Green Cross Australia is actively operating in the climate adaptation space for the built environment. Some of the partnerships that we are developing include:

 

 

Green Star Communities Rating Tool

The Green Building Council of Australia's (GBCA) Green Star - Communities Rating Tool is one of the world's first independent, transparent, national schemes able to assess and certify the sustainability of community-level projects. Green Star - Communities is a voluntary rating tool which provides best practice benchmarks and third-party verification of thesustainability of community and precinct-wide developments.

 

Released as a pilot in June 2012, the Green Star - Communities rating tool has been developed by the Green Building Council ofAustralia (GBCA), in close collaboration with the market, including all three tiers of government, public and private sector developers, professional services providers, academia, product manufacturers and suppliers and otherindustry groups. Green Cross Australia is a project partner for tool and has contributed to the
Governance - 6 Adaptation & Resilience credit which encourages and recognises projects that are resilient to the impacts of a changing climate and natural disasters by assessing project Climate Adaptation and Community Resilience initiatives.

The Community Resilience "credit" points are awarded where a project specific Community Resilience Report (CRP) has been developed that addresses preparation, during, and post disaster communication, safety and response in accordance with the "Community Resilience Report Checklist for developers" developed by Green Cross Australia as part of the Harden Up - Protecting Queensland project which is funded by the Natural Disaster Resilience Program.

 

 

The Resilience Taskforce
A project led by Edge Environment for the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA). Edge Environment is working with multiple partners to develop a Building Resilience Rating Tool (BRRT) that uses building material data to provide a rating of the resilience of a residential building. The rating provides various levels of detail from a 'headline rating' to resilience information by building element and weather hazard category. The tool is currently in pilot phase.

Edge Environment and the ICA are also developing the Australian Resilience Taskforce. It is intended as a platform for collaboration, and alignment across government, industry and non-government organizations to enable increased resilience in Australian communities.

 

 

Climate Risk - Adaptation strategies for high risk coastal locations

Climate Risk have been working on a project lead by one of the Australia's largest local councils and joined by the ICA to apply on-line cost benefit analysis models to identify the best adaptation strategies for high risk coastal locations.  This is one of the Federal Governments CAP projects.

The results have proven that even where risks from sea level rise and coastal flooding are severe, if councils, insurers and home owners work together it is possible to protect property values and ensure that the total cost of insurance, rates and mortgage remain affordable.

 

The diagram below shows a test output from the one of the models, showing the effect of different adaptation actions for infrastructure, planning rules and building resilience requirements.  Without action insurance would quickly become unaffordable, but if carefully timed or triggered, these actions keep the total costs for insurance, rates and mortgage low and stable for the home owner despite rising sea levels and increasing flood risk.