Construction

Extreme heat has already made 2024 a busy wildfire year. More acres had burned by mid-July than in all of 2023, and several communities had lost homes to wildfires. As fire season intensifies across the West, there are steps homeowners can take to make their homes less vulnerable to burning and increase the likelihood that firefighters can protect their property in the event of a wildfire. We research wildfire risk to homes and communities. Here’s what decades of research suggest homeowners in high-fire-risk areas can do to protect their properties. This house near Cle Elum, Wash., survived a 2012 wildfire because of the defensible space around the structure, including a lack of trees and brush close to the house, according to state officials. AP Photo/Elaine Thompson Small improvements make big differences A structure’s flammability depends on both the materials that were used to build...

As intense heat breaks records around the world, a little-reported fact offers some hope for cooling down cities: Under even the most intense periods of extreme heat, some city blocks never experience heat wave temperatures. How is this possible? Civilizations have recognized the power of cities to heat themselves up and cool themselves for centuries. City architects in ancient Rome called for narrowing streets to lessen late afternoon temperatures. Narrow streets were found to cool the air by limiting the area exposed to direct sunlight. The whitewashed architecture of the Greek Isles demonstrates another long-practiced strategy. Light-colored walls and roofs can help cool cities by reflecting incoming sunlight. Whitewashed buildings on the Greek island of Folegandros help deflect the heat rather than absorbing it. Etienne O. Dallaire via Wikimedia, CC BY In hot and humid regions of the southern...

Modern buildings tend to take electricity and air conditioning for granted. They often have glass facades and windows that can’t be opened. And when the power goes out for days in the middle of a heat wave, as the Houston area experienced in July 2024 after Hurricane Beryl, these buildings can become unbearable. Yet, for millennia, civilizations knew how to shelter humans in hot and dry climates. As an architectural designer and researcher studying urban resilience, I have examined many of the techniques and the lessons these ancient civilizations can offer for living in hotter and drier conditions. With global temperatures rising, studies show that dangerously hot summers like those in 2023 and 2024 will become increasingly common, and intense storms might result in more power outages. To prepare for an even hotter future, designers today could learn from the past. Sumerians: Keeping cool together The Sumerians lived about 6,000 years ago in a hot and dry climate that...

Fountains of lava erupted from the Sundhnúkur volcanic system in southwest Iceland on Jan. 14, 2024. As the world watched on webcams and social media, lava flows cut off roads and bubbled from a new fissure that invaded the outskirts of the coastal town of Grindavík, burning down at least three houses in their path. Nearby, construction vehicles that had been working for weeks to build large earthen dams and berms in an attempt to divert the lava’s flow had to pull back. The lava flow on Jan. 14, 2024, with Grindavík in the foreground. Iceland Department of Civil Protection Humans have tried many ways to stop lava in the past, from attempting to freeze it in place by cooling it with sea water, to using explosives to disrupt its supply, to building earthen barriers. It’s too soon to say if Iceland’s earthworks will succeed in saving Grindavík, a town of about 3,...

Four recent catastrophic building collapses and a near miss are raising concerns about the state of America’s aging buildings and questions about who, if anyone, is checking their safety. Many cities have buildings showing signs of aging and in need of repair. In New York City, where a seven-story apartment building partially collapsed in December 2023, the median building age is about 90 years, and many neighborhoods were built before 1900. As a civil engineer, I study building failures, and I have seen how crucial structural inspections and careful maintenance are – and how often the signs of trouble are ignored in the U.S. until a problem becomes a crisis. Too often, it is up to residents to call attention to the risks. A video from 2020 shows moisture stains and evidence of failed repairs at the bottom of the basement level parking garage slab in Champlain Towers South condominium before it collapsed. Fiorella Terenzi. Many...