The aim of this paper is to analyze the basic criteria, trends, applications, and developments related to climate adaptation in building maintenance and operation management (MOM) practices in Norway. Investigations conducted as part of the study include an analysis of current literature addressing climate adaptation in relation to MOM practices, supplemented by a review of existing research projects and initiatives in this field. Three case studies involving different Norwegian building owner organizations were examined in order to investigate the current status of the application and extent of climate adaptation practices in relation to MOM. The study has revealed a significant gap between theory and practice when it comes to integrating MOM in relation to climate adaptation. The concept of climate adaptation is only addressed as a high-level strategic issue. The case studies thus emphasize the need for a structured process that can enable the incorporation of climate adaptation in current MOM practices. This proposes a generic and structured climate-adaptive MOM framework that will enable the incorporation of climate adaptation in into corporate MOM practices at different scales and organizational levels. Implementation of this flexible and transferable framework is expected to provide a basis for accruing further knowledge on climate adaptation. Further work with the framework should include the introduction of more tangible and tailored tools and processes, including checklists or scoring systems accompanied by relevant climate adaptation factors and plans.

Buildings that are designed to meet high-energy performance requirements, e.g., passive houses, require well-insulated building envelopes, with increased insulation thicknesses for roof, wall and floor structures. We investigate whether there are differences in the efficiency of thermal insulation materials at different moisture levels in the insulation and if there is a larger or smaller risk of natural convection in wood-fibre based insulation than in mineral wool. The work has mainly been performed by use of laboratory measurements included permeability properties and full-scale measurements of thermal transmittance of mineral wool and wood-fibre insulated constructions. In addition, calculations have been used to calculate resulting effects on the thermal performance of constructions. Results showed that the thermal conductivity was unaffected by moisture in the hygroscopic range. The air permeability was found to be approximately 50% higher for the wood-fibre insulation compared to mineral wool insulation. Measurements showed that the largest U-values and Nusselt numbers were found for the wall configuration. Calculation of the U-value of walls showed that in order to achieve the same U-value for the wood-fibre insulated wall as the mineral wool, it is necessary to add 20 mm insulation to the 250 mm wall and approximately 30 mm for the 400 mm wall.

The global climate is changing. Predicting the impacts this will have on buildings is the first step in the process of finding suitable building adaptation measures. Future climate adaptation of buildings and infrastructure is a growing field of research, relying on both socio-economical and meteorological research for input values to the simulation models. Models producing hourly future weather data rely on global climate models which are based on emission scenarios made from assumptions of future political, social, and economic developments. Accounting for the uncertainties from these underlying models as much as possible, and communicating the uncertainties in the results, is obviously paramount for reliable conclusions from the building simulation models. This paper is a scoping review, investigating how 132 studies treat and communicate the string of uncertainties from underlying models connected to future weather file generation in the scientific literature on building adaptation research. The findings suggest that climate-model-induced uncertainties are often under-communicated, due to either insufficient analysis or neglect. The studies that included the most comprehensive analyses of the uncertainties frequently concluded that treatment of these is important for the reliability of the results, and neglecting this could lead to misleading conclusions.

To implement the geographical and future climate adaptation of building moisture design for building projects, practitioners need efficient tools, such as precalculated climate indices to assess climate loads. Among them, the Frost Decay Exposure Index (FDEI) describes the risk of freezing damage for clay bricks in facades. Previously, the FDEI has been calculated for 12 locations in Norway using 1961–1990 measurements. The purpose of this study is both updating the FDEI values with new climate data and future scenarios and assessing how such indices may be suitable as a climate adaptation tool in building moisture safety design. The validity of FDEI as an expression of frost decay potential is outside the scope of this study. Historical data from the last normal period as well as future estimated climate data based on 10 different climate models forced by two emission scenarios (representative concentration pathways 4.5 and 8.5) have been analyzed. The results indicate an overall decline in FDEI values on average, due to increased winter temperatures leading to fewer freezing events. Further, the variability between climate models and scenarios necessitates explicit uncertainty evaluations, as single climate model calculations may result in misleading conclusions due to high variability between models.

Increased insulation reduces the energy needed during operations, but this may be less than the energy required for the extra insulation material. If so, there must be an optimal insulation thickness. This paper describes the development of a tool to determine the optimal insulation thickness, including what parameters are decisive, and presents some results along with a discussion of the success criteria and limitations. To make these considerations manageable for regular practitioners, only the transmission heat loss through walls is calculated. Although the tool is universal, Greenland is used as an example, because of its extreme climatic conditions. The tool includes climate change, 10 locations and 8 insulation materials. It focuses on greenhouse gas emissions, considers oil and district heating as heating sources, and evaluates four different climate change scenarios expressed in terms of heating degree days. The system is sensitive to insulation materials with high CO₂ emissions and heating sources with high emission factors. This is also the case where climate change has the highest impact on the insulation thickness. Using the basic criterion, emitting a minimum of CO_2-eq, the Insulation Thickness Optimizer (ITO), generally identifies higher insulation thicknesses as optimal than are currently seen in practice and in most building regulations.