Durability and Climate Change—Implications for Service Life Prediction and the Maintainability of Buildings

Abstract

Sustainable building practices are rooted in the need for reliable information on the long-term performance of building materials; specifically, the expected service-life of building materials, components, and assemblies. This need is ever more evident given the anticipated effects of climate change on the built environment and the many governmental initiatives world-wide focused on ensuring that structures are not only resilient at their inception but also, can maintain their resilience over the long-term. The Government of Canada has funded an initiative now being completed at the National Research Council of Canada’s (NRC) Construction Research Centre on “Climate Resilience of Buildings and Core Public infrastructure”. The outcomes from this work will help permit integrating climate resilience of buildings into guides and codes for practitioners of building and infrastructure design. In this paper, the impacts of climate change on buildings are discussed and a review of studies on the durability of building envelope materials and elements is provided in consideration of the expected effects of climate change on the longevity and resilience of such products over time. Projected changes in key climate variables affecting the durability of building materials is presented such that specifications for the selection of products given climate change effects can be offered. Implications in regard to the maintainability of buildings when considering the potential effects of climate change on the durability of buildings and its components is also discussed.

Impact of Environmental Exposure Conditions on the Maintenance of Facades’ Claddings

“…Frequently, the maintainability of the material is not a priority, which compromises the future maintenance activities and the costs throughout the service life [19]. Reliable information on the service life of building materials and components is not only relevant to support decision-making, but also the base for practicing sustainable construction [24] and to develop effective maintenance strategies [25]. Service life prediction methodologies [7,26] have been developed to provide useful information on the degradation phenomena of building components, in real service conditions, and to know "how" and "when" to intervene [17].…”

Correlation between Defects and Technical Wear of Materials Used in Traditional Construction

“…The fuzzy approach presented in the publications of Plebankiewicz , Wieczorek , and Zima [ 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ] was used in the assessment of the whole service life of a building objects but considered the cost aspects in their life cycle. The social, cultural and engineering diagnosis of the purposefulness of the revitalization or demolition of buildings is presented in an interesting way in papers by Noonan , Power , Ástmarsson , et al [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. All of them are mainly descriptive and do not present the results of damage measurements.…”

“…The evaluation of the utility value also enables in the further steps (i.e., after the technical evaluation) the performance of calculations concerning the efficiency of renovation and modernization plans, i.e., the answer to the question: build or renovate? [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. The example of the renovated tenement house is presented in the Figure 2 .…”

“…The social, cultural, and engineering diagnosis of the purposefulness of the revitalization or demolition of buildings is presented in an interesting way in papers [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. A research attempt to assess the technical condition of downtown tenement houses in Wroclaw was described in detail in reports [ 7 ] and publications [ 8 , 9 ].…”

Overdurability and Technical Wear of Materials Used in the Construction of Old Buildings

“…The measurer of the durability is the time during which the object retains its properties. The durability of a building depends on many factors, including input assumptions, e.g., the properties of the built-in materials, the accuracy of the executed design, the quality of the performed construction works, and the conditions occurring during the operation of the building, i.e., the way of using it, and the impact of the external environment [ 1 , 2 ]. The demand of assumed durability of a building structure is met if the structure maintains its serviceability, load-bearing capacity and stability throughout its intended service life, without any significant reduction of its serviceability, and also without excessive, unforeseen maintenance costs.…”