Retrofitting for resilience: A multi-hazard approach

This item is part of: Boarin, P., Haarhoff, E., Manfredini, M., Mohammadzadeh, M., Premier, A., (2021). Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub PhD Symposium, Future Cities Research Hub, School of Architecture and Planning of the University of Auckland. ISBN: 978-0-473-53616-9

ABSTRACT

Resilience has received increased attention in urban-related research, policies and practice in recent years. Many urban development-related international initiatives have been established, such as the Making Cities Resilient Campaign and 100 Resilient Cities Programme, aiming to assist governments in enhancing urban resilience. Although the building stock is a significant component of the built environment, little work has been done on the scale of buildings compared to the work developed for the city scale. Resilient buildings can deliver their functions in the face of stresses and shocks, which are the converse of buildings that are vulnerable to the city's weaknesses and hazards. Enhancing the resilience of buildings boosts the urban fabric's resilience at a larger scale. This paper discusses what defines resilient buildings, focusing on existing building retrofits as it offers great opportunity to enhance the resilience of the built environment on a larger scale. It establishes a comprehensive understanding of resilience in buildings that consider both stresses and shocks threatening the built environment. Since resilience is a context-specific approach, the study also takes Jordan as an example and identifies the resilience challenges of its buildings according to 200 local professionals' perception who responded to an online questionnaire.