Equitable Responses to Climate Change for Wind Hazards
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) provides a comprehensive assessment of windstorm hazards (Working Group I) and the corresponding adaptation strategies (Working Group II). The report transitions from viewing wind purely as a weather variable to treating it as a Climatic Impact-Driver (CID)—a physical condition that directly affects society or ecosystems. In response, the International Association for Wind Engineering has launched a Working Group on Equitable Response to Wind Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigations. The working group is dividing into three task groups who will each release a detailed report to be promoted globally on how wind engineers are responding to climate change. Task Group 1 focuses on climatology and meteorology; Task Group 2 focuses on treatment in building codes and standards; and Task Group 3 focuses on how this information is being used in engineering design to develop adaptation strategies.
Task Group 3 will be coordinated out of Notre Dame and regularly convenes practitioners and researchers from around the world, who are contributing knowledge in the following focal areas:
- Focal Area 1: Climate-Adaptive Design: Identify frameworks to advance climate adaptive design for wide-ranging contexts and asset classes.
- Focal Area 2: Nature-Based Solutions: Examine benefits of nature-based solutions like Urban Forestry to improve livability and reduce wind demands in cities.
- Focal Area 3: Hardening Energy Infrastructure: Examine how wind-sensitive energy infrastructure should be adapted in its design and operations to anticipated changes in wind climate.
- Focal Area 4: Impact-Based Projections: Improve impact-based projection tools that link wind hazards to accurate projections of damages and losses in communities..
- Focal Area 5: Health and Well-Being: Identify how to engineer flows through urban areas to improve air quality and reduce urban health risks.
Students working on this project will support one or more of these focal areas by:
- assembling evidence from the scholarly literature, government reports, and other online sources on the current state-of-the-art in each of these focal areas;
- assisting in the synthesis of this information for inclusion in the report;
- Conducting basic analysis or processing of data to produce visuals for the report.
The faculty advisor is President-Elect of the American Association for Wind Engineering and works with international bodies to chart our responses to climate change. Students will be exposed to what his happening globally on this issue and where ore efforts are needed. Beyond the chance to join the calls of this body and interact with colleagues form around the world, students will haves the chance to contribute to a major international report guiding the engineering response to climate change for wind hazards. The report also deals with the non-technical dimensions of the climate crisis, so students will understand what barriers prevent adoption of engineering guidance, whether they be political, financial or social. Thus, the project and the faculty advisor (who is Director of the Pulte Institute for Global Development) can help students to see the complexities of driving climate action in communities.