Using Health Impact Assessments as a green building design tool to reduce localized vulnerability to climate change

Purpose: Health impact assessments (HIAs) offer the opportunity to introduce a third major determinant of climate change vulnerability into the green building design process: health. Currently, green building programs (such as the U.S. Green Building Council's LEEDŽ rating system) address only the natural and built environment determinants. Study Question: Can HIAs integrate data from green building and public health sources to prioritize design strategies that have been shown to reduce localized vulnerability to the health impacts of climate change (such as installing a vegetated roof in a neighborhood with high vulnerability to extreme heat events in order to mitigate the urban heat island effect)? Methods and Results: This study used spatial multiple logistic regression to analyze the strength of association at the neighborhood level between the prevalence of green building design strategies promoting climate change resilience and the level of vulnerability in that area to flooding and extreme heat events in Austin, TX, and extreme heat events in Chicago, IL. Green building strategies were defined using the U.S. Green Building Council's Climate Sensitivity Index and Climate Adaptation Opportunities Index. Level of vulnerability was defined using existing geospatially-coded vulnerability indices that combined socio-demographic, natural environment, and built environment data. The resulting HIA outlined recommendations for prioritizing green building strategies with the highest probability of enhancing neighborhood resilience to extreme heat and/or flooding events. Conclusions: HIAs offer an opportunity to bring an evidence-based approach to prioritizing green building strategies that reduce vulnerability to the localized health impacts of climate change.