Designing for Resilience in a Changing Climate
Rethinking “Green”: Opportunity and Obligation
Sponsored by Risk Strategies | Presented by Yvonne Castillo, Margaret Hopkins and Chris Mundell, AIA, LEED Fellow
Live Webinar Airing on May 29, 2025 at 02:00 PM ET
To date, climate modeling has been used primarily by insurers, rather than practitioners, but tools are becoming available that provide a framework permitting design professionals to have informed discussions with project owners. Resiliency guidelines that consider the “future state” of climatologic conditions in a given location will soon mandate design considerations that go far beyond backward-looking codes and building standards.
In this webinar, our panel will provide the disparate perspectives of an engineer specializing in climate resiliency and disaster recovery, an architect that happens to be a LEED Fellow, and a risk management specialist that counsels design firms large and small on risk mitigation and avoidance. With a heightened standard of care as a backdrop, they will explore the opportunities and obligations of the AEC community in regard to resilient design.
Photo credit: [Drazen][E+] Via Getty Images
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Yvonne Castillo is the Director of Risk Advisory for Victor Insurance Managers, LLC. – the underwriting arm for the CNA Insurance professional liability program. Her legal career includes litigation practice, and extensive policy and regulatory work at the American Institute of Architects – Texas Chapter and the Institute’s National Headquarters. Yvonne joined Victor’s Risk Advisory group in 2016 and draws on more than two decades of experience exclusively in the design and construction industry. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder with an undergraduate degree in Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin. She also serves as a Board Member for the National Institute of Building Sciences. |
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Margaret Hopkins is a Vice President at AKRF, where she leads the firm's climate resilience and adaptation practice. She combines her engineering and planning expertise for climate resiliency and disaster recovery work with flood resiliency project design, community asset inventories, risk assessment, and environmental review of resiliency projects. She has led several flagship climate resiliency projects including the NYC Climate Resiliency Design Guidelines Pilot Program and design of the $1.45B East Side Coastal Resiliency project. She is a licensed Professional Engineer registered in Virginia and New York and holds degrees in water resources engineering from Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Margaret was named to ENR’s 2023 national Top 20 Under 40 cohort. |
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Chris Mundell, AIA, LEED Fellow has over 30 years of architectural experience in a variety of architectural projects for education, government, healthcare, and commercial clients. He has worked on over 50 LEED projects around the country including three that were certified Platinum. Chris works closely with Clients to set up and achieve their sustainability project goals. In addition to his work, Chris is also involved in local AEC organizations including the AIA Dallas, CSI Dallas, and the USGBC Texas Chapter. |
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Originally published in Engineering News-Record
Originally published in April 2025
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Describe how resilient design strategies can address the future impacts of climate change and extreme weather events to protect occupant safety and building longevity.
- Evaluate the role of lifecycle cost analysis and return on investment (ROI) in making the case for resilient design during pre-design discussions with project owners.
- Identify emerging performance-based guidelines and standards that inform resilient design and explain their implications on the standard of care for design professionals.
- Examine the interdisciplinary collaboration between architects, engineers, and risk management professionals in mitigating climate-related risks and enhancing public welfare.
