A Framework for Transitions in the Built Environment: Insights from Compound Hazards in the COVID-19 Era

The COVID-19 era has witnessed numerous successful and unsuccessful attempts to adapt or reconfigure physical, virtual, and hybrid aspects of the built environment in order to mitigate the risks of co-occuring (i.e., compound) hazards. But it has also witnessed major challenges to ensuring that the protections these reconfigurations afford are equitably distributed. Additional theoretical and empirical research is needed to inform transitions (via adaptive reconfiguration) toward short-term goals of health and well-being, as well as to guide transformations (via the establishment of stable configuration) toward longer-term goals of equitable societal function. To this end, this paper presents a framework for conceptualizing adaptation of the built environment as a series of state transitions in response to (or in anticipation of) compound hazards. It draws upon cases from recent experience in the areas of food production, shelter, and education to critique, clarify, and explicate this framework. It concludes with implications for further research on the management of transitions in the built environment under a range of hazard scenarios. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a global backdrop for the study of the capacities and vulnerabilities of many aspects of societal function, challenging conventions around the design and operation of wide classes of infrastructure to protect populations from pandemics as well as hazards such as hurricanes and earthquakes. The framework offered by this study, and its application through the associated case studies, reveals how observed adaptations of the built environment can elucidate new potentials to mitigate the risks associated with co-occuring (i.e., compound) hazards, as well as areas where our existing conventions are no longer compatible with contemporary uses of the built environment. One such convention challenged by this study is the definition of critical infrastructure in existing regulatory frameworks. The built environment transitions documented by this study suggest that contemporary notions of what infrastructure is critical and what services are essential have outstripped the traditional notions in codes and standards, demanding corresponding realignment of regulatory frameworks to ensure life-safety can still be achieved as usages evolve.