Enhancing Building Resilience to Climate Change

The CLIMRES project aims to promote “Leadership for Climate Resilient Buildings” by identifying building vulnerabilities and enhancing their resilience to disruptive events and changing conditions caused by climate change.

Europe has seen a marked increase in extreme weather events, with the Mediterranean region particularly affected. Unseasonably warm winter temperatures are becoming more common, disrupting traditional weather patterns and ecosystems.

CLIMRES provides climate-resilient building solutions against heatwaves, extreme flooding, fires, and earthquakes. These solutions are tested in three large-scale pilots in Spain, Greece, Italy, and Slovenia, evaluating their efficacy. Additionally, there is one multi-hazard replication multiplier pilot in France.

Lessons from these pilots shape a replication roadmap and a capacity-building program to train future leaders in climate-resilient building. CLIMRES offers insights and guidance for building owners, policymakers, and stakeholders in climate resilience and sustainable development.

CLIMRES supports the adaptation of vulnerable buildings to climate change by providing:

• • vulnerability assessment methodologies;
  • an inventory hub for climate resilient buildings (together with novel solutions integration sustainable materials, prefabricated modules as well as blue-green infrastructure elements);
  • a decision support toolkit supporting decisions at different levels (strategic, tactical, operational).

Ecoserveis plays two main roles within the CLIMRES project.

First, at the project level, Ecoserveis leads the development of effective engagement strategies tailored to the stakeholders involved in the three pilots. It also contributes to co-designing the stakeholder requirements that guide the co-creation of CLIMRES solutions across all pilots.

Second, participates in the Spanish pilot which focuses on addressing resilience against Heatwaves. Ecoserveis is actively involved in co-creating the CLIMRES solution to manage climate vulnerability at the district level in residential buildings within the Besós district of Barcelona. The pilot also includes testing advanced architectural technologies at the building scale. Within this framework, Ecoserveis facilitates workshops with municipal staff to co-create the heatwave solution and leads the engagement of beneficiaries to ensure their acceptance and participation. Three other partners are also involved in the Spanish pilot: Municipal Urban Planning Institute of Barcelona (IMU), Pich Arquitects and the International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE).

1. Co-creation and stakeholder engagement: engage stakeholders in a co-creation process to define future-proofing implementation pathways for vulnerable buildings.

2. Architectural analysis and innovation:

• • Analyze architectural interventions, novel designs, and materials for renovating vulnerable buildings and future-proofing new ones.
  • Propose a framework for assessing building vulnerability and quantifying impact within the building ecosystem

3. Development and validation of solutions:

• • Build an ICT platform and AI tools for data gathering, harmonization, sharing, and data-driven decision-making.
  • Facilitate the replication and upscaling of renovation packages through a capacity-building programme

• ClimateReady