title: The Resilience of Structures in Times of Climate Change and its Implications for Human Safety
Creators: name: Schäfer, Stefan
name: Bisevac, Nikola
Publisher: name: UNSPECIFIED
Year: 2023

description: Resilience is the ability of systems to withstand disruptions. Resilient constructions remain fundamentally functional in crises. They are resistant to technical, environmental, and economic partial failures or disruptions through flexibility or redundancy of their systems, thus providing robust conditions for long-term use. Mutability of structures is understood as the ability of a system to adapt its construction actively and rapidly to temporally unpredictably changing tasks from its own substance (adaptability) in conjunction with the ability to evolutionarily develop the structures in the face of temporally constant or longer-term predictably changing requirements from its own substance. There are many definitions and concepts of resilience of building structures and component connections. What all these different concepts have in common, however, is that resilience is the ability or capacity of a system to maintain its functionality, or at least to regain it in the short term, even in the face of unusual or unexpected stress situations. Resilience can refer to natural systems as well as technical systems. In our research approach, the resilience of a structure is to determine how susceptible to damage or resistant this structure is when exposed to a natural event. It is largely determined by object characteristics, for example, the construction method, materials used, protective devices, etc. The risk can be reduced by improving the resistance of a structure to the effects of these natural hazards, by regular maintenance (servicing, condition assessment, refurbishment), and by protective and damage mitigation measures before, during and after the event. Building structures and component connections are exposed to a wide variety of environmental effects. As a rule, these environmental effects on the building are adequately considered in the legal regulations. In addition to this, the approach of our research institute should consider the extreme events, the intensities of which significantly exceed the already regulated impacts. The extreme events considered regarding wind, heavy rain, hail, snow and floods are associated with greater hazards to people health and risks of damage to property, from which higher requirements can be derived for the resistance of building structures. The relevance of this topic is increasing due to the climate change that is already occurring and the associated increase in extreme weather events, which, however, varies from region to region. Building structures and component connections must be adapted and prepared in this respect (adaptation). The objective of our research outline is to improve the resistance of buildings and building structures to current and future natural hazards at the site. This is to achieve, among other things - a protection of persons - a protection of material assets - the safeguarding of usability as well as the planned service life - the limitation of insurance needs - the compliance with the planned life cycle costs. The evaluation of the resistance of the building structures and component connections to wind, heavy rain, hail, snow and floods should be carried out taking into account the following: - The nature and extent of current and future hazards at the site under consideration. - Resistance of the building to the concrete hazard. The presentation should examine the structural interrelationships and resilient detailing solutions commonly encountered in building construction projects. The content of the presentation will address design fundamentals and interrelationships of resilient building components (from foundation to roof). Further, the presentation will provide insight into module order, structural design, and building technology from the resilient structures. The final point of the presentation will show the implications of resilient structures on human safety and health.