Designing a Resilient Future through Climate Adaptive Design
As designers of future places, we face uncertainty and change every day at work. Our engineers, landscape architects, and planners work to bring infrastructure projects to life—both classic infrastructure (buildings, roads, and utilities) and green infrastructure (green roofs, permeable pavements, urban green spaces, rainwater harvesting, biodiversity promotion, sustainable water management, flood-resistant designs).
AHBL’s approach to designing infrastructure, including green infrastructure, continues to evolve in response to potential impacts from a changing climate, including the increasing occurrence of natural disasters like storms, severe wind, flooding, and wildfires. Dividing the challenges helps us break down a big-picture problem into a more manageable, bite-sized one.
One source of perspective is the book, Climate Adaptation Engineering, Risks and Economics for Infrastructure Decision Making, by Mark Stewart and Emilio Bastidas-Arteago. Accordingly, “the adaptation of infrastructure to new demands induced by climate changes becomes a key component of future sustainable development. The introduction of a risk-based decision support that integrates climate and hazard, engineering, and fragility models, as well as economical decision tools to perform a comprehensive assessment of the cost-effectiveness of adaptation measures.” This integration is sparking evolution in the design process and bringing risk-based decision making to our practice.
What is Risk-Based Decision Making?
The concept of risk-based decision making plays a pivotal role in shaping resilient and sustainable solutions.
Risk-based decision making in climate-adaptive design involves the systematic evaluation of potential risks and uncertainties associated with probable climate change impacts on various projects. It integrates scientific data, modeling techniques, and stakeholder input to assess the likelihood and consequences of different risks. By identifying and evaluating these risks, designers can address vulnerabilities and devise strategies to enhance resilience.
Risk Assessment Now Closely Tied to Climate-Adaptive Design
Effective risk assessment forms the foundation of a risk-based decision process in climate-adaptive design. By conducting thorough risk assessments, designers can anticipate potential challenges and opportunities arising from climate change. This proactive approach enables them to optimize design solutions, minimize negative impacts, and design for emergent scenarios in a rapidly changing climate.
Implementing Risk-Based Decision Making
Incorporating risk-based decision making into the design process involves a multi-faceted approach. Designers need to analyze climate data, conduct risk assessments, engage with stakeholders, and integrate adaptive strategies into their designs. This process allows for continuous refinement and optimization.
By integrating risk assessment into the design process, designers can enhance the resilience and sustainability of their projects, ensuring a more secure future in a rapidly changing climate landscape.
Climate Adaptive Design
AHBL’s practice also enhances adaptation and resilience through implementing a wide range of green infrastructure projects. Working to address a changing climate can be subtle to overt but realizing that what the world needs is true for people as well. We work to create places for people and the planet. Creating gathering places that incorporate shade for people by planting trees and adapting our planting palettes to assist in the migration of varieties of plants that will be more appropriate for wider range of climatic variations – drier summers, wetter and warmer winters, etc.
As the Landscape Architecture Foundation wisely states, as designers schooled in structural thinking, ecological planning, and cultural literacy, we are poised to support the needs associated with our climate crisis. While not easy, we are ready to support and lead the way forward with you.
Resources
Designing for Resilience: Climate-Adaptive Architecture (archiplexgroup.com)
Introduction to Climate Adaptation Engineering - ScienceDirect
https://www.lafoundation.org/resources/2023/12/climate-change-resource-guide