Role of Maintenance in Reducing Building Vulnerability to Extreme Events

The paper is to assess contribution of maintenance toward reducing building vulnerability to extreme weather events such as high wind, wild fire and flood. The aims are to gather technical knowledge to develop policy recommendations and guidelines for practice in Australia. Reducing building vulnerability to extreme events is one way of improving building resilience that is partly under the control of the building owners/occupiers. The performance of buildings will decease overtime without effective maintenance and their vulnerabilities to extreme events will increase. What are the opportunities to reduce building vulnerability via maintenance is the key question. Lack of consideration for maintenance during the design phase and lack of proper as-built documentation at completion of construction are the two main deficiencies of the Australian building system. The paper reviews the impacts of weather events in Australia. Losses due to storms, cyclones, wildfires and floods accounted for 96% to total losses due to disasters. Emerging risks for Australia are due to climate change, changes to construction practice and the introduction of new construction products without appropriate control. Maintenance activities currently carried out in Australia include (i) maintenance of essential safety measures, (ii) maintenance for habitability and

(iii) preventive maintenance for extreme events. Maintenance is considered as a post-construction activity and a responsibility for States and Territories governments. Opportunities for reducing building vulnerability vary with the types of events. For storms and cyclones, water penetration remains a recurring and costly issue. For floods, the opportunities for the owners/occupiers are mainly in preparation of the buildings before the floods and subsequent clean up and repairs. For wildfires, the main opportunity is in reducing the risk of ignition due to embers action with appropriate maintenance measures for the buildings and surrounding areas. The main recommendation of the research is to establish a building maintenance manual for each building with prescribed information including (i) as-built construction details relevant to maintenance, (ii) required preventive maintenance checklist.