Abstract: With a growing global concern about climate change, the building industry is facing the question of how predicted changes in climate will impact on the performance of buildings around the world. This is resulting in a fast-growing field of research that focuses on the adaptation and resilience of buildings to a changing climate. This review paper sets the scene for a special issue of Building and Environment on this subject. It discusses the relationship between climate change and buildings and the emerging body of knowledge on the subject, as well as classifying and summarizing the contributions to this special issue. Keywords: climate change, environmental effects, impact on buildings and occupants This special issue of Building and Environment deals with the implications of a changing climate for buildings. Climate change is considered to be one of the main challenges facing humankind in the 21 th century, with serious and global consequences for the environment [1], human health [1, 2] , and the economy [3] . In itself, the built environment is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. For typical developed nations like the OECD countries, about 24 to 40% of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions will be related to buildings; 40 to 95% of these emissions will be caused by operational energy use with the remainder being caused by construction and demolition [4, 5] . At the same time, the performance of buildings depends on the climate they are exposed to. Their long lifetime (in the range of 50 to 100 plus years) corresponds to the timescale over which the climate is expected to show substantial change. This implies that buildings built today need to be designed to work successfully in both the current and future climate, and with the aim of reducing the greenhouse emission burden they place on this and future generations. While greenhouse gas emissions and climate change are thus intrinsically linked, traditionally most attention is paid to curbing emissions and climate change mitigation. The special issue focuses on the reverse relation: adaptation or resilience of buildings towards climate change.
More recently Wilde and Coley pointed out the fast-moving field of research on the adaptation and resilience of buildings to a changing climate and its importance to the building industry REF .
The implications of a changing climate for buildings
Building and Environment
Engineering