Extreme wind events and risk mitigation: overview and perspectives for resilient building envelopes design in the Italian context

Resilient buildings need to face many challenges in many combinations (hurricanes and high wind resistance, wildfire events, etc.) but today their design hardly includes these aspects. During extreme wind events, threats are mainly due to the detaching and flying of materials and pieces from buildings and other man-made structures: roof tiles, façade elements, antennas, etc. are dragged away becoming flying debris that endanger people and properties, hitting surrounding buildings at high speed. Therefore, wind can cause direct damages to the building envelope (building elements failure under wind loads or detachment from the source) and indirect damages (flying debris impact on other buildings). The paper deals with effects and consequences of strong wind events on the built heritage, with a focus on the Italian context, proposing risk mitigation strategies which are part of mitigation and adaptation actions to respond to current and future climate threats. The themes were explored in the new course "Strategies and tools for advanced building envelopes design towards resilient constructions" (ABC-PhD), Politecnico di Milano.