Building design is strongly influenced by regional contexts, including climatic conditions, structural requirements, and cultural preferences. These factors impact material selection and pose challenges to the transferability of building typologies and material indicators (MIs) across regions. This study examines how regional context affects design and material requirements, using a 9-story residential building as a case study based on building standards in Kazakhstan and Germany. The building was chosen for comparability, reflecting cultural differences in construction methods, such as with and without a basement. Climatic differences affect building physics requirements, influencing the material needs of the building envelope. Structural design followed reinforced concrete standards in both countries, determining material quantities. Analysis identified key factors influencing the transferability of building concepts, particularly climatic conditions—Kazakhstan's colder winters require thicker insulation walls—and Germany's cultural preference for basements, leading to higher material consumption. The study emphasizes the need for region-specific approaches to sustainable, climate-resilient design and strategies to improve the transferability of MIs across regions.

Climate change introduces significant challenges for civil engineering, especially concerning heat resilience in buildings. This study investigates the susceptibility of buildings to heat waves and explores the transferability of adaptation strategies between Germany and Iran. Building resilience is shaped by factors such as architectural design, materials, and construction methods, requiring advanced thermal simulation models to understand building performance. The analysis integrates dynamic building performance simulations, accounting for physical properties, room usage schedules, and ventilation effects, along with meteorological data like temperature, wind, and solar radiation. By comparing the climatic conditions of Germany and Iran, the study reveals key differences in temperature patterns and their implications for building design. While both countries experience rising temperatures, Iran's climate is more stable, while Germany faces more significant seasonal fluctuations. The study also demonstrates how hourly temperature data can guide heat adaptation strategies, focusing on passive cooling in Germany and minimizing cooling energy demands in Iran. These findings underscore the importance of tailored adaptation measures, including urban planning, shading, and ventilation improvements, to enhance heat resilience in response to local climate conditions.

More frequent and intense drought and heat events imply increased multi-risks for urban green infrastructure (UGI) and their ecosystem services. To tackle this challenge, a conceptual drought and heat risk assessment framework has been developed. This study operationalizes the framework by providing a methodology that supports decision makers in their assessment, and selection of risk reduction alternatives. The methodology overlays two main procedures of the assessment: risk analysis and risk evaluation. Within the risk analysis, the risk system is delineated, from the drought and heat hazards, to the vulnerabilities of UGI entities, ecosystem functions (EF), and ecosystem services (ES). Urban parks, creeks, and lakes are used as exemplary UGI to derive biophysical system variables as so-called endpoints. A multi-layer approach is applied to translate the endpoints into an information system comprising descriptor, attribute, and indicator layers. The assignment of attributes and indicators to descriptors is based on a literature search. Hazard attributes are then linked with vulnerability indicators to derive risk indicators. A lane-based approach is adopted to interrelate indicators, and to identify the key indicators of the cascading nature of the system. The indicators “Net leaf-air temperature” and “Leaf net CO2 assimilation” are determined as key indicators with 10 linkages each. As for the risk evaluation, a guideline is set to support the selection of methods for the multi-criteria evaluation. Based upon, methods such as the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) are deemed especially applicable. Finally, the role of decision makers as end-users of the methodology and its local adoption is described together with principles for selecting these decision makers. A tool is designed to offer a simple and adaptive way to organize the calculation steps of the risk assessment, making it transferable and effective to use for researchers and practitioners of environmental risk management. Overall, the proposed methodology supports decision-making on drought and heat risks of UGI through systematic risk analysis and risk evaluation.

Hoyerswerda in der sächsischen Lausitz befindet sich im Strukturwandel und hat in der Vergangenheit massive Bevölkerungsverluste hinnehmen müssen. Nun versucht die Stadt in Zusammenarbeit mit wissenschaftlichen Institutionen, entstandene Leerstände und Freiflächen zu nutzen, um unter Mitwirkung der Bevölkerung, Pilotmaßnahmen zum ökologischen Stadtumbau, zum Klimaschutz, zur Klimaanpassung sowie zur Kreislaufwirtschaft umzusetzen.

