Resilient Housing in the Face of Climate Change: A Review of Adaptation Strategies, Disaster-Resistant Designs, and Community-Based Initiatives

Research Article

Abstract

Climate change has increased the incidence and intensity of extreme weather, which has made housing infrastructure extremely vulnerable throughout the globe. Traditional building styles were unable to cope with the devastating impacts of floods, hurricanes, heat waves, wildfires and sea-level rise, leading to substantial economic losses and displacement as well as public health and livelihood risks. As such, climate-resilient housing has been identified as an essential part of sustainable development and climate adaptation. This review summarizes the literature published in validated research data that discusses strategies for adaptation, disaster-resistant designs, community-based efforts for climate-resilient housing. It explores the impact of various design and infrastructure measures such as raised platforms and flood-resilient components, passive cooling and nature-based measures, smart homes and multi-hazard engineering, community and Indigenous knowledge, as well as government policies and public-private collaborations on housing resilience, and it evaluates the challenges associated with housing resilience development such as high costs, policy challenges, social issues and technological constraints in the Global South. In response to rise in number and severity of extreme events driven by climate change, housing infrastructure is vulnerable on a global level. Conventional construction methods failed to withstand extreme events, thus resulting in damage to the existing buildings and heavy economic loses, population displacements as well as health and livelihood risks from natural disasters such as floods, storms, droughts and heatwaves, wild-fires and sea-level rise. Therefore, climate resilient housing has emerged as an important issue on the forefront of sustainable development and climate adaptation. This paper presents a review of literature published on disaster resistant design, community-based approaches and strategies for climate resilient housing in peer-reviewed indexed journal articles. The study identifies various adaptation strategies and disaster resilient measures like, use of raised platforms and flood resistant structures, use of natural components and passive cooling measures and smart homes and multi hazard engineering, use of community based approaches and Indigenous knowledge and use of governmental policies and public-private partnership on climate resilience and identifies the barriers of developing housing resilience like high cost, policy issues, social aspects and technological barriers in the global south.