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Coping with climate change could be a matter of what building you’re in

Extreme heat and cold brought on by climate change put people at risk. Beefing up building codes now could help to save lives.
By
  1. Meredydd Evans

    1. Meredydd Evans is an Earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in College Park, Maryland, and leads the International Energy Agency’s Building Energy Codes working group.

Three years after the 1978 Miyagi earthquake, a magnitude-7.4 event that caused extensive damage to the city of Sendai, Japan overhauled its building codes to better protect people against quakes. The country’s building codes are some of the strictest, but they are hardly unique now. Around the world, fortified building codes in high-risk areas now help people and their property to survive natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires and flooding.

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Nature 625, 633 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03934-2

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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