The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), alongside the Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI), released an expanded suite of resources and resilience tools to support green building initiatives, helping cities and businesses mitigate the economic effects of COVID-19 and the worsening impacts of climate change.

USGBC and GBCI’s available resources include the "LEED for cities and communities program" to help enhance building resilience; a roadmap for operating and designing energy systems in the face of potential disasters; and educational materials about resiliency within the green building industry, among other tools.

USGBC also partnered with Coastal Risk Consulting on a new RiskFootprint tool, which enables building owners, architects and engineers to assess a building's vulnerability to climate risks such as flooding or earthquakes.

More than 16 million people globally and 1.2 million U.S. residents were displaced due to weather-related events in 2018. Today, the effects of climate change in the U.S. are being felt perhaps most urgently on the West Coast, as wildfires have destroyed more than one million acres and killed at least 33 people, CNBC reports.

The building sector is one of the primary areas where cities can tackle climate change and its costly effects.

"We know people, especially those in our most vulnerable communities, are already experiencing the costs of a changing climate and the resilience of the people in these structures is a critical factor," Mahesh Ramanujam, President and CEO of USGBC and GBCI, said in a statement. "Resilient design, construction and operations verified through green building and infrastructure certifications can help reduce risk and vulnerability."

Read the full article about green building resilience by Cailin Crowe at Smart Cities Dive.