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Defining climate‑resilient housing

Three characteristics define climate-resilient housing:

1. Robustness – the home maintains structural integrity through climate events and long-term rising temperatures.
2. Protection – the home continues to protect occupant health, safety and comfort.
3. Recovery – the home can be efficiently and affordably returned to acceptable functionality after events.
    

Features of climate‑resilient housing

Resilience relies on integrated, hazard‑specific design, not single measures.

Measures to improve resilience to key climate risks include:

• Heat-resilience – shading, reflective surfaces, ventilation, insulation and thermal mass. Innovative measures like phase change materials may improve performance in the future.
• Bushfire-resilience – non-combustible materials, simple building forms and ember protection on exposed points, such as doors, windows and gutters.
• Flood-resilience – dry proofing, elevation or wet proofing.
• Cyclone-resilience – structural reinforcement, secure connections (including robust tie downs), impact-resistant elements (impact-resistant glazing and cyclone shutters) and appropriate siting (including landscaping for fencing and outbuildings to minimise debris).
   

Resilience measures have trade-offs

Some measures reduce exposure to one hazard but increase vulnerability to another. For example, measures to keep houses cooler during hot weather can make them colder in winter.

Therefore, measures must be assessed holistically and consider the local climate.
 

Climate resilience of households

Household resilience is critical for all climate hazards and varies with people’s health, resources, tenure and community networks, and is strengthened through retrofits, practical preparedness, and institutional and informal support.
 

Insights from case studies and practitioners

Real‑world case studies demonstrate:

• measures can be combined to address multiple hazards
• innovation can significantly raise resilience
• high climate resilience does not always equate to high building costs
• standards should be aligned to local conditions (for example, in southern Australia, heat is increasingly the focus, while northern regions grapple with prolonged heat, humidity and mould).
   

Resilience measures in the CRHG

Measures within the CRHG are classified by innovation level (basic, established, innovative) and confidence level (low, mid, high), reflecting the maturity of available research.

Each measure is mapped against relevant climate hazards, resilience characteristic (robustness, protection, recovery) and potential for amplifying other risks. Climate‑zone is also specified.

In new homes, mid-to-high levels of innovation dominate because many basic measures are already mandatory. In existing homes, basic to established measures should be prioritised.

Deploy measures contained within the CRHG

The CRHG provides:

• resilience measures for new homes
• resilience measures for existing homes
• existing National Construction Code (NCC)–mandated measures that apply to new builds.

Policymakers should consider each resilience measure's innovation and confidence levels and tailor recommended measures to regional conditions.
 

Opportunities to advance climate resilience

Five key opportunities for policy and practice to advance climate‑resilient homes and households are identified:

1. Strengthen and modernise standards for new housing

Opportunities for the NCC to build climate resilience include:

• mandating basic and established resilience measures (outlined in the CRHG) for heat, bushfire, flood and cyclone risks
• expanding hazard zones based on projected climate exposures
• setting climate triggers for NCC updates
• integrating climate resilience into the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS).

2. Rapidly scale up the retrofitting of existing homes

Retrofitting homes improves safety while reducing energy hardship and disaster‑related costs. This could be done via:

• states and territories setting minimum resilience standards for rental properties
• targeted incentive programs to encourage voluntary retrofit activity, such as rebates for insulation, shading, ventilation upgrades, and solar systems.
• tailoring guidance to local climate zones and housing types
• embedding 'build back better' principles in disaster recovery funding
• further developing disclosure frameworks (such as in NatHERS for Existing Homes) to flag to buyers or renters when a property falls below a minimum energy efficiency or resilience standard.

3. Invest in household, neighbourhood and community resilience

Community knowledge sharing could be strengthened by local governments supporting peer-to-peer learning. Neighbourhood resilience could be boosted by federal, state and local government including community insights in planning, while local and state/territory government could expand tree canopy and water-sensitive design, and upgrade resilience hubs that offer safe shelter during extreme weather.

4. Build capacity to plan for future risks

Increasingly sophisticated climate risk projections provide opportunities to foster resilience, including:  

• updating hazard maps and planning controls to reflect shifting risks
• incorporating multi‑hazard and compounding‑event scenarios into planning and regulation
• supporting energy security
• providing guidance on navigating trade‑offs.

5. Build a 'living' national evidence and guidance system

A dynamic, continuously updated system, similar to living systematic reviews used in medical research, could ensure guidance on climate risks and effective responses remains current and evidence based.

This report utilises academic and grey literature, case studies, practitioner and householder interviews and focus group discussions.

The research was undertaken in three stages:

1. development of guidelines (CRHG) for climate-resilient homes
2. testing the CRHG with case studies and specialist stakeholders
3. examining the climate-resilience experiences of households.