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Passive Survivability

By Alex Wilson October 27, 2023 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

2023 Likely to be Among the Coolest in 20 Years

Despite what a lot of people say, this isn’t the “new normal.” Normal would imply a plateau in conditions—and that’s not likely to happen any time soon.

By Alex Wilson January 10, 2023February 4, 2023 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

Welcome to the New Reality: Resilience Lessons From the Recent Winter Storms and Atmospheric Rivers

In Buffalo, a ban on driving extended five-and-a-half days in December, forcing residents to stay home—some without power.

By Alex Wilson August 5, 2021August 30, 2021 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs/Uncategorized

The Cascading Impacts of Drought and the Role Resilience Must Play

We need to examine where we build, how we build, and how to protect existing buildings and infrastructure.

Texas Loop 306 near San Angelo Texas, covered in snow.
By Alex Wilson February 24, 2021March 2, 2021 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

What the February Winter Storm Can Teach Us About Resilience – 10 Recommendations

The winter storm last week won’t be the last disaster to strike, and it won’t be the worst. Achieving resilience will depend on understanding the growing vulnerabilities we face and working together to respond to them.

By Alex Wilson February 17, 2021December 4, 2023 Alex Wilson/News & Blogs

Our Fragile Power Grid

There’s an excellent article in today’s New York Times on the vulnerability of our power grid to climate change.

By Alex Wilson March 16, 2020March 3, 2021 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

Resilience in a Pandemic

Resilience isn’t only about getting back to where we were before; it’s also about learning and adapting so that we will be better prepared next time—when the disturbance might be a flood or wildfire or earthquake, or another pandemic

By Alex Wilson October 30, 2019August 7, 2020 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

California wildfires and intentional power outages call for more resilient power systems

The most resilient backup power system is a solar system and battery storage that has islanding capability.

By Alex Wilson February 12, 2019March 2, 2021 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

AAC: An Ideal Material for Resilient Buildings

“I’ve seen too many wood-frame buildings damaged by moisture, termites or other wood boring insects, fire, rot, and mold. AAC offers the best of all worlds.”
– Dan Levy, Passive House consultant and AAC expert in Woodstock, New York

By Alex Wilson November 14, 2018March 3, 2021 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

The LEED Pilot Credits on Resilient Design Are Back Up!

It is possible, once again, to specifically address resilience in LEED project certifications.

By Stephen Dotson September 25, 2018 Front page slider/News & Blogs/Uncategorized

RDI’s Tiny House Village Design Charrette

On 6/25/2018, we held a design charrette to explore what are optimal designs for building cold-climate resilient sleeping pods with a central common building in a tiny house village?

By Stephen Dotson September 18, 2018March 5, 2021 Front page slider/News & Blogs/Uncategorized

Why Tiny House Villages, and Why Now?

The tiny house movement and tiny village model provide a new, modular option for people from a wide range of backgrounds to consider, and a new way to plan clustered development.

By Alex Wilson September 6, 2018September 6, 2018 Alex Wilson/News & Blogs

Nice article on passive survivability

“Resilience in the face of weather events and power outages could shape up as the cutting edge of performance building.” – Charlie Wardell

By Alex Wilson April 4, 2018March 3, 2021 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

Resilient Tiny House Shelters for the Homeless

RDI has received initial funding to develop prototype, resilient, homeless shelters for a cold climate.

By Alex Wilson September 11, 2017 Alex Wilson/Front page slider/News & Blogs

Is There a Silver Lining in the Clouds of Hurricane Irma?

Passive survivability should be a design criterion for any building that is designated to serve as an emergency shelter.

By Alex Wilson July 24, 2017 Alex Wilson/News & Blogs/Uncategorized

Special issue of BRI on Overheating in Buildings

When I was at the PLEA 2017 Conference (Passive Low-Energy Architecture) in Scotland a few weeks ago, I learned that the contents of a special issue of the journal, Building Research & Information on Overheating in Buildings are available free through the end of July. BRI is a peer-reviewed, technical

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Susan Roff, PhD, FRSA

Sue Roaf

An architect, author and academic, Susan Roaf, Ph.D., FRSA, is Emeritus Professor of Architectural Engineering at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, with degrees from the University of Manchester, the Architectural Association, and Oxford Brookes University. She spent ten years in Iran and Iraq, studying traditional technologies and as an archaeologist.   She is author or co-author of twenty-two books, including Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change (2009), Adaptive Thermal Comfort: Principles and Practice (2012), and Ecohouse (4th Edition 2012).She has chaired, and co-chaired, numerous international conferences on such issues as  Carbon Accounting, Passive Low Energy Architecture, Thermal Comfort, and Architectural Education.

