A review of technologies that improve flood resilience in residential buildings

Flooding is a key natural disaster that causes significant damage to residential buildings worldwide, necessitating the need for proactive measures to improve resilience. Developments in digital technology and their applications to building construction are creating a multitude of options to enhance structures' resilience to flooding as well as approaches for assessing flood damage after an incident. Therefore, it is imperative to identify the damage prone building elements and explore the types and extent of damages typically affecting them. This paper presents the results of systematic literature reviews (SLR) carried out utilising product information available online to identify existing flood resilient features of building elements that are prone to flood damage, as well as the technologies being adopted in these features. These reviews have revealed that walls, and openings (doors & windows) were among some of the elements that are most prone to flood damage. Further it has revealed a significant gap in the existing body of knowledge where scientific publications exploring the flood resilient technologies for such elements are lacking. The results were collated and flood resilient features of the technologies available on the market were systematically categorised. Product features relevant to flood resilience were found to be the flood depth to withstand, loading type, building standard followed, usage, material composition, appearance, installation method, sealing mechanism and maintenance. The findings also provide the basis for improving flood damage assessment technologies currently utilised.