The contribution addresses a comparison of normative building codes for earthquake design between Germany and Iran. The underlying objective is to assess the possibilities and limitations of transferring building typological approaches for risk assessment and building materiality analysis from the European to the Iranian context. Research in building codes is closely related to risk analyses of natural and anthropogenic hazards, considering uncertainties in predicting their intensity and frequency. On this basis, building codes bridge the gap between insights from hazard research and the implications or requirements for structures. They involve determining relevant parameters and their effects on the structural design, required load-bearing capacity, and usability of individual components, taking into account the entire building. In a comparative study involving the Iranian earthquake design standard "Standard 2800" and the "DIN EN 1998" (Eurocode 8 and German National Annex) regulating seismic design in Germany and the EU, the primary focus is to assess the codes' applicability in risk assessment and their potential contribution to an integrated perspective, particularly from a resources perspective. The comparative study provides a brief overview of most important contents and compares key parameters of seismic design. Specifically, the study compares seismic zones characterizing the impact, subsoil types significantly responsible for the transmission and damping of earthquake waves as well as the importance factor, which characterises the social significance of the buildings as a kind of affectedness of the people living in them. The normative comparison reveals some similarities but also differences. While both codes essentially define the importance factor in the same way, geological conditions differ, resulting in distinct approaches to design parameters, among other aspects. Overall, both the Iranian and European seismic codes present a distinct perspective on content. While the Iranian code focuses on seismic design, the Eurocode 8 incorporates additional information on specific seismic requirements related to the use of building materials in structural planning.

The study aims to develop a method for characterizing the vulnerability of transportation infrastructures such as roads and railways, starting with an analysis of damage patterns from flooding events. It classifies damage patterns based on exposure considerations and systematically categorizes types of damage. The vulnerability assessment involves classifying various construction types, emphasizing the inclusion and evaluation of structural conditions. Relevant factors such as terrain connection are also taken into account. Initially, the common building types were categorized according to their susceptibility to flooding and assigned to technical hazard classes. Construction-type-specific criteria were developed to assess structural conditions, enabling assignment to corresponding classes. Vulnerability and condition classes are methodically related, resulting in the assignment to a vulnerability class. The combined analysis of construction-type susceptibility and structural condition reveals that both an unfavorable construction type and impairments to the structural condition can increase vulnerability. Mapping vulnerability classes provides insights into potential damage locations, addressing the need to reduce vulnerability. Beyond selecting less susceptible construction types in the future, the study emphasizes the potential to avoid condition impairments. The findings offer specific recommendations for action.

Urban green infrastructure (UGI) is a prominent concept toward climate adaptation and urban resilience, but it is also affected by droughts and heat. Hence, this study aims to advance the multi-assessment of drought and heat risks (DHRs) for UGI through the DHR assessment framework with conceptual and methodological features, paving the way toward knowledge creation and decision support. The framework was systematically developed, starting with defining the situation, analyzing concepts, and finally, constructing the framework. The situation is interpreted as a coupled human and natural system to represent the biophysical and immaterial elements, processes, and interrelations. Further, the concepts of risk, UGI, and ecosystem services lead to a risk system showing the compound hazards, the exposure, and the cascading vulnerabilities of the UGI. The DHR assessment framework distinguishes two stages, multi-risk analysis and multi-criteria risk evaluation. The analysis includes the definition and interpretation of the UGI situation under drought and heat conditions, analyzing the hazards, exposures, and vulnerabilities of the system, and translating the risk system into an indicator-based information system. Hereby, the vulnerability analysis of the biophysical UGI aspects comprises the susceptibility and resilience of UGI entities, as well as the degree to which providing ecosystem functions and services can be affected. The multi-criteria risk evaluation covers the assignment of thresholds and weights for indicators, in addition to the aggregation methods. The resulting framework intends to support local actors in the risk assessment of current and future conditions, fostering evidence-based decisions and interventions to deal with compound DHRs.

In addition to their ecological importance, rivers and streams have always been used in diverse ways by humans, resulting in the development of settlements and their connected built environments along many of the world's watercourses. During heavy rainfall, buildings, traffic infrastructure and water‐related infrastructure are exposed to potential hazards in the form of (flash) floods. In contrast to near‐natural watercourses, anthropogenically modified channels in urban areas are particularly susceptible to damage by flooding. Previous damage assessments have highlighted the need to forecast such damage to watercourses in order to identify critical areas and justify the selection and expansion of adaptation measures. Within the scope of the current study, we have developed a method based on the hydro‐morphological properties of watercourses to make transferable estimates of the economic damage potential based on ecologically‐relevant parameters. Using a scale‐specific cause‐effect analysis, we have identified characteristics of the watercourse type and adjacent structures as well as construction‐related properties of reinforcements that can increase the damage potential during flooding. In this way, we are able to show that several influencing factors determine the vulnerability of watercourses: in addition to the specific longitudinal gradient and size (macroscale) of various watercourse types, damage‐relevant boundary conditions in watercourse sections (mesoscale) and the resistance of typical bed and bank constructions are also important, reflecting the specific structural conditions. Taking rivers in Germany and the Czech Republic as case studies, in the following, we review the local identification of critical areas and describe the necessary data management. The presented “Hydro‐morphological based Vulnerability Assessment‐Concept (HyVAC)” can contribute to the flood damage prevention at watercourses by utilizing existing basic data to the greatest possible extent and thus is suitable for preliminary investigations according to the EC Flood Risk Management Directive.

