Background/Objectives

Resilience planning requires public and private owners to focus beyond vulnerability to adaptation and the prioritization of required actions. While owners are arguably the driving force behind resilience decisions, the architecture-engineering (AE) industry is responsible for the development of resilient designs. As such, the issue is emerging as to what is the standard of care these professionals need to address in terms of climate change. For engineers, the code of ethics states, “Engineers should hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public[1]” Similarly, architects have as part of their code of ethics, “Design for Human Dignity and the Health, Safety, and Welfare of the Public[2]”.

Approach/Activities

Based on 20 years of observation into resilience efforts, both in the public and private sectors, inductive reasoning has led to a conclusion that a professional need for resilience ethics is required. This is the proposition that design professionals have a professional and ethical responsibility to consider climate change impacts in all designs as future environmental changes may impact public health and safety. While this may appear to be a logical advancement given current climate changes, significant hindrances exist to achieving such a requirement. The current research addresses both the need for resilience ethics and the roadblocks to achieving this objective.

Results/Lessons Learned

Project budgets will always be a consideration in achieving resilience. However, this issue is set aside as funding does not dismiss professional ethics for public safety and welfare. With this aside, the following are the identified challenges to resilience ethics.

• Code Defense – A primary hurdle to expanding professional ethics to include future climate scenarios is the historic basis of building codes. Designers use local design codes as a guideline for meeting professional requirements. Unfortunately, the focus on codes provides little guidance for future conditions and thus provides little motivation for design professionals to include these future climate conditions.
• Competitive Advantage - The scope detailed in an RFP is ultimately what is proposed by designers. Owners are starting to acknowledge climate impacts in RFPs, but it is still a minority of projects. While extras may be put forward, addressing the RFP as written is the goal. Until resilience is given a greater emphasis, this issue will remain unresolved.
• Vulnerability versus Resilience – Vulnerability to climate change is an important step in risk awareness, but it is only the first step. Clients need to understand adaptation options, cost considerations, and investment risk to achieve resilience. However, the ease of providing vulnerability input is overriding the need to provide resilience input.
• The Uncertainty Factor - Historic guidelines do not address future climate scenarios. However, uncertainty can prompt professionals to return to historic guidelines. The concern of negligence from over or under-design of assets due to selecting the “wrong” scenario is overriding the concern for meeting future conditions.

In summary, the challenge to adopt resilience as a professional requirement is based on a combination of financial, legal, and competitiveness factors. While national associations are focusing on code updates, there is a strong need for national labs and universities to aid in the process of integrating climate projections into the design norm. The alternative is that outdated, historic guidelines will place the health, welfare, and safety of the public at risk.