Part of: Climate Change Adaptation

Climate Resilience Roadmap

As climate change impacts continue to occur, the built environment must prepare for hazards such as heatwaves, floods, and storms whilst cutting carbon emissions. To start, we first need to understand how to measure our resilience, establish industry-wide targets and pinpoint essential actions and policies to achieve them.

What do we need to accomplish?

This is a critical time for climate action. In the most recent assessment of risks the UK faces from climate-related hazards, over 60% were given the highest urgency score, a staggering increase in urgency compared to the previous assessment. Destructive climate impacts and extreme weather changes will affect all members of our society, devastate lives and livelihoods, and have a detrimental impact on the buildings, infrastructure and environments that keep us secure from climate-related hazards.  

As noted by the Climate Change Committee, the UK currently lacks associated targets or goals for resilience standards at a national, local or sectoral level. This is reflected in UKGBC’s 2025 strategy which identifies the need to define these targets through collaborative research and engagement with the wider built environment industry. 

UKGBC now aim to address this gap by catalysing more urgent, comprehensive, and cohesive action on climate resilience throughout our industry and beyond.  

UKGBC’s Climate Resilience Roadmap

Building on the experience of UKGBC’s groundbreaking Whole Life Carbon Roadmap launched at COP26 in Glasgow, the Climate Resilience Roadmap will be a collaborative effort between some of the built environment’s most influential, trusted, and experienced players using cutting-edge insights at the forefront of global industry.  

This group will collaborate to drive progress on climate resilience in the UK built environment through: 

  • Setting measurable metrics and science-based targets for climate resilience 
  • Identifying key actions for stakeholders across the industry 
  • Identifying key policies for to drive forwards local and national policy 
  • Creating a pathway for UK built environment stakeholders to follow to achieve a climate resilient built environment by 2050.  

Latest Updates

It has not been long since we’ve announced our Steering and Task Group members, but there’s been a lot of action on the Climate Resilience Roadmap since November 2023. We’re working across three main groups—Steering, Task, and Adaptive Pathway—with about 55 contributors from various organizations.

Up to now, we’ve held two main Steering Group meetings, engaged in multiple Adaptive Pathway discussions, and convened four Task Group sessions. Our focus has been on simple yet core aspects of the Roadmap: envisioning a climate-resilient built environment, exploring what resilience and readiness mean from the built environment perspective, identifying key hazards, figuring out the most useful metrics and indicators for tracking resilience, facilitating adaptation, and highlighting critical policy recommendations.

At the heart of it, we’re all about looking at the big picture—making sure people and nature get as much attention as bricks and mortar, all while spreading the word and upping the knowledge game for everyone in the built environment scene.

Events

Past event

Collaboration Café – Climate Resilience

London, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and Scotland hosted event series for UKGBC members to share insights about the practicalities, implications, and challenges of creating climate resilient business.
21 Feb, 2024
Event
In person
connect, network
Past event

Building Climate Resilience in Bristol

Join UKGBC CEO, Smith Mordak and partners Hoare Lea and BCO for a lively panel event discussing the challenges and opportunities of climate resilience in Bristol.
15 Nov, 2023
Event
In person

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Climate Change Adaptation

As the climate crisis intensifies and extreme weather events become more common, the UK’s buildings, cities and critical infrastructure, and the communities that use and occupy these, are in increasing danger. It’s vital to address how our buildings and infrastructure can be adapted to remain fit for the future.
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Climate Resilience webinar