New York City Task Force Convened to Respond to Superstorm Sandy

Flooded New York City subway on October 30. 2012. Photo: Hector Mosley, USACE. Public Domain photo.

Superstorm Sandy took a major toll on New York City, but if a newly created task force succeeds, the impact of future such events should be lessened.

At the request of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Urban Green Council (New York City’s chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council) has convened a special Building Resiliency Task Force to take an in-depth look at how to better prepare the city’s buildings for future storms and infrastructure failures.

The Task Force is comprised of four committees and three working groups. The committees are Commercial Buildings, Critical Buildings, Residential Buildings (focused on multifamily), and Homes (single-family, duplex, and triplex). The three working groups will address: Structure, Façade and Interiors; Electrical and IT; and HVARC, Plumbing, and Fire Protection. To date 137 people have been named to the Task Force, most from the New York City real estate community, along with architects and engineers.

Following a kick-off meeting last week (December 19th), each of these committees and working groups will meet from January through the spring to develop specific recommendations on boosting the resilience of the City’s hundreds of thousands of buildings.

The Resilient Design Institute will play a part in this initiative, as I’ve been invited to serve as an at-large member of the Task Force. That designation gives me the freedom to follow the discussions of these various committees, contributing where appropriate and participating in meetings when I’m able to get down to the City.

Work will begin work immediately, with a plan to release recommendations in the summer of 2013. Already, draft measures are emerging in these committees and working groups.

I’m looking forward to participating in the Task Force. While I participated in the Climate Adaptation Technical Committee of the New York City Green Codes Task Force in 2008-09, the proposals I offered on “passive survivability” were a little to radical to make it into the final report, except as a recommendation for research. I believe that following Sandy, policy makers will be far more willing to embrace some of these ideas.

Along with founding the Resilient Design Institute in 2012, Alex is founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. and executive editor of Environmental Building News. To keep up with his latest articles and musings, you can sign up for his Twitter feed.

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Tags: Commercial/Public buildings/Communities/Cities/Energy efficiency/Renewables/flooding/Floodproofing/Homes/Living spaces/News/Power interruption/Sea-level

One thought on “New York City Task Force Convened to Respond to Superstorm Sandy”

Gil Lopez says:

January 6, 2013 at 11:01 pm

I’m glad to know there will be folks like you at the table forcing decision-makers to look beyond improving the wind speed design considerations for glass skinned buildings. It is a shame that it takes a tragedy like Sandy to nudge them into becoming “more willing to embrace some of these ideas.” Especially when so many harsh realities have been staring us in the face for years if not decades and ample warning has been raised via your previous “passive survivability” recommendations among a sea of other voices. Best of luck in helping them see the light this time around. I look forward to your GreenDrinks NYC SPARK talk on January 22nd. For anyone else interested in that talk: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5134679966#

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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.