scholarly journals BUILDING UP RESILIENC E OF CONSTRUCTION SECTOR SMES AND THEIR SUPPLY CHAINS TO EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 362-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gayan Wedawatta ◽  
Bingunath Ingirige ◽  
Dilanthi Amaratunga

Wider scientific community now accept that the threat of climate change as real and thus acknowledge the importance of implementing adaptation measures in a global context. In the UK, the physical effects of climate change are likely to be directly felt in the form of extreme weather events, which are predicted to escalate in number and severity in future under the changing climatic conditions. Construction industry; which consists of supply chains running across various other industries, economies and regions, will also be affected due to these events. Thus, it is important that the construction organisations are well prepared to withstand the effects of extreme weather events not only directly affecting their organizations but also affecting their supply chains which in turn might affect the organisation concerned. Given the fact that more than 99% of construction sector businesses are SMEs, the area can benefit significantly from policy making to improve SME resilience and coping capacity. This paper presents the literature review and synthesis of a doctoral research study undertaken to address the issue of extreme weather resilience of construction sector SMEs and their supply chains. The main contribution of the paper to both academia and practitioners is a synthesis model that conceptualises the factors that enhances resilience of SMEs and their supply chains against extreme weather events. This synthesis model forms the basis of a decision making framework that will enable SMEs to both reduce their vulnerability and enhance their coping capacity against extreme weather. The value of this paper is further extended by the overall research design that is set forth as the way forward. Santruka Gana daug mokslininku jau sutinka, kad klimato kaitos gresme yra reali, taigi pripažista, kaip pasauliniame kontekste svarbu diegti prisitaikymo priemones. Tiketina, kad Jungtineje Karalysteje fizinis klimato kaitos poveikis bus tiesiogiai jaučiamas per ekstremalius meteorologinius reiškinius. Prognozuojama, kad kintant klimato salygoms ju skaičius ir intensyvumas ateityje dides. Tokie reiškiniai paveiks ir statybu pramone, kuria sudaro per kitas ivairiausias pramones šakas, ūkius ir regionus einančios tiekimo grandines. Taigi svarbu, kad statybu organizacijos būtu tinkamai pasiruošusios atlaikyti ekstremalius meteorologinius reiškinius, kurie daro tiesiogine itaka ne tik šioms organizacijoms, bet ir ju tiekimo grandinems, kurios savo ruožtu gali paveikti atitinkama organizacija. Daugiau kaip 99 proc. statybu sektoriuje veikiančiu imoniu priklauso SVV kategorijai, tad šiai sričiai išties praverstu politika, gerinanti SVV atsparuma ir gebejima susitvarkyti. Šiame darbe pateikiama literatūros apžvalga ir trumpai pristatomas daktaro disertacijos tyrimas, kuriuo siekta išnagrineti statybu sektoriaus SVV ir ju tiekimo grandiniu atsparuma ekstremaliems meteorologiniams reiškiniams. Pagrindinis darbo indelis, pravartus ir mokslininkams, ir praktikams, tai sintezes modelis, kuriame suformuluojami veiksniai, didinantys SVV ir ju tiekimo grandiniu atsparuma ekstremaliems meteorologiniams reiškiniams. Šis sintezes modelis yra sprendimu priemimo sistemos pagrindas, o sistema SVV leis ne tik mažinti pažeidžiamuma, bet ir didinti gebejima susitvarkyti esant ekstremaliems meteorologiniams reiškiniams. Šio darbo verte dar labiau padidina bendras tyrimo modelis, pateikiamas kaip žingsnis pirmyn.

Author(s):  
Ann Phoenix ◽  
Uma Vennam ◽  
Catherine Walker ◽  
Janet Boddy

This chapter looks at the sort of environmental issues that families in India and the UK had to negotiate: sometimes routinely (for example, pollution and danger from road traffic) and sometimes unpredictably (for example, flooding and other extreme weather events). It addresses the complexity of the intermeshing of environmental concerns and practices by focusing on families who were so preoccupied with caring for their families and the daily grind of family maintenance that this superseded concern with climate change. Since families live in diverse material circumstances, environmental messages are likely to be received in different ways and to have varied impacts on different families and children.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anni Vehola ◽  
Elias Hurmekoski ◽  
Katja Lähtinen ◽  
Enni Ruokamo ◽  
Anders Roos ◽  
...  

