We quantified the neighbourhood resilience and found that the ecodistrict is exposed to a strong urban heat stress under the future intense heatwave. These results highlight how outdoor overheating assessment can be used to evaluate the district mitigation and adaptation strategies. This approach can be used for urban planning, while the modelled future urban heatwaves can be used as an input for building simulations and evaluate the resilience of the buildings to urban heat stress.

Disaster Risk Reduction with Resilient Built Environment in Odisha coast, India

Disaster Risk Reduction with Resilient Built Environment in Odisha coast, India

Critical review of existing built environment resilience frameworks: Directions for future research

Resilience, in general, is widely considered as a system's capacity to proactively adapt to external disturbances and recover from them. However, the existing resilience framework research is still quite fragmented and the links behind various studies are not straightforwardly accessible. The paper provides a critical state-of-the-art review of both quantitative and qualitative considerations of resilience, approached from a built environment engineering perspective, with a focus on geo-environmental hazards. A research gap is identified and translated into a holistic and systemic approach to conceptualise resilience, factoring in related concepts such as vulnerability, adaptive capacity and recoverability. A generic built environment resilience framework is proposed informed by a critical and comprehensive review of the related literature. The paper concludes with insights into four key strategic areas requiring further research, namely: (a) risk based cost optimal resilient design and standards of buildings and infrastructures, (b) model based evaluation and optimisation of buildings and infrastructures, (c) integrated risk modelling, inference and forecasting, and (d) heterogeneous disaster data acquisition, integration, security and management.

The grey and the green [resilient built-environment infrastructure

If you like it hot, don't head for the beach. Go to the city. Researchers from Yale University some years ago found the concrete jungle of cities like London creates 'urban heat islands'. Temperatures are noticeably warmer inside the city than even within its own ribbon of green belt - the buildings trap heat by day and release it slowly at night. Yet such grey infrastructure also stores up trouble for the future when you look at the city's ability to survive massive floods.

Understanding the Role of Built Environment Resilience to Natural Disasters: Lessons Learned from the Wenchuan Earthquake

AbstractThis study develops and validates a conceptual model of the role of built environment resilience to natural disasters by conducting an overall case study of the Wenchuan earthquake. This re...

Development of a Tool for Assessing Commercial Building Resilience

Built environment resilience is becoming a more established concept, although there are no schemes yet devised to comprehensively measure building resilience from the point of view of a commercial building owner. For a commercial building owner, ‘building resilience’ can be defined as the ability to protect, maintain, or restore the functionality of, value of, and income generated by a building after a damaging event or circumstance within a prescribed time frame. There is a need to measure the resilience of individual buildings to help owners make better decisions and protect their assets, to better assess the built environment resilience of larger geographic units such as communities and cities, and to complement existing assessments of building sustainability. Based on a conceptual examination of resilience measurement and a review of the literature and other resources, this study develops a new resilience assessment tool: the Australian Resilience Measurement Scheme for buildings (ARMS). The scheme adopts resilience as a holistic concept incorporating physical, infrastructural, environmental, economic–social, political–regulatory, and organisational resilience, and is rated according to dimensions, subdimensions, and items scored on a points system. The scheme will allow the aspects in which a building is performing well or poorly to be identified as well as give an overall resilience rating. This paper also examines the lessons to be learned from sustainability assessment tools for measuring and assessing resilience in terms of tool structure, the weightings of items and dimensions, item measurability, whether items are performance based or feature based, and benchmarking. The tool is its infancy, and work to further develop it is continuing. As has occurred with the assessment of building sustainability, the assessment of building resilience will increase in importance to stakeholders of the built environment.

Resilient Built Environment: New Framework for Assessing the Residential Construction Market

AbstractThe residential construction market remains vulnerable to the environment. The architecture, engineering, and construction industry now recognizes natural hazards as an increasing threat to the vitality of the built environment. Resilience has become a central concept for assessing environment adaptations; however, how to assess resilience remains elusive. In an effort to solve this problem, the present work proposes a conceptual framework of resilient built environment (RBE), which focuses on one piece of the resilience puzzle: residential construction in the built environment. This paper also provides a case study to demonstrate how to use the RBE framework to assess the state-level minimum resilience performance for the U.S. residential construction market. Findings from the study indicate that 53% of states have adopted building codes with a satisfactory capability for resilience, which raises a need for new policies on resilience management. The case study validates the RBE framework as a val...

サステナブルでレジリエントな建築環境をめざした日本建築学会の取り組み

サステナブルでレジリエントな建築環境をめざした日本建築学会の取り組み