Climate Resilient Infrastructure and Buildings

Challenge

Canada has a large and growing natural-disaster liability. Disaster liability is outpacing population growth due to pressing factors such as climate change, urban expansion, and larger buildings. Abundant options exist to reverse the trend efficiently. For example, we have long known about stronger and stiffer buildings, noncombustible cladding, and higher-capacity wastewater systems. Unfortunately, many of these options have not been implemented.

Aim

Led by Keith Porter PE, PhD, who has 35 years of professional and research experience in construction contracting, structural design, performance-based engineering, and catastrophe risk management, the team aimed to examine obstacles hindering the adoption of adaptive infrastructure and find ways to overcome them. Learning from communities and organizations that have acted to protect themselves while waiting for model codes to provide resilient buildings, the team assesed significant changes and barriers. Climate resilience requires interactions between all sectors, so the team strived to draw upon interdisciplinary perspectives to identify and untangle conflicts and to offer the case for resilience and cooperation.  

Impact

Highlights of successes include:

    • New Frontiers in Research Funding (1.5M CAD, 500K GBP) for the CIRCLE project
    • The Centre for Multi-hazard Risk and Resilience
    • The Canadian Severe Storms Lab
    • The music in climate action
    • Climate-rescilience incentives with the Cities of Calgary and Edmonton (ICLR)

Read more about our progress here.