Building Codes Aren’t Climate Ready, But Changes are Coming
Date Posted: September 19, 2023
Posted In: Discussion, Environment/Sustainability,
From Construction Dive: The world’s climate is changing more quickly than building codes are being updated, putting lives and structures at risk, according to panelists at the Building Innovation 2023 conference in Washington, D.C., last week.
In fact, only about a third of the U.S. is covered by disaster-resistant codes, according to panelist Daniel Bass, an architect with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Although climate risks interact with each other, building and zoning codes are not meshed accordingly and vary by locality. Wildfires, for example, must be addressed at a community and neighborhood level, since a fire at one building threatens all the structures around it.
This holistic thinking is vital because sometimes climate mitigation efforts conflict with each other. Bass gave an example from the 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder, Colorado, where grass-filled drainage canals, built to deal with stormwater runoff, inadvertently created “fire superhighways” that spread flames directly into the hearts of towns and subdivisions.
For the most part, buildings in the U.S. are not designed for future conditions or even current climate change-fueled extreme weather, and growing flood and fire activity is forcing residential and commercial insurers to leave coastal states like California, Florida and Louisiana.