Guest editorial: Climate change adaptation in the built environment

Abstract

According to the State of the Global Climate Report, 2023 is a year that has broken the record for all climate change indicators (World Meteorological Organization, 2024). The global mean sea level rise rate has more than doubled during the past decade, indicating the significant threat of climate change to coastal regions. The impact of climate change is particularly pertinent to the built environment, given the relatively long lifespan of buildings and the fact that it is essential to adapt the existing built environment to deal with a climate significantly different from that in which it evolved. On the contrary, as the most significant contributor to climate change drivers through greenhouse gas emissions, the built environment has been recognised as the key agent of change in addressing the climate change predicament. Stakeholders in the built environment are responsible for leading climate-resilient developments that integrate mitigation and adaptation measures. The challenge lies in effectively achieving deep emission reductions throughout the various stages of the building life cycle: design, construction, retrofitting and maintenance. A fundamental understanding and the development of tangible climate adaptation measures for the built environment are vital to addressing such challenges.In recognition of these challenges, an EU-funded project entitled Built Environment leArning for Climate Adaptation (BEACON) was launched in 2020 with the aim to develop trans-disciplinary and innovative research-based learning in the built environment to tackle climate change in coastal regions (Nissanka et al., 2022). The BEACON project brought together experts from the University of Huddersfield, UK; the Lund University, Sweden; the