Standards shape many aspects of our society: regulations and threshold values decide, for example, to what extent interior spaces need to be protected against heat or up to what height facades need to be sealed against moisture. Standards and technical regulations thus are vital levers to adapt long-term infrastructure to the impact of the climate crisis: from residential buildings to traffic routes to critical infrastructure such as dams.
This scientific report assesses to what extent the standards and technical regulations of the German standardisation bodies DIN, DWA, and VDI already take climate changes into account. It turns out that only a small fraction of climate impacts are explicitly addressed. This points to a need to catch up, especially regarding standards referring to outdated values for climatic variables, such as total annual precipitation. There are several different ways to support actors in standardisation with optimised integration of climate change into their regulations; among other approaches, this topic needs to be put on the agenda by the DIN's leadership, and the exchange between standardisation bodies and climate researchers needs to be intensified.
