Climate change and construction sector SMEs:vulnerability, consequences and resilience

Abstract

Climate change has become one of the prime challenges the society has to face in the future. As far as businesses are concerned, it also has added one other important issue that they have to consider as part of their business planning. Climate change is of significant importance particularly to the Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are considered as the most vulnerable among the business community to the effects of climate change. This paper presents the findings of a literature review conducted with the aim of identifying the specific importance of climate change to the construction sector SMEs. The objectives of the paper are to identify the vulnerability of construction sector SMEs to the effects of climate change, their consequences and also to identify the importance of improving resilience and implementing adaptive measures to manage these issues. The paper also outlines the directions of a study undertaken to address these issues as part of an EPSRC funded research project titled “Community Resilience to Extreme Weather Events – CREW”. The paper concludes by stressing the importance of improving the resilience of construction sector SMEs to climate change effects and also the importance of collective action in this regard.

Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering > Engineering Systems and Supply Chain Management
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Sustainable environment research group
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences
Event Title: 8th Workshop and Meeting of the CIB W108
Event Type: Other
Event Dates: 2009-03-26 - 2009-03-27
Uncontrolled Keywords: climate change,SMEs,construction,extreme weather,resilience
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2024 09:06
Date Deposited: 29 Sep 2014 09:50
Full Text Link: http://www.irbn ... da/CIB16445.pdf
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PURE Output Type: Conference contribution
Published Date: 2009
Authors: Wedawatta, Gayan (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-8600-5077)
Ingirige, Bingunath
Jones, Keith

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