Bringing citizen science to the built environment

Designing and realizing high-performance building envelopes is imperative to addressing the climate crisis. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphasizes the risk of inaction because of the potential for increasing greenhouse gas emissions due to higher use of energy and materials as we cope with climate change. It means that the stakes are high; with every day that goes by, each material and design choice that we make for our buildings will have a higher impact on the environment, either positive (if choosing high-performance) or negative (if choosing low-performance).

Managing maintenance and replacement of the building envelope will be crucial to ensure that the high-performance intended remains for the life of the building. As building policies often lack robust requirements for maintenance and replacement, “citizen science” is a method of crowd-sourcing information that could support increased transparency and proactive response to maintain fenestration, an important part of the building envelope.

Read the full blog here.