Disasters can inform building code updates, construction association says

The president of the Construction Association of Nova Scotia says natural disasters bring opportunities to update building codes and regulations, so we can be better prepared for the future.

"There's no question about it," Duncan Williams said. "The climate change that's happening around us is going to require a different set of solutions."

One step the province promised last December, as part of a climate change plan, is to adopt the federal government's 2020 National Building Code. It includes guidance for energy efficiency and higher performance requirements for heating, ventilation and air conditioning. 

Heather Fairbairn, a spokesperson for the Nova Scotia fire marshal's office, said the province is working to adopt the code. 

There is also work being done across Canada to create building standards that take into account the effects of climate change, such as stronger winds and higher-intensity storms. Some of the protections being examined include making basements more resistant to flooding and ensuring that buildings are built outside of floodplains, Williams said.

"How we manage those things are going to be critical in terms of how we interact with our environment over the next coming decades," Williams said.

The 2020 National Building Code states that "many regions of the country have, on average … been tending towards wetter conditions." 

Meanwhile, the National Research Council's 2021 guidance on wildfire risks says, "The impacts of climate change are expected to contribute to … increased wildland fire risk in areas that have not historically experienced significant wildland fire hazards."

Research on building codes and disasters

Academics are also doing research on the effectiveness of building codes drawn up with natural disasters in mind.

Patrick Baylis is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia who studies the economics of natural disasters. He researched the impact of a California building code law for homes built in areas at risk due to wildfires for a paper that was published in 2021 and is currently being peer-reviewed.

"We find these pretty substantial effects, like almost a 50 per cent reduction in the probability of a given home burning between … one that's built like let's say in the 1970s versus one that was built in the 2010s," Baylis said.

He cautions that the results may be difficult to generalize to other regions. Still, Baylis said governments can support homeowners with building codes and policies.

"It's a lot to ask homeowners to kind of project forward in time, especially with the expected effect of climate change to make … the right decision with respect to how they build their home based on where they're living," Baylis said.

Building code measures for other types of disasters should be evaluated based on their costs and benefits, he said.

Ultimately, Williams said it will take time and money to change the way communities are built.

"There is urgency around climate change," he said, "but there's also the reality of training people, making sure that people are ready."