Given the significance of urban green infrastructure (UGI) and their ecosystem services (ES) towards urban climate resilience and sustainable development, a practical method to assess the drought and heat risks for UGI is needed for understanding the risks, selecting reduction alternatives and protecting the benefits of UGI. Hence, this study develops a spatiotemporal indicator-based method, based on a conceptual drought and heat risk assessment framework, which supports decision makers in analyzing and evaluating risks under changing conditions, and selecting risk-reduction alternatives. The UGI types of parks, creeks, and lakes are selected as representative UGI for this study for developing the assessment method. Subsequently, endpoints as variables of the biophysical risk system are derived considering the processes of drought and heat hazards, exposed UGI entities, ecosystem functions and ES. The biophysical endpoints such as biota, soil-water dynamics, and UGI’s cultural uses, are then translated into information with descriptors explaining their vulnerability aspects following a multi-layer approach and interpreted over three dimensions of provisioning, regulating, and cultural. The multi-layer approach states that the layers of descriptors are accompanied with layers of indicators as a mean to operationalize these characteristics. A two-stage literature review is applied to identify vulnerability indicators for the defined descriptors, whereas a lane-based approach is followed to interrelate these indicators based on their qualities we refer to as attributes. Using the attributes of the drought and heat hazards, the vulnerability indicators are linked with the hazards to derive risk indicators. By introducing these vulnerability and risk indicators, we pave the road for the analysis and evaluation of compound risks to support the decision makers in planning and managing UGI and protecting their ES under these risks.

Climate change has increased the frequency and severity of extreme climateconditions such as heavy rainstorms and extreme hot weather. This coupled withinadequate urban infrastructure leads to urban pluvial and fluvial flooding which furtherexacerbates water security in cities. In this context, nature-based solutions (NbS) havegained momentum worldwide to tackle growing environmental and urbanizationconcerns. Since NbS can facilitate sustainable urban transitions in the cities, this papergathers evidence on different NbS types for urban water security. It explores theirscales of application across various types of cities, while considering the processesand aspects in which they were evolved. Scoping literature review, using inductive-deductive thematic coding and co-occurrence analysis was undertaken. The resultsrevealed that the studies quantified urban flooding more often than drought risks whichwere generally considered as indirect co-benefits. A greater variety of NbS wasimplemented at neighbourhood-level and city-level. A higher co-occurrence of NbSwas observed for urban settlements, small and medium-sized cities from Global North,in comparison to medium-size, large and mega cities from Global South, withsignificantly greater scientific reporting from Global North. Finally, most of the NbSstrategies were evolved considering environmental aspects, followed by economic andsocial aspects.

