Climate Adaptation

Climate adaptation studies how building and service are prepared for physical climate changes already under way: heat stress, extreme rainfall, drought and storm damage. Unlike carbon management, which reduces emissions to limit further change, adaptation accepts part of the change as given and focuses on functioning under those conditions.

FM carries the operational consequences of climate extremes — overheated offices, basement flooding, storm-related outages — often without the building design having anticipated them. Adaptation knowledge gives FM the argument to defend investments that yield no direct saving but do prevent future failure.

• Was this building designed for the climate of thirty years ago, or for projected conditions?
• Which extreme-weather failure mode carries the greatest consequential damage, and has it been addressed?

• IPCC scenarios for regional climate projections; national climate adaptation strategies.

• Adaptation investment has no payback period in the classic sense; it prevents a loss that only materialises in an event with uncertain timing.

• Technical management of climate control and drainage systems

• Site-level climate risk assessment

• Demand organisation

  Adaptation investment requires a client role that looks beyond the current contract term.

• ISO 14090 — guidelines on climate change adaptation.

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• Confused with carbon management: adaptation reduces the consequences of climate change, mitigation/carbon management reduces the cause. A building can score excellently on carbon and still be poorly resilient to heat.

Local climate projections at building level are more uncertain than global scenarios, so investment decisions must rest on a wider probability range than most financial models are used to handling.

• IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, regional chapters.
• ISO 14090:2019, adaptation to climate change.