Sustainable Construction, 5th Edition

Chapter 16Resilience in the Context of Sustainable Construction

The combination of increasing human population, economic growth, and climate change is not only devastating the planet, it is also increasing the risk to humans of catastrophic natural disasters. Other, non-climate-related disasters, such as earthquakes, can cause catastrophic damage due to the concentration of large populations in urban areas located in regions prone to natural disasters. Increasing urbanization, marked by the large-scale migration of people to cities, is increasing population density and forcing a transformation in the design and construction of the built environment to minimize these risks. The attribute of the built environment that describes this strategy is resilience and the risks it addresses vary widely and include earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, landslides, and wildfires. More specifically, the application of resilience to communities, cities, and buildings is referred to as built environment resilience. The process of creating a resilient built environment depends on the type of risk being addressed and the location of the likely risk. Japan is subject to both earthquakes and typhoons and a resilience strategy must take both into account. In California, earthquakes, wildfires, landslides, and flooding are all risks to the survival and recovery a community and its buildings and infrastructure (see Figure 16.1).

Figure 16.1 US natural disaster map.

(Source: NOAA) ...