Abstract Climate change places great pressure on the construction sector to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions and to create solutions that perform well in changing weather conditions. In the urbanizing world, wood construction has been identified as one of the opportunities for mitigating these emissions. Our study explores citizen opinions on wood usage as a building material under expected mitigation and adaptation measures aimed at a changing climate and extreme weather events. The data are founded on an internet-based survey material collected from a consumer panel from Finland and Sweden during May–June 2021, with a total of 2015 responses. By employing exploratory factor analysis, we identified similar belief structures for the two countries, consisting of both positive and negative views on wood construction. In linear regressions for predicting these opinions, the perceived seriousness of climate change was found to increase positive views on wood construction but was insignificant for negative views. Both in Finland and Sweden, higher familiarity with wooden multistory construction was found to connect with more positive opinions on the potential of wood in building, e.g., due to carbon storage properties and material attributes. Our findings underline the potential of wood material use as one avenue of climate change adaptation in the built environment. Future research should study how citizens’ concerns for extreme weather events affect their future material preferences in their everyday living environments, also beyond the Nordic region.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Clarke ◽  
Friederike Otto ◽  
Richard Jones

<p>Extreme weather of increasing intensity and frequency is the sharp edge of climate change. Greater understanding of exactly how the risks to people and property from such events are changing is therefore of considerable value to society; it enables the effective allocation of resources for adaption planning and provides a foundation for cost-benefit analysis of mitigation policy. Moreover, the first global stocktake following the Paris Agreement aims to comprehensively detail climate change-related loss and countries’ adaption ambition. Thus there is a clear imperative for greater understanding of the drivers of extreme weather risks.</p><p>To this end, the emerging field of Extreme Event Attribution (EEA) is becoming increasingly able to attribute the specific meteorological conditions (or even the impacts) of an event to human-induced climate change. This provides a tangible, evidence-based bridge between the global phenomenon of climate change and the scales at which people live and decisions are made. However, EEA studies are currently undertaken on an ad-hoc basis, in part due to discrepancies in data availability in different regions but also the lack of comprehensive, coordinated efforts. To provide greater utility to vital policy questions, insights from EEA need to be integrated into a wider system for documenting past events and understanding drivers of change.</p><p>In accordance with this, we propose a standardised framework for recording historical extreme weather events in an inventory structure. In our method, existing hazard-loss databases such as EMDAT provide a basis for event selection and give some basic impact details. Then, additional impact information, as well as detail about the process chain leading from antecedent conditions to impacts (the ‘event narrative’), is researched from a range of academic, government and NGO sources. Finally, existing attribution literature provides the link, or lack thereof, to human climate change. The comprehensive nature of such an inventory will align with the remit of the global stocktaking process, and offers a new and valuable perspective for understanding and adapting to changing risks at both national and sub-national scales.</p><p>To demonstrate the framework, we will here present inventories of past extreme weather events for the UK and the Caribbean in the period 2000-2019. Specifically, we will explore the logic and methodology behind the inventory framework, and use these examples to consider potential applications as well as foreseen drawbacks to the concept.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Rüttenauer

The exposure to extreme weather events has been linked to higher belief in climate change and the likelihood of engaging in pro-environmental behaviour. Supposedly, personal exposure reduces the subjectively perceived spatial and temporal distance to climate events, and thus increases the belief in climate change and environmentally friendly behaviour.This study exploits the variation in temporal and spatial distance to floods and periods of extreme temperature, and estimate the effect of personal experience on climate change belief and self-reported pro-environmental behaviour. Therefore, I connect individual-level panel data of up to 120,852 observations from 67,547 individuals to floods across England and heatwaves across the UK between 2008 and 2020. I control for large-scale spatial patterns and pre-existing differences between affected and non-affected individuals using person-fixed effects estimators.Results reveal that individuals are more likely to believe in climate change when they are affected by floods or heatwaves, and the effect is stronger for spatially and temporally proximate events. However, this does not translate into more pro-environmental behaviour: results provide only slightest evidence for a positive overall change in behaviour. Still, people differ in their reaction to extreme weather events. While the effect on climate change belief is mainly driven by individuals with initially low trust-levels, only respondents with a high level of general trust show some signs of positive behavioural reactions to extreme weather events.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Adedayo Ogunbode

The literature suggests extreme weather experiences have potential to increase climate change engagement by influencing the way people perceive the proximity and implications of climate change. Yet, limited attention has been directed at investigating how individual differences in the subjective interpretation of extreme weather events as indications of climate change modulate the link between extreme weather experiences and climate change attitudes. This article contends that subjective attribution of extreme weather events to climate change is a necessary condition for extreme weather experiences to be translated into climate change mitigation responses, and that subjective attribution of extreme weather to climate change is determined by the psychological and social contexts in which individuals appraise their experiences with extreme weather. Using survey data gathered in the aftermath of severe flooding across the UK in winter 2013/2014, I show that personal experience of this flooding event is only directly linked to perceived threat from climate change, and indirectly linked to climate change mitigation responses, among individuals who subjectively attributed the floods to climate change. Additionally, subjective attribution of the floods to climate change is significantly predicted by pre-existing climate change belief, political affiliation and perceived normative cues. Attempts to harness extreme weather experiences as a route to engaging the public must be attentive to the heterogeneity of opinion on the attributability of extreme weather events to climate change.


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