The RETIME project is pleased to announce the publication of a new systematic review in Urban Climate (August 2026), showing that current approaches to assessing how vulnerable buildings are to floods, landslides, storms and other natural hazards in Europe rely almost exclusively on what can be seen from the outside — leaving critical gaps that could affect how well buildings, and the people inside them, are protected as climate risks intensify.
The study, led by our partners at TH Köln (Germany) together with the Technical University of Denmark, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, the University of Žilina (Slovakia), and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, analysed 26 peer-reviewed publications from 2000 to 2025 and catalogued 121 distinct indicators used to assess how vulnerable buildings are to natural hazards.
The findings are especially relevant for architects, engineers, urban planners, civil protection authorities and building owners who must decide where to prioritise limited resources for retrofitting and risk reduction. Within RETIME, we argue that a more systematic, standardised approach — one that treats interior and exterior characteristics together, makes better use of digital tools like BIM and GIS, and accounts for multiple hazards at once — would make vulnerability assessments more comparable, transferable and actionable across Europe’s diverse building stock and climates.
The comprehensive indicator list compiled through the review is made openly available, providing a foundation other researchers can build on to design, test and validate future vulnerability assessment frameworks — including RETIME’s own upcoming work.
The full indicator dataset is openly available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21376830.
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