Her current research focuses on ‘extreme design’ and strategies for future-proofing buildings by exploring how they work successfully in extreme climates. She is currently experimenting in Antarctica on performance limits of a novel tent in extreme temperature and wind conditions. Sue has served on numerous national and international committees, think tanks, and working groups, and boards with architects, planners, and engineers—including the International Solar Cities Initiative; Solar City Dundee; the Scottish Institute of Solar Energy Research; the Initiative for Carbon Accounting in Scotland (Chair); the Edinburgh Centre for Climate Change and the UK Architects Registration Board. She was also an Oxford City Councillor for seven years, and she lectures widely on energy, comfort, buildings, and climate adaptation.

Marc Rosenbaum, PE

Marc Rosenbaum
Photo by Nancie Battaglia

Marc Rosenbaum is a mechanical engineer with South Mountain Company on Martha’s Vineyard and his own consulting business, Energysmiths, which he founded in 1979. He is a leading practitioner of integrated design, addressing energy performance, renewable energy, building science, water and wastewater, indoor air quality, site planning, and materials. He is a licensed engineer in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, a certified Passive House Consultant, and a LEED Accredited Professional.

Marc has worked with leading architects, including William McDonough + Partners and Payette Associates, and his clients have included MIT, Vermont Law School, Yale, Dartmouth College, Middlebury College, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, Woods Hole Research Center, Stonyfield Farm, Tom’s of Maine, and five cohousing groups in New England. Projects he has worked on have been recognized with three AIA Committee on the Environment Top-10 awards, two national ASHRAE awards, and four Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) awards. He is a recipient of both the Distinguished Service and Professional Leadership Awards from NESEA.

Marc lectures widely on topics ranging from integrated design to resilience, and his articles have appeared in the ASHRAE Journal, Fine Homebuilding, Solar Today, and other leading publications. He lives on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

David W. Orr, Ph.D

David W. Orr
Photo by Nancie Battaglia

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.

Fiona Cousins, PA

Fiona Cousins

Fiona Cousins, PE leads the sustainability team in the New York City office of Arup, one of the world’s leading engineering firms, and serves as a principal and member of the Arup Americas’ Board. A mechanical engineer by training, Fiona has spent much of her career engaged in HVAC design, with an area of specialization in thermal comfort and energy efficiency. She developed a strong interest in sustainability during the 1990s and she is particularly focused on interdisciplinary design that involves collaboration between disciplines to achieve break-through results. Her interest in sustainability has developed over time to include issues of resilience.

Fiona has extensive project experience, having worked for both corporate and institutional clients on a wide variety of building, planning and sustainability projects including offices, trading floors, laboratories, libraries, performing art centers, airports and campuses. She has been a LEED® Accredited Professional since 2001 and is active with the U.S. Green Building Council, having chaired the New York Chapter (Urban Green) for two years and currently serving on the national board.

A frequent speaker on sustainable design, she is also a coauthor of Two Degrees: The Built Environment and Our Changing Climate (Routledge, 2013), and she was project director for the Arup support team that synthesized input from 30 appointed commissioners into the 200-page NYS 2100 Commission Report, Recommendations to Improve the Strength and Resilience of the Empire State’s Infrastructure (2013). Fiona was also project director supporting the NYC Housing Recovery Office following Hurricane Sandy, and in 2009-10 she co-chaired the Energy & Ventilation Sub-Committee of the New York City Green Codes Task Force.

Bill Browning, Hon. AIA

Bill Browning

Based in Washington, DC, Bill Browning is a principal of Terrapin Bright Green, LLC, a consulting firm he founded in 2006 with Bob Fox, Rick Cook and Chris Garvin. Terrapin crafts high-performance environmental strategies for corporations, governments, and large-scale real estate developments. In 1991, Bill founded Green Development Services at the Rocky Mountain Institute, an entrepreneurial, non-profit think tank whose work advances energy-efficient and environmentally-responsive design. Bill was a founding board member of the U.S. Green Building Council, and he still serves on the USGBC’s Governance Board. He lectures widely on sustainable design, biophilia, and building practices, and he was a leader in a series of charrettes following Hurricane Katrina that led to publication of The New Orleans Principles.

Bill received a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from the University of Colorado and a Masters of Science in Real Estate Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the MIT Center for Real Estate’s 1991 Public-Sector Fellowship and the Charles H. Spaulding Award in 1995. In 1998 Bill was named one of five people “Making a Difference” by Buildings magazine, in 2001 he was selected as an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, and in 2004 he was honored with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership Award.

