Impacts of climate change on buildings and urban neighbourhoods

Climate change poses non-negligible risks to the built environment. Global warming and the changes in the climate system, e.g. heat waves, extreme rainfall, floods, landslides, droughts and water scarcity, increasingly affect safety and resilience of the built environment, entailing consequent risks posed to human individuals and the general public. Aiming at mitigating the risks, the goal of this research group is to analyze the effects of climatic changes to the built environment, such as buildings and civil infrastructure, and to develop sustainable measures towards structural adaptations of the built environment to the impacts of the changed climate. Emphasis is put on adaptations with respect to static and dynamic behavior, indoor comfort, and energy efficiency of residential and industrial buildings.

The research group is composed of five chairs at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar:

• Advanced Structures (Junior Professor Dr.-Ing. Lars Abrahamczyk, Coordinator),
• Computing in Civil Engineering (Professor Dr.-Ing. Kay Smarsly),
• Building Physics (Professor Dr.-Ing. Conrad Völker),
• Modeling and Simulation of Structures (Professor Dr. Guido Morgenthal), and
• Steel Construction (Professor Dr.-Ing. Matthias Kraus).

The transfer processes to the Thuringian economy are supported by a project-accompanying industry advisory board.