Delivering climate responsive resilient building codes and standards: New Zealand

This paper assesses climate responsive resilient building codes and standards in New Zealand. New Zealand (NZ) has had a performance-based Building Code since 1992 and it is primarily focused on life safety. Feedback from the 2020 Global Resiliency Dialogue survey identified that there is an opportunity to address issues of building resilience and occupant wellbeing in the face of expected changes to the climate in the NZ Building Code.

Outcomes of improving requirements for resilience identified in the survey included:

• reduced economic losses,
• improved public health, safety and wellbeing, and
• faster post-disaster recovery.