Environmental Design Commons^™

Making Better Decisions About Built Assets: Learning By Doing, Craig Langston

Craig Langston

Climate change presents significant challenges to society (e.g. Stern, 2006; Bouwer and Aerts, 2006). Many have concluded that climate change is the most important problem facing humankind, and indeed other life on Earth. The construction industry, which contributes 5-10% of national GDP globally, has a prominent role to play in meeting this challenge given that the built environment demands 40-50% of global resources and generates a proportional amount of waste (Langston and Ding, 2001). Climate change adaptation is about human response to this challenge, thus mitigating the impacts of a changing climate (Burton et al., 2005).