Bob Berkebile, FAIA

Bob Berkebile

Bob Berkebile is a principal of BNIM Architects in Kansas City, Missouri and a leading voice in the green building and resilient design community.  He founded the AIA Committee on the Environment in 1989 and served as its initial chair.  Bob was a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council and served on the national board in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  In 2009, Bob received the Heinz Award  from  Theresa Heinz and the Heinz Family Foundation for his role in promoting green building design and for his commitment and action towards restoring social, economic and environmental vitality to America’s communities through design and planning.  His firm, BNIM, received the AIA’s National Firm Award in 2011. 

Bob is a pioneer in regenerative design with the goal of integrating social, environmental and economic vitality.  His work ranges from setting new standards for the industry, to creating the first building to be certified both LEED Platinum and a Living Building, and restoring 12 communities severely damaged by natural disasters, including New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and Greensburg, Kansas, (the first city to make LEED Platinum their standard) following a devastating F-5 tornado.

Jerelyn Wilson

Dummerston, VT

Jerelyn is CEO and Outreach Ambassador for BuildingGreen, Inc., a 14-person, for-profit, B Corp in Brattleboro, Vermont. She also serves as president of the Brattleboro Food Co-op Board of Directors.

Ralph Meima, MBA, Ph.D

Brattleboro, VT

Ralph Meima

Ralph is the founding director of the Marlboro MBA in Managing for Sustainability (which he directed from 2006 to 2012); an author and blogger; and a consultant specializing in CSR (corporate social responsibility), sustainable business, renewable energy policy and finance, and Nordic-US trade in energy and environmental technology. He is a member of the Brattleboro Town Energy Committee. Alongside his role at the Resilient Design Institute, he operates Meima Associates. His scenario novel Inter States, which explores the human and societal implications of climate, resource, geopolitical and other trends, was released in installments through 2014.

Ralph holds a BS in industrial engineering from RPI, an MBA from the Wharton School, an MA in international relations from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and a PhD in management from Lund University, Sweden. (.

Travis Hellstrom

Travis Hellstrom is an entrepreneur, international consultant, author, and executive advisor who helps mindful leaders expand their influence.  He is the founder of Advance Humanity, one of the first dozen Certified B Corporations in Vermont, alongside Ben & Jerry’s, Seventh Generation, and King Arthur Flour. He is also Chair in the School of Leadership & Management at Marlboro Graduate School, with a focus on Mission Driven Organizations and Social Innovation.

Travis has a passion for helping social entrepreneurs, social businesses and nonprofits expand their influence and make a difference in the world. He served for three years with the Peace Corps in Mongolia where he helped lead the first Certified B Corps in Asia, and then was a Peace Corps Fellow at SIT Graduate Institute where he received his Masters in Management focusing on social business, leadership and happiness at work. Today you can find him at TravisHellstrom.com where he writes about living simply, creating a life and work you love, and advancing humanity.

Vernon Grubinger, Ph.D

Dummerston, VT

Vern is the Vegetable and Berry Specialist and Extension Professor with the University of Vermont. Since 2007 he has served as Director of USDA’s Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (SARE), which currently awards ~$6 million annually in grants to researchers, educators, graduate students and farmers in twelve Northeast states. 

Over the past 30 years he has conducted applied research and outreach programs in the areas of climate change and agriculture, nutrient management, pest management, produce safety, renewable energy for greenhouse heating, and soil health. Vern has served on the Town of Dummerston Farmland Protection Committee, the Vermont Land Trust Board, the Vermont Farm Fund Board, and the Vermont Sustainable Agriculture Council.  He has written 200+ monthly columns for industry publications, authored 150+ fact sheets for commercial growers, produced videos on sustainable vegetable production and marketing practices, and recorded 100+ commentaries on Vermont Public Radio. He is the author of the books Sustainable Vegetable Production from Start Up to Market (1999) and With an Ear to the Ground: Essays on Sustainable Agriculture (2004). He co-authored Food, Farms and Community: Exploring Food Systems (2014).

Farrah Andersen, The Cadmus Group

Washington, DC

Farrah Anderson

Farrah Andersen is an Associate at Cadmus’ Sustainability & Energy group. She leads policy and strategy teams on behalf of state and local governments, large companies, and nonprofits to advance their sustainability goals, including on renewable energy, climate mitigation, and resilience. Ms. Andersen is an expert on sustainable finance and social equity (example thought leadership includes Unlocking Private Capital to Finance Sustainable Infrastructure and  A Guidebook on Equitable Clean Energy Program Design for Local Governments and Their Partners). As a trained facilitator and certified mediator, she also leads stakeholder and community engagements on behalf of her clients across the country to help embed diverse voices in decision-making. 

