Climate risk is already shaping how buildings perform
For years, climate risk in real estate was treated as a future problem. Something for long-term strategies, disclosure frameworks, and scenario modelling. That framing no longer holds.
– Written by Dan Reveley, Project & Account Manager at CFP Green Buildings.
Buildings are already behaving differently. Overheating is rising across Northern Europe. Energy demand is becoming less predictable. Weather events are disrupting operations in ways many assets were never designed for.
Yet most buildings are still managed using assumptions set at the point of design. Performance models continue to rely heavily on historic weather patterns, while operational decisions are often based on fragmented or disconnected datasets.
This is often seen as an issue relating to the lack of data. Without a clear operational view, even basic questions become difficult to answer. Why is a building overheating? Where is energy really being used? How will performance change as external conditions continue to shift? However, the data does exist, it just needs to be harnessed and made readily available.
“The industry does not have a lack of data. It has a lack of connected understanding. And until those connections are made, many operational decisions will continue to rely more on assumption than insight.”
Why this matters now
Comfort is one of the first things to be noticed. Spaces that are too warm or poorly ventilated change how people use a building and how they feel in it. Buildings need to be useable in all conditions.
However, this is not just a sustainability discussion. It is increasingly becoming an operational and financial issue that directly affects core business outcomes. Costs spiral as a result of poorly designed buildings that cannot cope with either hot or cold conditions effectively. Tenants become uncomfortable and unhappy in these buildings or simply can’t afford to heat or cool them effectively, lowering productivity in these spaces.
There is also a growing link to compliance and value. Standards are tightening across multiple markets, and buildings that cannot demonstrate performance are at risk of falling behind. In simple terms, climate resilience is no longer being treated as a separate sustainability topic. It is becoming part of how overall asset quality is judged by a variety of stakeholders.
How do we solve these issues?
Digital twins, supported by better structured building data, are starting to play a more meaningful role. Digital twins are often described as virtual models of buildings. In practice, their usefulness depends on the data that sits behind them.
Most of that data already exists. There are datasets covering energy performance, building characteristics, system behaviour, and increasingly, climate exposure. The problem is that they rarely connect in a consistent way. The industry does not have a shared way of identifying and linking data at building level yet. As a result, valuable information remains fragmented, and the overall picture is incomplete.
This is where a different approach is starting to emerge. Some platforms, including NXTBLDNG, are beginning to focus less on generating new datasets and more on structuring existing building data in a usable way. Instead of adding another layer of analysis, the aim is to make existing data more usable by connecting it.
That changes how buildings can actually be managed in practice. Climate risk data on its own has limited value if it cannot be tied to how a specific building performs. When it is combined with information on systems, usage, and energy behaviour, it becomes far more meaningful.
At that point, a digital twin becomes something more than a model. It becomes a way of understanding how a building actually functions, and how it is likely to respond under different conditions.
Looking ahead
The relationship between climate, performance, and data is only going to become more important. Buildings will be expected to operate across a wider range of conditions, remain efficient within more constrained energy systems, and demonstrate their performance more clearly.
Meeting those expectations will depend less on one-off interventions and more on the ability to understand buildings continuously. In that sense, the challenge is not only about adapting to climate risk.
It is about fundamentally improving how we understand buildings in the first place.
