How architects, engineers & planners use climate projection data (survey request!)

Ariane Laxo

Sustainability Director

HGA

LEEDuser Premium Member

3 thumbs up

August 15, 2022

HGA is collaborating with the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP) to research how the AE industry is currently using climate projection data, and what they need in order to grow their use of data. MCAP is currently producing a set of dynamical downscaled climate projections for the state of Minnesota and unlike other data providers, is prioritizing the AE industry as a primary end user that they need to build their data platform to serve. Imagine if Cal-Adapt was designed with architects and engineers in mind!

We have a survey open this month to capture a current state of the industry. Whether or not you are currently using climate projection data in your work, please take the survey and share with others in the industry! Here is the preamble that you can copy/paste to share:

Architecture and Engineering (A&E) professionals are well-positioned to advance climate adaptation innovations and high-value services through the effective use of climate information and data. Sources of this information are becoming more widely available, yet they are often not well-suited for immediate A&E applications.

The University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP) and HGA Architects and Engineers invite you to take this 15-minute survey to gather input on how you and your organization identify, obtain, and apply climate information and data within the A&E field of practice.

Results from this survey will be summarized in a report and will inform the creation of dedicated professional development opportunities for A&E professionals. More broadly, survey results will articulate the needs of A&E professionals to advance climate adaptation services.

Click here to take the survey: https://tinyurl.com/climatedataforarchitecture

Visit the MCAP website for more information on this project.

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Jack Rusk

Climate Strategist

EHDD

LEEDuser Basic Member

0 thumbs up

Mon, 08/15/2022 - 19:55

This is a really exciting effort! Will the data and/or methods coming out of MCAP be open access? I've worked on projects that have used WeatherShift data before, but honestly I've always bristled at the price of it. I see the use of downscaled climate projections and morphed weather data as an essential (and fairly straightforward) technique in designing for climate change. I dream of a future where this data is all accessible, especially since the techniques for generating it (at least previously published techniques) are not super computationally complex. There are obviously other issues too (the survey rightfully calls out liability concerns) but I'd love to hear more about how MCAP's findings will be made available. I'd also be really curious to hear which (suites of?) climate models your team is considering . The r package epwshiftr (open source by folks at National University of Singapore, on GitHub here) uses the most recent results from the WCRP Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. Which climate models do you think are most appropriate for use by us architects?

Ariane Laxo

Sustainability Director

HGA

LEEDuser Premium Member

3 thumbs up

Mon, 08/15/2022 - 20:29

Yes, MCAP data will be open access, and they are as transparent as their capacity allows on sharing methodology as well. They are using CMIP6 models for the dynamical downscaling. More info: https://climate.umn.edu/climate-projections

Aside from using the most up-to-date data whenever available, the climate scientists we are working with usually recommend we consider a range of models/future scenarios so we can test our designs against those possible futures to evaluate their adaptive capacity. The standard practice of using a single weather file to produce analysis/modeling results in our industry is part of the challenge - a single file won't tell the future when the future could be many different scenarios! We outlined some of this in a paper I recently co-authored that was published in Buildings & Cities earlier this year:
Projected climate data for building design: barriers to use https://journal-buildingscities.org/articles/10.5334/bc.145/

Jack Rusk

Climate Strategist

EHDD

LEEDuser Basic Member

0 thumbs up

Mon, 08/15/2022 - 22:19

Great paper! I had actually just shared it recently with the fine folks at Two Degrees Adapt (also out of Minnesota) in a conversation about how their downscaled climate modeling might be more useful to people in AEC. Apologies for not realizing you were one of the authors. I'm really happy to hear that the data and methods will be open access (and my deep thanks for publishing your last article in an open access journal!) and excited to integrate your research into our work.