Building Governance and Climate Change

Regulation and Related Policies

Richard Lorch, Jacques Laubscher, Edwin Hon-wan Chan, Henk Visscher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351184199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The contribution of buildings to climate change is widely acknowledged. This book investigates how building regulatory systems are addressing the current and future effects of climate change, and how these systems can be improved. After presenting a comprehensive overview of how the current building regulatory system developed, some of the inadequacies are identified. The largest part of the book examines the potential for innovative policy solutions to address the real world problem of mitigating and adapting buildings to climate change. This publication contributes significantly to our understanding of the complexities of long-term energy efficiency in buildings. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Building Research & Information journal.

RESEARCH PAPER

Sustainability and resiliency objectives in performance building regulations

Brian J. Meacham

Building regulatory agencies worldwide are grappling with how to define and implement appropriate mandatory and voluntary measures for new and existing buildings that address societal and political demands for increased environmental and resource sustainability and resiliency to the effects of climate change without lessening the historical building regulatory focus on health, safety and welfare of building occupants. It can be argued that a transition from prescriptive to performance-based building regulatory regimes, coupled with the introduction of new policy objectives for sustainability and resiliency, in a rather short period of time, without full assessment of how they interact with existing building regulatory objectives, and without broadly agreed holistic solutions, has led to the introduction of new objectives that have the potential to result in increased hazards and risks to occupants. To explore the current situation and future needs associated with performance building regulatory regimes and the inclusion of sustainability and resiliency objectives for new and existing buildings, the literature was reviewed and a survey of building regulatory bodies and institutions in 12 countries was conducted to obtain perspectives on whether and how sustainability and resiliency objectives are being incorporated into their building regulations and if any challenges have been identified.

Introduction and context

Historically, building regulations have focused on the health, safety and welfare of building occupants. They emerged in response to widespread illness, death and destruction that occurred in urban centres as a result of unsanitary conditions and significant hazard events, and the social and political mandate to mitigate these hazards as part of urban redevelopment. A social compact (contract) developed between government and the citizenry in which it became acceptable for the government to collect taxes in return for the regulation and enforcement of minimum levels of safety and sanitary conditions. As such, early building regulations addressed such issues as minimum requirements for fire separation and resistance of materials, structural resiliency to natural hazards, and safe heating and sanitation systems for occupants. Over time, needs such as standardized testing and listing to assure minimum performance, industry standards for compatibility of systems and components, minimum competency of practitioners, and mechanisms to assure compliance of constructed buildings with stated designs gave rise to the other components within the building regulatory system, all based around a culture of facilitating a built environment that delivered minimum levels of safety and health to building occupants (Cheit, 1990; Field & Rivkin, 1975; Geschwind, 2001; Hemenway, 1975; ICC, 2007; Imrie & Street, 2011; Meacham, 2014; Wermeil, 2000; Yatt, 1998).

Generally speaking, changes to the regulations and supporting regulatory system occurred slowly as new materials, products, systems and methods of analysis, design and construction were developed, tested, introduced and adopted as acceptable into the regulatory system. The process can take many years, as with the development and implementation of the single burning item (SBI) test (van Mierlo, 2005) or even decades, such as with the development and implementation of the Eurocodes for structural design (Eurocode, 2015). In other cases, change occurred rapidly, but nearly always in response to some significant hazard event which resulted in unacceptable damage, injury or death. In these situations change was often made to the building regulations first, with changes to standards and other instruments following, with the intent of avoiding similar losses in the future. When this type of change occurred, however, it was primarily focused on new construction, and even when upgrade of some of the existing building stock was required, it was often not to the same level of new construction: a trend that continues today (e.g., IREM, 2013; Stannard, 2014). There are obvious reasons for this, primarily the cost of retrofitting all existing building stock in comparison with the overall risk and benefits. In order to provide options to legislated provisions, voluntary standards or guidelines (e.g., NFPA 101A, 2013; FEMA 356, FEMA 114) and/or market instruments (e.g., insurance industry requirements, such as FM Global Data Sheets (e.g., FM Global 1–28) are used to encourage building owners to increase the safety performance of existing buildings.

