Tarpio, J; de la Rosa, R C and Pelsmakers, S (2025) Promoting resilience in Finland: Built environment professionals' perspectives. Building Research & Information, 53(3), pp. 305-322. ISSN 0961-3218
Abstract
The built environment and various ongoing crises, e.g. climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and declining well-being due to the pandemic, are interconnected. Resilience of the built environment has become increasingly important and construction professionals have a focal role in promoting it. This paper investigates the opportunities that professionals possess to introduce key aspects of resilience in building projects in their everyday practice in Finland. Six targeted focus group interviews for Finnish city planners, housing specialists, housing developers, housing architects, public building and landscape architects, and sustainability specialists were organized, encompassing 32 different professionals. A crisis preparedness checklist was developed and used as a concretization of resilience. Findings show that (1) currently all Finnish built environment professionals, except housing architects, are able to integrate some aspects of resilience in their current work; (2) aspects of resilience should be introduced to building projects and processes in their early stages; (3) all key aspects of resilience cannot be introduced by one profession; (4) interdisciplinary committee work and resulting information products by the Finnish Building Information Foundation provide a feasible opportunity for collaboration and integration of resilience to Finnish building projects and processes. This study highlights the need for dynamic built environment professionals' engagement.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | building design; built environment; crisis preparedness; housing design; resilience; sustainability |
| Index terms: | housing developer, Finland, landscape architect, well-being, building design, housing, pandemic, architect, interview, housing design, climate change, planner, public building, integration, profession, focus group, construction professional, biodiversity, collaboration, built environment |
| Subjects: | sociology, infrastructure and transport systems, biodiversity, data collection methods, architectural design, profession, mental health and wellbeing, professional development, organizational analysis, construction type, institututions, design process, health risk and incident analysis, Geography, management, climate science |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Health and Safety, Geographical Context, Urban Studies, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management, Design Practice, Organizational Design, Information Management, Research Practice, Sustainability |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here