Incorporating Climate Change into the New 2025 Canadian Building and Bridge Codes

Networking Cocktail

Attending the conference in person at the ÉTS allows you to meet the speakers and other colleagues while respecting health measures. A glass of wine will be offered to in-person participants at 5 pm and after the conference. This will be a great opportunity to make new connections and develop existing ones in a casual and relaxed setting.

Hybrid event

This conference is presented in hybrid mode. You have the choice to attend in person at ÉTS or online.

No registration required to attend in person at ÉTS.

General information

This conference will be presented in English. Cette conférence sera présentée en anglais.

The content of the conference (PowerPoint) cannot be shared with participants after the conference.

Description of the conference

Canada’s climate is changing, and the design standards used to safeguard buildings and infrastructure must evolve accordingly. The 2025 edition of the National Building Code of Canada (NBC 2025) represents a major step forward in integrating climate resilience into structural design, building on recommendations developed through the Climate-Resilient Buildings and Core Public Infrastructure (CRBCPI) initiative. This presentation reviews the research and technical developments that informed the code updates, including the transition from traditional uniform-hazard approaches to uniform-risk-based climatic design values for wind and snow loading. The work examined regional variations in climatic hazards, structural reliability under changing climate conditions, and the potential effects of non-stationary wind and snow climates across Canada. It also evaluated the influence of extreme events such as tropical cyclones and tornadoes, while demonstrating that conventional synoptic wind climates continue to govern design for most structures. The resulting methodologies, which have now been incorporated into NBC 2025, provide a more consistent level of safety across Canada and establish a framework for considering future climate change within structural design.

The presentation also explores parallel advances in the 2025 edition of the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code (CSA S6:25), the first Canadian bridge design code to explicitly incorporate projections of future climate conditions into engineering design. CSA S6:25 updates climatic design data based on a projected global warming level of +2.0°C by the end of the century and introduces new approaches to address climate-driven changes in flooding, wind, ice, temperature, and scour hazards. Drawing on research undertaken for both NBC 2025 and CSA S6:25, the presentation discusses how climate adaptation is becoming a core component of Canadian structural design practice and outlines the challenges and opportunities that remain as engineers prepare for the next generation of climate-informed design standards.

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