Lunch & Learn: LCA & Building Sustainably in a Changing Climate

The growing imperative to design our buildings and community infrastructure to be resilient in a future of more extreme weather (precipitation, flooding, wind and temperature stresses, etc.) poses a new challenge for architects and other building professionals already wrestling with the complexity of designing compelling, affordable and sustainable structures. How should and how can climate resilience be valued in the built environment? Are today’s lifecycle costing and assessment (LCCA/LCA) tools robust enough to help optimize tradeoffs between economic, environmental and resilience related risks? This session explores MIT’s work on the role of LCCA/LCA in supporting better decision making in the built environment, and touches on how lifecycle approaches to cost, environment and disaster risk are driving material innovation in the concrete industry.