Climate resilience of the built environment

The images from the Ahr Valley and flooding disasters such as in Spain in 2024 are ubiquitous: the consequences of climate change are increasing in intensity and frequency. Such events cause both human suffering and societal damage. At Fraunhofer EMI, methods and tools are being developed to automate the assessment of the vulnerability of buildings and infrastructure to extreme weather events. The basis for this is a fully digitized process chain from building recognition to probabilistic structural analysis.

A central element is the use of parametric building models. Using publicly available digital city models and additional data, recognition algorithms facilitate automated inventory capture and categorization, as well as the derivation of generic, parametric building models. Typical parameters such as construction type, materiality, and structural properties are assigned. Without precise knowledge of individual buildings, uncertainties and variations in the various parameters are taken into account in the modeling using probability distributions. Thus, probabilistic analyses enable probability-based statements about damages and risks. Real estate investors, insurance companies, reinsurers, housing companies, as well as administrative authorities benefit from the calculations. Furthermore, in addition to the actual damages, failure patterns can be identified, potential damage probabilities quantified, improvement measures qualified, and their efficiency evaluated. Municipalities could then respond urbanistically to the challenges of climate change and implement necessary precautions