Is resilience a key to the future?

Resilience refers to a building's ability to withstand unexpected events and ensure long-term sustainability, thereby protecting people. Resilience of buildings is no longer an option; it is a necessity.

Resilience through time

Resilience is about designing systems and their reactions, including recovery and adaptation, to shock events. The systems can respond and adapt, that is, recover and return to the state, or ultimately fail, meaning that there is no resilience. Resilience can also include flexibility, adaptability, integration, robustness, resourcefulness, regeneration and more.

Designing for resilience means accounting for both current and future conditions. Resilience is about being prepared and mitigating negative impacts. However, we can be even more holistically prepared to support, adapt, and maintain through buildings. It is a way of considering a building's larger impact in unexpected events.

As unforeseen events become more frequent, unpredictable, and intense, buildings must still adapt to protect lives, systems, and environments. Resilience in buildings is no longer an option; it is a necessity that demands action from all, such as – from investors, architects, engineers and others involved. 

Resilience can also directly address people's health and indoor environmental quality (IEQ). A key element is resilience in healthy buildings with the built indoor environment where health, sustainability and resilience perspective must be included in buildings through resilience.

We can connect sustainability, circularity, and resilience in buildings, as all buildings are designed and built to withstand external stressors – extreme weather-related disruptions, global health-related outbreaks, technological and economic failures and rapid human-caused changes.

Explore resilience through time

In the fields of engineering and construction, resilience refers to the ability to absorb or mitigate damage without suffering complete failure. The objective of design, maintenance, restoration for buildings, infrastructure and communities is to ensure their long-term sustainability. It is the ability to respond, absorb and adapt to, as well as recover from, a disruptive event.

A resilient structure/system/community is expected to be able to withstand an extreme event with minimal damage and functionality disruptions during the event; after the event, it should be able to rapidly recover its functionality similar to or even better than the pre-event level.

Future-proofing and smart-readiness of buildings

High energy performance, comfortable indoor environments and decarbonisation of buildings

Future-proof your expertise: Smart-ready buildings and the EPBD recast

Data transforms modern buildings – We share HVAC expertise

The smart readiness indicator (SRI) is a Commission initiative under the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) that measures a building’s ability to use smart technologies. While buildings need to be energy efficient and sustainable to help decarbonise, they also must offer comfortable and healthy living environments for us - people.

How can smart-ready technologies help improve occupants' comfort and buildings' energy consumption? Smart buildings are about connection—interlinking and reacting to signals—thus satisfying building occupants' demands and achieving buildings' good energy performance. Smart buildings are responsive and can adapt operations.

The smartness of a building refers to its ability to sense, interpret, communicate, and actively respond efficiently to changing conditions concerning the operation of technical building systems, the external environment, and building occupants' demands. Smart buildings are the key to healthier and more comfortable buildings with lower energy use and carbon emissions while facilitating the integration of renewable energy sources into the energy system. The key to making buildings smart are technologies such as building automation and control systems (BACS) and the evolution of building services into smart-ready services with intelligent functionalities. The EPBD Recast, supported by the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI), envisions smart buildings as integrated energy systems — capable of producing, using, and storing energy while providing a healthy and comfortable indoor environment for people through effective HVAC systems and other advanced building services. We have summarised the knowledge for you. Introduction to smart buildings – explaining what, why and how. -Smart-ready technologies can help improve occupants' comfort and buildings' energy consumption. -Policy overview on smart-ready buildings will transform the building sector. - Smart-ready buildings, including building automation control systems and smart technologies will shape future building policies. - The engineering profession and smart buildings are rapidly evolving due to technological advancements and regulatory changes across Europe. - SRI makes the indoor environment visible through a mandatory IEQ monitoring system.

Using the EPBD and SRI to make indoor climate visible and valued by everyone is a step in the right direction. Today, defined methodologies exist to monetise energy savings and flexibility services in buildings and for people. However, there is still a clear challenge in standardising the translation of improving indoor environmental quality (IEQ) into economic value. SRI makes the indoor climate more visible by prioritising user needs, with its scoring system rewarding buildings that enhance health, wellbeing, accessibility, comfort and convenience for people. However, the missing link lies in translating these features into financial terms. While the SRI emphasises responsiveness to user needs and includes indoor climate as one of its three key functionalities, connecting these benefits to economic metrics is still critical. Doing so would ensure that IEQ improvements are not only visible but also demanded and valued by all stakeholders in the building sector.

A sensible climate policy would emphasize building resilience into our capacity to adapt to climate changes – whether cooling or warming; whether wholly natural, wholly man-made, or somewhere in between.

Steven F. Hayward, American conservative author