Integrated Design for Flood Resilience

Both historic and recent natural events continue to reveal weaknesses in the capacity and capability of buildings to respond and cope with natural events such as flooding. The subject of this paper is both topical and significant because the prevailing approach continues to overlook this fundamental factor for resilience, in favour of larger scale technocratic, infrastructure solutions. Recent examples have however shown that levees, dams and dikes do fail, so resilient buildings should be considered as part of a comprehensive climate change and environmental management strategy.
Integrated design for resilience is a process that engages design, planning,
engineering, social and political solutions to proactively deliver an effective and
usable built environment. It offers a coherent framework for the collaborative and holistic design, delivery and management of building-level resilience at both the macro and micro scale. This paper presents historic and contemporary case
study examples with the view to define for further evaluation, the multi-variant
components and benefits thereof, of the integrated design approach for resilience.
It concludes with a series of practical design recommendations for resilience and
scope for further research.