Blueprint for sustainable living in changing climates
Your Resilient Home Guide – ACT Winner of the 2023 Resilient Australia Awards.
In the face of a changing climate, our approach to home design must evolve.
Your Resilient Home Guide is a multiple-award-winning guide, produced by the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) for Canberra's Suburban Land Agency. It is a resource for homeowners in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) to help them when planning to build or renovate a home.
The climate is changing, and this means we need to change the way we design our homes. In today’s climate it’s simply unwise to build a home without thinking of resilience.
– Caitlin McGee, ISF
Resilient homes are robust, flexible, and ready to withstand extreme weather while keeping your family safer. They are also cheaper to run, with lower utility bills and a reduced likelihood of replacement and rebuilding costs across the lifetime of your home.
ISF Research Director Caitlin McGee said, “The climate is changing, and this means we need to change the way we design our homes. In today’s climate it’s simply unwise to build a home without thinking of resilience.”
“Besides this, there are so many benefits. A resilient home is basically a good quality home, designed with the occupants’ safety and wellbeing in mind”, McGee said.
The guide is filled with tips to help you make simple and smart choices during the design of your home, ensuring a more comfortable and sustainable life once you've settled in.
Award-winning advice
Your Resilient Home Guide is the ACT Winner of the 2023 Resilient Australia Awards and is the ACT finalist for the National Awards. The Resilient Australia Awards is a nation-wide program that celebrates, shares, and promotes initiatives that build and foster community resilience to disasters and emergencies.
The guide draws on ISF's decades-long experience compiling and updating Your Home, Australia's most comprehensive guide to environmentally sustainable homes.
The guide explains the specific impacts of climate change that could affect ACT residents and provides practical advice on ways to ensure homes are designed to meet them.
The recommendations better equip homeowners to protect their families and property, reduce reliance on emergency services, and contribute to overall community resilience.
“Having access to easy-to-understand information about improving the resilience of your home is the first step in building a better, more sustainable home in the face of a changing climate”, said Bec Kaye, Director of Sustainability at Suburban Land Agency.
“We’re proud that Your Resilient Home Guide helps people understand what they should ask their architects and builders to ensure their homes will be designed and built to be best suited to build resilience against the impacts of Canberra’s changing climate.”
Ultimately, the guide aims to empower the community, as we work together to build a more resilient Australia.
RESEARCH OUTPUTS
Your Resilient Home (2022) (guide)
