Lisø PhD Dissertation Manuscript - NTNU

LisÖ
Independent institutions with high social esteem are
important brokers for informing the public about
the results of scientific research (Klinke and Renn,
2001). The Technical Regulations under the Norwegian
Planning and Building Act are performance
based, which necessitate supporting standards,
design guidelines and pre-accepted solutions. NBI,
as an independent institution developing technical
guidelines (the Building Research Design Sheets)
that reach out to almost all actors in the Norwegian
construction industry, thus has an important role in
the development of precautionary and discursive
management strategies aimed at building awareness
of the future risks of climate change and initiating
collective efforts by regulatory bodies and other institutions
to take responsibility. The institute provides
guidelines, solutions and recommendations that
comply with the building code and that encourage
high quality in the planning, design and construction
of buildings. It is by far the most used planning and
design tool amongst Norwegian architects and
engineers.
In Norway, the Directorate for Civil Protection and
Emergency Planning was established in September
2003 (under the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and
the Police). The directorate has a full overview
over developing vulnerable situations and looming
perils that threaten society – in peacetime and in
war. And, in the event of inadequate safety and preparedness
measures, it takes the initiative for followup
with the responsible authorities. The directorate
has a special responsibility to ensure that society
has a common comprehension of vulnerability, and
it coordinates measures to reduce vulnerability (in
cooperation with, for example, the 18 County Governors
in Norway). A transition from traditional preparedness
thinking to a more proactive safeguarding
of life, health and the environment calls for crossdisciplinary
cooperation. The question is to what
extent barriers between professions (represented in
different institutions) constrain this development.
The National Office of Building Technology and
Administration (under the Ministry of Local
Government and Regional Development) is responsible
for administering and interpreting Norwegian
building regulations, and it has the authority to
administer a centralized system of Approval of
designers, constructors or controllers in the construction
industry. The Directorate for Civil Protection
and Emergency Planning and the National Office of
Building Technology and Administration have a
common responsibility to initiate collective efforts
by institutions to reduce climate vulnerability in the
built environment.
Strategies for climate change adaptation must, of
course, be developed with due consideration for
other agendas for change that to some extent may
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contribute to an improvement of these strategies,
e.g. the general movement towards industrialization,
prefabrication and off-site construction (Lowe,
2001). The development of increasingly Europeanized
construction and construction products industries,
and the continued development of Norwegian and
international standards (especially the preparation of
additional national appendices associated with the
various types of climatic impact) are also important
factors to be considered. The need for adjustments
or alterations of the present and future building
stock and building practice should be kept under
close observation, based on the continuous monitoring
of the development of regional- and local-level
scenarios for climate change. A simple precautionary
adaptation measure could be to choose solutions with
a higher climatic safety level than considered necessary
under the climate regime of today, where this
may be considered cost beneficial. However, weighing
cost and benefit in this context is certainly not
straightforward and introduces new challenges to be
considered.
Further studies on adaptation strategies need to
explore the extent to which the industry considers geographically
dependent climate change in the production
of buildings. Furthermore, to what extent is
local knowledge, technical and scientific information
exchanged between the different actors, and what is
encouraging or constraining locally adapted solutions?
These questions are now being addressed through an
ongoing investigation within the NBI Research
& Development Programme ‘Climate 2000’ (Øyen
et al., 2005).
Conclusions
There are large uncertainties associated with the future
performance of the built environment due to changes in
external climatic impact. In order to develop adaptation
strategies, effective ways must be found to
strengthen institutional capacity. Cross-disciplinary
risk-based management strategies, together with
design guidelines that account for both historical
local climatic conditions and potential future
changes, can be an important step towards a more
active and dynamic way of ensuring a high-quality construction
process and a sustainable built environment
in the light of the unknown risks of future climate
change.
For large, complex building projects, there is an established
tradition of using risk analysis methods. This
tradition has not moved from large-scale to more
‘trivial’ building. Obviously, there are benefits to be
gained from the introduction of modern risk-based
management strategies within a greater extent of the
construction industry. This paper discusses three