A major concern in climate adaptation is to enhance the heat resilient design of residential buildings. However, recent scientific literature addressing overheating analysis is only focussing on individual countries. In this article, we discuss how different design of representative apartment buildings in two countries influences the overheating risk or cooling demand and what conclusions can be drawn from it. This is done for a low-rise apartment building located in Germany and a high-rise building in South Korea applying building performance simulation. Both countries are located in the moderate climate zone, but regional differences in frequency of tropical nights and radiant summer days lead to significant differences in overheating intensity (800 Kh/a for the German and 5100 Kh/a for the Korean) or cooling demand (1800 kWh for the German to 1300 kWh for the Korean). The lower cooling demand but much higher overheating intensity of the Korean building compared to the German is mainly caused by the different solar heat gain due to the glazed balcony design of the Korean building where these balcony rooms are not actively cooled. On the contrary, the common internal façade insulation of Korean buildings results in a higher overheating risk compared to the German building and in addition the lower potential of passive cooling by natural ventilation due to the necessity of insect screens in Korea. The large effect of implementing heat adaptation measures on overheating risk reduction or cooling demand (up to 90%) clearly demonstrates that both buildings are far away from a heat resilient design and that heat adaptation measures can address both climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Flooding due to intensive precipitation poses a major threat to lives and property. To deal with the resulting risks, information about flood-prone areas regarding water levels and flow velocities is needed. The flood probability of a certain point in the landscape depends on the one hand on the occurrence probability of a surface runoff generating-rainfall event and on the other hand on the flow- and runoff-determining properties of the terrain, e.g., the surface morphology and the hydraulic roughness. Simulation models for the flow of surface water are common tools for assessing the dynamics of flooding caused by intensive precipitation events. Major input parameters for such simulation tools are digital elevation models, surface roughness datasets, as well as data on the precipitation input. In order to make informed decisions that take the uncertainties of modeling results into account and to get an idea of the probability space, it is important to quantify the effects of different alternative model parameter sets regarding data sources as well as the spatial and temporal resolution of the input data. We evaluated the effects of different parameter sets for the hydronumeric computational fluid dynamics model HiPIMS on flow velocities and water levels. (C) 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Around the world, building stocks are the dominant consumers of mineral resources. Mining activities for the supply of construction materials can lead to conflicts in land use. In order to minimize such sources of conflict, we need improved knowledge of material consumption in the built environment. For this, we can make use of material flow analysis (MFA), which in turn requires the determination of material composition indicators (MCIs). Usually, such indicators are defined for a building type. Currently, there is a lack of research on the impact of material substitution on these MCIs as well as studies on the potential for resource-saving that take technical issues into account. This contribution describes a preliminary study on material substitution in six different reference buildings which compare the bill of materials for structures constructed using standard clay bricks vs potential material substitutes such as hollow, lightweight, or autoclaved aerated concrete blocks. The results show that considerable reductions in material consumption can thereby be achieved for certain parts of the considered buildings. In the future, these effects should be incorporated in the MCIs as key variables for an MFA.

Heat is one of the most serious environmental impacts of climate change and negatively affects inhabitants of densely populated urban areas. Building resilience to this natural hazard that will intensify in the future is a socially challenging knowledge-integrative process that requires adaptive capacity at multiple levels. Increasing coping capacity through adaptation measures that are as physically effective as possible, socially just and perceived as effective by citizens contributes significantly to building resilience, in the sense of the ability of actors or systems to cope with disturbances such as a severe heat load. This chapter aims to demonstrate qualitative and quantitative potential for resilience building through specific implementation measures in two sample quarters in Dresden and Erfurt as case studies. The measures described in this chapter at the levels of buildings, green spaces and open spaces have almost all already been implemented at the time of writing this chapter. Some were intended to be implemented, but were actually not realized. These adaptation measures are used to show how their effectiveness and acceptance can be evaluated. The description of the planning and implementation process of these adaptation measures shows how an optimization of effectiveness can be achieved by combining measures with the help of such evaluation methods. The prioritization in the process of selecting measures for implementation is based on the integration of inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge of the involved actors from different scientific disciplines and from practice. Drivers and obstacles are also analyzed on the basis of these implementation processes. The chapter concludes with an outlook on opportunities with regard to future implementation of measures for resilience building in urban neighborhoods that result from the learning process here.

Can building performance simulation reproduce measured summertime indoor conditions of a multi-residential building in good conformity? This question is answered by calibrating simulated to monitored room temperatures of several rooms of a multi-residential building for an entire summer in two process steps. First, we did a calibration for several days without the residents being present to validate the building physics of the 3D simulation model. Second, the simulations were calibrated for the entire summer period, including the residents' impact on evolving room temperature and overheating. As a result, a high degree of conformity between simulation and measurement could be achieved for all monitored rooms. The credibility of our results was secured by a detailed sensitivity analysis under varying meteorological conditions, shading situations, and window ventilation or room use in the simulation model. For top floor dwellings, a high overheating intensity was evoked by a combination of insufficient use of night-time window ventilation and non-heat-adapted residential behavior in combination with high solar gains and low heat storage capacities. Finally, the overall findings were merged into a process guideline to describe how a step-by-step calibration of residential building simulation models can be done. This guideline is intended to be a starting point for future discussions about the validity of the simplified boundary conditions which are often used in present-day standard overheating assessment.

Building resilience is a core element of urban resilience that refers to both the (1) intended physical change of the building stock and the related blue, green, and grey infrastructure, as well as (2) the social process of increasing resilience through the goal-driven cooperation of scientists and practitioners. Building resilience at the interface of science and practice is characterized by tensions and a range of approaches to dealing with tensions. To specify this proposition, this research note adopts a strategic spatial planning perspective and introduces the typology of "motors of change " from organizational and management research. We focus on a goal-driven motor of change ( "teleology ") and highlight three approaches to dealing with tensions: developing a strategic focus of knowledge integration, setting priorities to enhance resilience as a pro-active ability of disaster risk reduction (DRR), and compromising in the management of trade-offs, such as those between the scales of resilience. For the purpose of illustration, this research note refers to examples of building resilience at a local level in Germany, dealing with heat stress in urban areas, managing the risk of extreme flood events, and analyzing the resilience of innovative infrastructure solutions.

