Building Resiliency Task Force

Alex Wilson, of RDI, was one of the few non-New-York-City experts to participate on the Building Resiliency Task Force that was established by the Urban Green Council in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy in the fall of 2012. The full task force included approximately 200 people, who were organized into seven different technical groups, a steering committee and at-large members.

In June 2013 the Building Resiliency Task Force issued its final report with 33 detailed recommendations, more than half of which have now been adopted by New York City. Five of the recommendations fall under the category of “Essential Safety” that Wilson was most focused on: Supply Drinking Water Without Power; Ensure Toilets and Sinks Work Without Power; Enhance Building Water Reserves; Ensure Operable Windows in Residential Buildings; and Maintain Habitable Temperatures Without Power.

The specific recommendation that buildings should maintain habitable temperatures without power was the first time that a city had specifically addressed passive survivability, and although that specific recommendation has not yet been adopted as a code or regulation, it got the discussion started and there is ongoing interest in such an outcome.

Access the Building Resiliency Task Force Summary Report here.

If your city would like to develop its own set of recommendations or regulations to maintain habitable building conditions without power, please contact alex@resilientdesign.org .

Back to Projects

David W. Orr, Ph.D

David W. Orr is Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies & Politics, Emeritus. He also served as “Counselor to the President” of Oberlin College for ten years. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change and the Long Emergency (Yale, 2016) and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and co-editor of three others. He has authored over 220 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. In the past twenty-five years he has served as a board member or adviser to ten foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, Bioneers, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

He is currently a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, Children and Nature Network, and the WorldWatch Institute. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, leadership awards from the U.S. Green Building Council (2014) and from Second Nature (2012), and a lifetime achievement award from Green Energy Ohio and the North American Association for Environmental Education. He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years,” as “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and as one of “52 game-changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design +Construction in January, 2016. He was instrumental in the design and funding of the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center. He is the founder of the Oberlin Project and a founder of the journal Solutions. His current work is on the state of American democracy.