Climate change will mean more extreme weather conditions, and buildings in many parts of the country will have to withstand greater stresses, particularly where humidity is concerned. If we are to maintain the expected lifetime of the built environment (60 – 100 years) we must begin now to take the potential effects of greater climate-induced loads into account. This means that all participants in the building process will need to focus on climate and humidity problems.

Affects all aspects of planning
This will affect building regulations, local and regional government aspects of area planning and building permits, and the design and construction of buildings.

SINTEF will contribute to this process by generating new knowledge and transferring expertise on topics related to how we adapt to climate change.

Humidity
As a part of its Klima 2000 (Climate 2000) research programme, SINTEF Building Research has set up an electronic construction damage archive, which will be incorporated in the National Building Quality Database.

Wide-ranging analyses of building damage have already revealed that three-quarters of cases of damage to buildings are caused by humidity, while two-thirds of all cases of damage are related to buildings’ climate screen, and as much as a quarter are due solely to rainfall. All of this suggests that the effects of humidity will offer the most serious challenges to the durability of buildings in the future too, and that more rainfall and higher temperatures could lead to undesirable types of biological growths.