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Extracted Content

REQUIREMENTS EXPLAINED

This prerequisite seeks to enhance awareness of potential climate hazards, increase transparency about associated risks, reduce vulnerabilities, and preserve the long-term safety and sustainability of projects.

Integrating climate resilience throughout a project’s lifecycle helps address the impacts of climate change and promotes the long-term durability of structures from key vulnerabilities. A Climate Resilience Assessment guides project teams in identifying and evaluating site-specific climate hazards that could impact structural integrity, occupant well-being, and operational continuity. It provides a framework for integrating data-driven, forward-looking strategies that align with regional climate projections and sustainability goals.

Addressing climate risks at the project level also supports broader goals of public safety, economic stability, cultural preservation, and community resilience by reducing vulnerability to the shocks of extreme weather events and adapting to long-term climate stressors. Integrating these considerations strengthens the built environment’s ability to endure changing conditions while maintaining functionality and sustainability.

This prerequisite requires project teams to conduct a comprehensive climate and natural hazard assessment, identifying current and projected hazards that may impact the project site and building operations. For many teams, this will be an educational and goal-setting process. In identifying risks and vulnerabilities, teams can begin to integrate project-specific resilience strategies aimed at mitigating the impacts of natural hazards and enhancing the project’s adaptation capacity.

Climate and Natural Hazard Risk Assessment

A climate and natural hazard assessment is a systematic process to identify, evaluate, and understand the potential risks that climate change and natural hazards pose to a specific project and its functionality. This assessment considers observed and projected hazards, including extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes, as well as longterm phenomena such as sea level rise. The analysis involves gathering data on the likelihood, severity, and timing of these hazards using The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Key elements of the assessment include evaluating the project’s exposure, sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability to these risks and identifying the overall hazard risk levels.

U.S. Green Building Council LEED v5 Reference Guide for Operations and Maintenance, April 2025 Launch Edition 22