While there have always been some challenges in addressing issues within the historical building regulatory system as outlined above, the focus on health and safety, and the development of regulatory infrastructure and generally common understanding of those issues amongst stakeholders around these topics, had created an environment where many of the issues were able to be addressed proactively and cooperatively. In recent years, however, three concurrent activities have emerged within building regulatory systems that have placed pressure on the ability of the systems to adapt and respond in as successful a manner as in the past: a relatively rapid transition to performance-based regulations, new policy objectives in the area of sustainability, some of which appear to be difficult to harmonize with traditional health and safety objectives, and a desire to address, but lack of clarity as to how, climate change impacts on buildings.

When the transition to performance-based (function-based) building regulatory systems and regimes began, health and safety was still the focus. The motivation for change was related to reducing regulatory burden, reducing costs to the industry and the public, increasing innovation and flexibility in design, and being better positioned to address emerging issues (BRRTF, 1991; May, 2003; Meacham, 2009; Meacham, Moore, Bowen, & Traw, 2005; Meijer & Visscher, 1998; 2006). All this was to be achieved while maintaining tolerable levels of safety and performance.

In some cases the transition has worked reasonably well: in other cases there have been issues, including some significant system failures (Lundin, 2005; May, 2003; Meacham, 2010; Mumford, 2010). With respect to failures, contributing factors include lack of agreed performance measures (criteria) and means to predict performance in use, lack of test methods that yield data that can be used in engineering analysis, limited availability and quality of data, inadequate competency and accountability in the market and of those in oversight (compliance checking) roles, insufficient product certification/means to assure the performance of products, lack of transferring knowledge between regulatory regimes, lack of having persons with the right expertise and experience involved, and challenges with insurance, liability assignment and limitation, and consumer protection mechanisms (Lundin, 2005; May, 2003; Meacham, 2010; Mumford, 2010). These shortcomings become particularly important when one considers that buildings have been constructed under these systems for some 25 years, and now might reflect a significant contribution to the existing building stock in many countries. As such, if performance issues exist, the impact could be significant. The ‘leaky building’ scenario that unfolded in New Zealand is probably the highest profile example of what could happen (May, 2003), but there may be other latent problems as well.

Part of the challenge is that performance-based building regulatory systems, while similar in structure, can vary significantly in implementation. While the structure of the building code (regulation) itself follows the general format outlined by the Nordic Building Code Committee (NKB) in the 1970s (Meacham 2004; Meacham et al., 2005), there can be significant variation in the means for demonstrating compliance with the mandatory provisions (Meacham, 2009) (Figure 1).

In some countries there are no mandatory means of demonstrating compliance, and it is the designer’s choice to follow ‘deemed to comply’ documents, which may reference national or international standards, or to take a ‘first principles’ (performance-based) approach. England and New Zealand are examples. In other countries there are mandatory compliance documents, which in turn reference national or international standards, and variance from the requirements is by exception. There are also situations in which performance criteria and means of verification are built into the code (regulation). A good example here is Japan.

In addition to the transition to performance-based systems, building regulations and regulatory systems have increasingly become complicated by the establishment of policy mandates and the introduction of voluntary assessment and rating instruments originating from environmental sustainability and climate change resiliency concerns, which have historically been outside the realm of building regulation. While a social compact between government and the populace has developed around the understanding that we need to do more to protect the environment, resulting in the proliferation of environmental regulation and enforcement legislation which nominally began in the 1970s, it is only recently that the connection of the built environment to negative impacts on the environment, and the need to make buildings more resilient to climate change, have come onto the political agenda. A result is new pressures on building regulations from new actors, inside and outside of government.

