Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are urgently required (IPCC
2007a
). The built
environment is responsible for approximately a third of global anthropogenic GHG
emissions, leading to climate change (de Ia Rue du Can and Price
2008
). Despite
international climate change protocols and initiatives, global GHG emissions are
still increasing. Building sector carbon emissions including those from energy
generation used to power buildings have increased annually by 2 % since 1970 for
example, while emissions from commercial buildings have increased by 3 %
annually since 2002 (IPCC
2007a
).
The built environment will also have to adapt to climate change impacts, as the
main site of human economic, social and cultural life. More than half of all
humans now live in urban built environments, and people spend more than 70 %
of their time indoors (Chan and Cheng
2006
; Grimm et al.
2008
). Even if all GHG
emissions were immediately halted, the climatic change caused by past emissions
would still be experienced due to the slow response of the planet's atmosphere,
oceans and other carbon sinks (IPCC
2007b
). It is important therefore that built
environment professionals are not only able to work towards mitigating the causes
of climate change, but are also able to devise strategies to adapt to the impacts
concurrently.
It is appropriate then that established responses to climate change in the built
environment broadly fall into two categories. The first is mitigating the causes of
climate change by reducing GHG emissions. The second is adapting the existing
and future built environment to predicted climate change impacts. Changes in the
climate that will affect the built environment are numerous and although difficult
to quantify, have been explored by several researchers (Koeppel and Ürge-Vorsatz
2007
; Wilby
2007
). The impacts that climate change will have on the built
environment are both direct and indirect. Direct impacts will affect the actual
physical fabric of the built environment. Indirect impacts incorporate economic
and social changes that will also affect the built environment. The results of a
review of international research examining the main direct impacts of climate
change on the built environment have been summarised in Table
4.1
(see:
Pedersen Zari
2012
for methodology, full results and sources). Impacts will vary
greatly depending on the location and local quality and density of the existing built
environment.
4.2 Biomimicry and Climate Change
By looking to the living world, there may be organisms or systems that can be
mimicked to create and maintain a resilient and adaptable built environment, and
improve its capacity for regeneration of the health of ecosystems (Pedersen Zari
and Storey
2007
). Biomimicry is the emulation of strategies seen in the living
world as a basis for design and is a source of innovation, with potential to con-
tribute to the creation of more sustainable architecture. It is the mimicry of an
organism, organism behaviour or an entire ecosystem, in terms of its form,
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