Adaptive or Absent: A Critical Review of Building System Resilience in the LEED Rating System

Since people living in developed nations across Europe, North America, and Australia spend most of their lives indoors, protecting indoor environmental quality is critical for protecting human health. As stressors such as COVID-19 and climate change further complicate living conditions, conflicting system priorities underscore the need for resilience in all building systems. In the engineering and architectural fields, sustainability rating frameworks are used to note, reward, and motivate the use of sustainable practices. As such, it is crucial to ensure that these frameworks genuinely encourage resilience in building systems. This paper conducts a review of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design–Building Design and Construction (LEED BD+C v4.1) framework for New Construction through a credit-level analysis, to determine the extent to which the framework encourages the resilience of building systems beyond the scope of structure. Researchers identified, tabulated, and deconstructed relevant credits according to four key resilience factors: diversity, efficiency, adaptability, and cohesion. Findings indicated that, while efficiency is well supported, diversity, adaptability, and cohesion can be enhanced. The existing rating system provides a strong base upon which improvements can be made, but falls short of adequately encouraging the wide adoption of resilience needed for long-term sustainability. In short, while the LEED credits do reward resilient designs, they do not yet actively inspire them