Figure 1 NKB hierarchy

Source: Meacham et al. (2005)

These new pressures pose a significant challenge, not just because the traditional building regulatory environment is itself undergoing change and has structural challenges to overcome, but because the success of recent governmental policies and market approaches aimed at increasing the sustainability of the built environment has arguably been limited (Simmons, 2015; Van Bueren & de Jong, 2007). Whereas a robust approach to engaging stakeholders in issues of health and safety developed over decades in the historical building regulatory system, new stakeholders have emerged around sustainability objectives, and the different groups are fragmented and not working effectively together (Cole, 2011; du Plessis & Cole, 2011; Foxell & Cooper, 2015; IPCC, 2007; Simmons, 2015; Van Bueren & de Jong, 2007). In addition, the introduction of voluntary measures have resulted in inconsistent levels of performance being realized (Newsham, Mancini, & Birt, 2009; Scofield, 2009), in part because it rests outside the realm of regulatory oversight. The situation is further complicated because there are incomplete building performance measures, monitoring and enforcement mechanisms for sustainability (Van Bueren & de Jong, 2007) as well as increasing liability concerns (Brinson & Dolan, 2008). As noted by Foxell and Cooper (2015, p. 403),

The gap between policy intent and effective solutions remains difficult to close. This serves to increase the number of challenges that the built environment sector needs to address successfully.

This fragmented regulatory approach, not necessarily having the right persons involved, and the introduction of new social objectives has led to unintended consequences being introduced, some of which could present considerable risk to building occupants. This includes structural hazards due to moisture-related failures of enclosed structural systems (May, 2003; Mumford, 2010), health hazards related to mould and indoor air quality due to weather-tight buildings (Mudarri, 2010), fire and health hazards due to the flammability of thermal insulating materials (Babrauskas et al., 2012; Simonson McNamee, Blomqvist, & Andersson, 2011), fire and smoke spread potential through the use of double-skinned facades (Chow, Hung, Gao, Zou, & Dong, 2007), and fire hazards and impediments to emergency responders associated with interior and exterior use of vegetation, photovoltaic panels, and other ‘green’ features and elements (Meacham, Poole, Echeverria, & Cheng, 2012).

Finding a suitable balance between sustainability and fire safety objectives can be particularly complex due to the multidimensional aspects of each. Timber is ‘sustainable’ but also is combustible, so if not addressed appropriately can present a significant fire safety hazard (Meacham et al., 2012; UL, 2008). High-strength concrete requires less material and is more sustainable than regular-strength concrete, but can be highly susceptible to spalling during a fire (Kodur & Phan, 2007). Insulation and alternative energy sources are good for sustainability, but photovoltaic panels that can cause an ignition, and flammable insulation material, can be a catastrophic combination (Meacham et al., 2012).

Tightly coupled with goals to increase environmental sustainability through better energy efficiency, reduction in/reuse of construction materials, incorporation of alternative energy sources and related measures in the built environment are goals to increase the resiliency of the built environment to climate change effects. In recent years we have seen devastating hurricane, cyclone, flood, snowfall, drought and wildland fire events and seasons. Each has resulted in significant impacts on the built environment, including widespread building damage associated with moisture, wind, snow load and fire. This is not unexpected, as it has been predicted as a real possibility for some time (e.g., IPCC, 2007; Steenbergen, Geurts, & van Bentum, 2009; Wilby, 2007).

However, there are no easy answers in terms of developing comprehensive resiliency strategies, since while the problems are easy to recognize, the solutions are difficult to agree and implement. In many cases there is not a single policy area that has responsibility for avoiding or mitigating the impacts. Planning, zoning, environmental and resource legislation have a significant effect on the susceptibility of buildings to flooding and wildland fire (as is said in real estate (property) valuation: location, location, location). In some cases, policy-makers wish to avoid moving people or restricting expansion into hazard-prone areas if that has an impact on economic development. That places a burden on building regulation. Some of this can be addressed in regulations for new construction; however, affordability then becomes a concern. The challenges become even more amplified when addressing existing buildings, as there is less regulatory oversight and often less economic capacity to manage from the ownership side (i.e., older buildings, particularly residential, house a higher percentage of lower-income families).

In summary, the literature suggests that advancing sustainability and resili...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Building governance and climate change: roles for regulation and related polices
• Part 1: Impact of building regulations on the built environment
• Part 2: Inadequacy of current building regulatory systems
• Part 3: Addressing the performance gap
• Part 4: Innovative policy solutions
• Part 5: Historic buildings
• Part 6: Financial incentives
• Part 7: Future governance
• Part 8: Enforcement
• Index