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Low-carbon solutions for water infiltration in urban buildings under climate change

Nature Cities volume 2, pages 479–488 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The world is facing a serious problem of water infiltration in buildings, which threatens urban safety and sustainability. Although building waterproofing engineering has made much progress, it remains largely experience-driven and cannot guarantee the reliability and low-carbon attributes of building waterproofing projects under climate change. As a result, the building waterproofing industry stands at a critical turning point, urgently needing innovations that prioritize both reliability and low-carbon emissions. This Perspective proposes a new strategy for sustainability-based building waterproofing design, explores future directions and provides low-carbon recommendations for policymakers, researchers, designers and technicians.

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Fig. 1: Water infiltration in buildings endangers urban function, safety and sustainability.
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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge financial support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFC3803401), the Science and Technology Major Project of Guangxi Province (AA24263035) and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (UIDB/04625/2020). We thank X. Liu of the Delft University of Technology for his advice, and Beijing Oriental Yuhong Waterproof Technology Co. for providing the innovative building waterproofing cases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Structural Engineering, College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

    Jianzhuang Xiao, Caihua Yu, Bing Xia & Xuwen Xiao

  2. College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guangxi University, Guangxi, China

    Jianzhuang Xiao

  3. Institute of Science and Technology for Carbon Peak and Neutrality, Guangxi University, Guangxi, China

    Jianzhuang Xiao

  4. School of Water Conservancy Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

    Fuming Wang

  5. Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, The Bartlett, University College London, London, UK

    Jian Kang

  6. CERIS, Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Environment, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Jorge de Brito

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  1. Jianzhuang Xiao
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  2. Caihua Yu
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  3. Bing Xia
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  5. Fuming Wang
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  6. Jian Kang
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Contributions

J.X. and C.Y. drafted the initial outline and core content of the paper. B.X. participated in discussions throughout the project. X.X., F.W., J.K. and J.d.B. provided constructive comments and polished the language.

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Correspondence to Jianzhuang Xiao.

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Nature Cities thanks Zhen Leng, Shi-Jie Cao and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Xiao, J., Yu, C., Xia, B. et al. Low-carbon solutions for water infiltration in urban buildings under climate change. Nat Cities 2, 479–488 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00259-1

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