The edited volume “Building resilience to natural hazards in the context of climate change—Knowledge integration, implementation, and learning” follows a specific purpose and agenda. This introductory contribution to the volume explains its purpose and agenda in broad terms and provides an overview over the contributions. Six points characterize the volume. (1) The volume offers conceptual and empirical contributions that focus on climate change adaptation at local and regional level in Germany. Theoretical and methodological arguments remain in the background of investigation. (2) Contributions address issues of dealing with river floods and risks related to heavy rain fall as well as rising temperatures, heat waves and associated droughts in urban areas. Hence, contributions address issues of high priority for climate change adaptation—in Germany, but also in Europe and around the globe. (3) We understand building resilience as a core element of urban resilience. (4) The expression “building resilience” is meant to cover both the social process of increasing resilience in the future and dealing with the consequences of climate change for the building stock as well as related blue, green, and grey infrastructures. (5) Three patterns of goal-driven social processes for building resilience are salient: knowledge integration, implementation at local level, and learning in the context of participation and multi-level governance. (6) Engineers, physical geographers, social scientists, and spatial planners were involved in providing the contributions to the edited volume. Inter- and transdisciplinary approaches result in conceptual arguments and empirical accounts that seek to address both challenges of scholarly quality and practical relevance.

Durch die projizierte globale Erwärmung werden sich Hitzeextreme verschärfen. Vor allem in den Städten wird die Lebensqualität der Stadtbevölkerung unter sommerlichen Hitzewellen leiden. Im ProjektHeatResilientCitywerden bewohnerorientierte Hitzeanpassungsmaßnahmen an Gebäuden und im städtischen Freiraum entwickelt und geprüft sowie Empfehlungen für die Umsetzung gegeben.TheHeatResilientCityproject applied insights from natural sciences, engineering and the social sciences to develop heat adaptation measures, test their effectiveness and partially implement them in two structurally different real-world laboratories in Dresden-Gorbitz and Erfurt-Oststadt. The present article discusses interventions to plant street trees and to refurbish two different residential buildings. We describe and analyse aspects of the implementation process to identify key factors that enable or constrain adaptation action among different groups of actors. We find that adaptation measures that are objectively effective and supported by residents are most appropriate for implementation. Where residents evince scepticism about adaptation measures, information about their effectiveness and usefulness should be disseminated. Early and targeted involvement of relevant stakeholders, careful communication and the establishment of climate adaptation as a permanent interdepartmental task at municipal level can promote successful implementation of heat adaptation measures.

Increasingly, decision makers and society at large are focusing on ways of conserving natural resources. This change of perspective will certainly impinge on the construction industry. Several recent studies have developed material composition indicators (MCI) in order to assess the quantities of construction materials required for various building types. One major limitation of the MCIs used thus far is that they ignore locational factors and the associated site-specific boundary conditions such as building statics in seismic zones as well as the form of subsoil, which will dictate the needed level of earthquake resistance and thus the materials used in the design. The aim of the exploratory study presented here is to determine the extent to which site-specific parameters affect the composition of MCIs for certain building types. To this end, the influence of these parameters is estimated for various regions in Afghanistan. The results show significant correlations between the material consumption and site-specific boundary conditions. (C) 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Climate change is likely to cause a change in frequency and intensity of convective thunderstorms and associated heavy precipitation.Typical consequences of such events are a rapid generation of surface runoff with high flow velocities in hilly and mountainous areas as well as the unexpected and abrupt occurrence of inundation in areas currently not known as flood-prone.The mapping of such pluvial flash flood events is still a developing field especially with regard to the post-processing of raw hydrodynamic model output data.Moreover, challenges include the derivation of indicators needed for quantification and visualisation of the impact dynamics on elements at risk such as buildings and infrastructures.This is important to support the understanding of vulnerabilities including uncertainties as well as to ensure a targeted interpretation of possible consequences and planning of mitigation measures.We present a three-step approach which includes (i) the calculation of surface runoff dynamics with a 2D hydrodynamic model, (ii) the derivation of impact indicators based on the modelling results as well as (iii) the presentation and mapping of key indicators in innovative hazard maps and diagrams.