The term climate change is often used to refer specifically to human-caused climate change, also known as global warming. As a consequence of climate change, land surfaces are heating faster than the ocean surface, leading to heat waves, wildfires, desertification, and rising sea levels. In addition, increasing energy in our atmosphere is causing more intense storms and weather extremes. For the building designer and facility manager, the implications of climate change are two-fold. First, buildings must be designed to resist the increasing risks of heat waves, fires, storms, and drought. But in addition, buildings can also be designed to mitigate the human-caused drivers of climate change, most notably unprecedented increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. In this two-pronged battle against climate change, the walls, and roofs of buildings (commonly referred to as the building envelope) offer numerous and significant opportunities to resist the effects of climate change and reduce its long-term effects.

Against the challenges of climate change, we are developing smarter, stringer, and more effective building envelopes. This webinar will provide the background and tools to help building professionals select the best building envelope to address climate change, from preliminary design to project management, and on through long-term building asset management. Specifically, the webinar will identify key strategies that may be incorporated into almost any building envelope design that not only protects building occupants from the increasing hazards of climate change but also helps to directly reduce climate change.

Note: This is a live webinar delivered via GoToWebinar. Session instructions will be emailed to you 24-48 hours prior to the webinar and the morning of the webinar. If you have not received your instructions for any reason please call Client Support (1-866-546-1212) the day of the event. Webinars are live and interactive. Students will have the ability to directly interact with and ask questions of the presenter.

• Discuss how the effects of climate change can adversely impact the building envelope and increase the risk of building failure, consequently posing a threat to the safety of the community.
• Describe how effective building envelope design can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and solar heat loading.
• List specific building envelope strategies that can be used to resist the effects of climate change as well as strategies to mitigate the underlying causes of climate change to benefit community welfare.
• Demonstrate how each of these trategies can be incorporated into efficient and economical building envelope design for the community welfare.