Ensuring Community and Economic Resilience

by Marcy Marro | December 2, 2019 12:00 am

While the specific infrastructure weaknesses and hazard threats may vary, this kind of vulnerability is not unique to California. Clearly a new approach is needed. Natural and manmade hazards are inevitable, but they only become disasters when we don’t prepare for them. According to the reinsurance industry (insurance for insurers), the frequency and severity of extreme weather (high winds, heavy rain, drought, hurricanes, tornados, etc.) have increased, with 10 percent more billion-dollar loss events over the last decade (2017 was costliest year on record for natural catastrophe events, with $344 billion in global economic loss, 97 percent due to weather-related events). Considering the accelerating climate crisis, it is time to update planning and design standards to address resilience, reduce health and life safety risks, and limit disruptions for homeowners, businesses and communities. A combined focus on sustainability and resilience in hazard preparedness boosts the triple-bottom-line of people, planet and prosperity in good times, and when hazards strike.

To integrate sustainability and resilience, a systems approach is required. While our current utility infrastructures and the existing buildings they serve will be with us for some time, we can begin to model a more resilient means of serving the energy and water needs of our homes, institutions and places of work. Using the recent crisis in California, let’s look at an example. The California Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan[1] includes a rule requiring all new residential construction to be zero net energy starting in 2020, followed by a similar requirement for new commercial development in 2030. This may create some systemic issues with production and demand curves on the electricity grid (that I will discuss in detail in a future column), but it will also set up many homes (and later businesses) with the potential to be somewhat self-sufficient when the grid goes down.

Zero net energy homes meeting the new requirement are assumed to be more energy efficient, and to be equipped to produce as much renewable energy on-site (e.g., rooftop photovoltaics) as they use in a year. However, these new homes will not necessarily be more resilient because they will rely on the grid, feeding excess electricity in when the sun shines, and drawing on it to power the home at night. If the design of these homes used a passive approach to minimize electricity demand for cooling, heating and lighting, and then incorporated a battery bank for energy storage, they could increase their direct reliance on the renewable energy they produce, and more importantly, be able to function when the grid goes down. The cost of battery storage continues to decline, and a modest system could power lights, fans and computers, as well as charging mobile phones, with more robust storage keeping refrigerators running. Such system keeps people safe, comfortable and informed in the event of increasingly inevitable blackouts.

A similar approach could reduce risks and potential losses, and increase comfort and safety in other types of hazard scenarios. The key is to think beyond minimums and optimize the design. Many laypeople assume that codes establish the best practices to protect structures from known hazard risks (allowing continued use), when they are actually minimum standards for occupant safety and emergency egress during and immediately after a hazard event. Even a building meeting all current codes is likely to be severely damaged and uninhabitable after a hazard event, requiring costly repair or replacement. Prudent building owners, along with their design teams, should conduct their own calculated risk assessment and define optimal resilience for potential hazards. Building structural and enclosure systems can be designed and constructed to exceed code and protect property to a higher level, making buildings capable of serving as shelters immediately following hazard events, and supporting continuity of business (or occupancy in the case of residential) soon after.

The FORTIFED for Safer Business[2] program developed by the Institute for Business and Home Safety[3] (IBHS), established research-based standards for resistance to high winds, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, freezing weather, hail and earthquakes. FORTIFED identifies the primary risks in each region of the U.S. and provides specific requirements and recommendations to mitigate risks.

Government and institutional building owners have been the first to embrace this approach. I recently worked with a state government agency to establish resilience and sustainability requirements for its new headquarters building. The agency’s leaders recognized the importance of maintaining continuity of government operations after a major earthquake or other hazard event. The proposed building will use passive design standards to maintain comfort conditions with minimal or no energy use (passive survivability) and will include a photovoltaic array and battery storage to power computers, servers, communications equipment and other critical systems as required. As more businesses and homeowners feel the pain of hazard-related circumstances like many Californians recently experienced, the value proposition for investing in resilient systems will become stronger. Programs like Property Assessed Clean Energy[4] (PACE) financing are becoming available in more locations and can be used to fund resilience measures with long-term, low-cost financing.

Forward-focused public and private investments in the built environment, informed by risk assessments, and development standards based on best practices for resilience, not code minimums, should be used to guide planning and design. Enhancing resilience in the face of inevitable hazard events is critical to sustaining our communities and economies.

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Alan Scott, FAIA, LEED Fellow, LEED AP BD+C, O+M, WELL AP, CEM, is an architect with over 30 years of experience in sustainable building design. He is a senior consultant with Intertek, Building Science Solutions in Portland, Ore. To learn more, visit intertek.com/building/building-sciences[5] and follow Scott on Twitter @alanscott_faia[6].

Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/ensuring-community-and-economic-resilience/

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