Ms. Andersen previously served as Chief of Staff for Corporate Social Responsibility at BNP Paribas subsidiary Bank of the West, leading the team’s strategy, operations, and national-level partnerships. Ms. Andersen holds a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and BA in Political Economy from the University of California at Berkeley.

Jim Newman, Linnean Solutions

Cambridge, MA

Jim Newman

Jim Newman is founder and Principal at Linnean Solutions, which provides environmental analytics and benchmarking for corporate, institutional, and municipal clients. Linnean’s work includes resilience analysis and planning, ecosystem services assessment, and life cycle assessment and embodied carbon studies. 

Previous to Linnean, Mr. Newman worked with BuildingGreen, as the Director of Strategy. He helped found the Massachusetts Chapter of the USGBC, first creating a membership organization for green building professionals, and then moving that organization into Chapter status with the USGBC. Mr. Newman is a former Chair of the Chapter (now Built Environment Plus). Mr. Newman is a Board member of CLEAR, the owner of the LENSES regenerative development framework and a member of the RELi Steering Committee.

Mary Ann Lazarus, FAIA, LEED Fellow

St. Louis, MO

Mary Ann Lazarus

Mary Ann Lazarus, FAIA, LEED Fellow, is an architect and educator working on accelerating shifts in design of the built environment to sustainable and resilient outcomes. Mary Ann has over 40 years of experience as an architect primarily at HOK, where she served as global director of sustainability for over a decade.  Mary Ann served as the Resident Fellow on Sustainability at the American Institute of Architects and was 2017 Chair of the AIA’s Committee on the Environment Advisory Group. Mary Ann now works as a resilient and sustainability consultant and is the Coordinator for the Sustainability Program at Washington University in St. Louis’ University College.

Mary Ann is considered a thought leader on sustainable design and resilience with a focus on design for climate change and speaks regularly at national events. She co-led the development of the LEED Resilient Design Pilot Credits, served as a Review Editor on the Fourth National Climate Assessment Report, and a co-author on the HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design, 2nd Edition. She is a former Trustee of Washington University in St. Louis.

Russ Derickson, Ph.D., P.E.  RDI Director of Science and Engineering

Commerce City, CO

Russ Derickson

Russ is an engineer and scientist with over 40 years of widely ranging experience. He created REM/Rate that pioneered home energy rating; developed programs for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army to achieve energy efficiency in military bases globally; performed technology assessment and designed rebate programs for Southern California Edison and PG&E; produced an in-house commissioning framework for California’s state buildings. His career encompasses atmospheric science, building science, hydrology, wind engineering (structures & dispersion), fire science, multiple hazards (floods, extreme winds, earthquakes, fires, climate change), and business education. As a founding faculty member at Presidio Graduate School, Russ created and taught the course Sustainable Products & Services, and wrote the white paper that led to the school’s Experiential Learning Program. During 2017-2020, he crafted innovations in fire safety that resulted in four patents with ten pending.

Russ believes technology and wild nature must work symbiotically in addressing Earthly challenges of sustainability, resilience, and adaptability. Initiatives must operate locally but with a global umbilical connection in which success requires unprecedented integration of disciplines, thought, and action. In an urbanizing world with high-rises tripling since 2000, humanity is encountering both vast new challenges and emerging opportunities. Russ is primed to meet these challenges and shape opportunities as part of RDI. Not least, Russ’s loves include music, reading, nature, and his two-year-old granddaughter.

Alex Wilson, President

Dummerston, Vermont

Alex Wilson

Alex is the founder and president of the Resilient Design Institute. His focus on resilient design began following Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast—leading to publication of The New Orleans Principles, which he edited. He has worked on resilience initiatives for the cities of New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, and he co-led the effort to create the LEED pilot credits on Resilient Design. He has lectured and written widely about resilient design, including a chapter in the book, Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales, published in 2022 by Routledge.

Alex is also the founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. in Brattleboro, Vermont, an 15-person company that has served the design and construction industry with non-biased information on environmentally responsible design and construction since 1985. He is author of Your Green Home (2006), and co-author of Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate (1998), and the Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings (1990, 9th edition, 2007). He has also co-authored a series of four guidebooks on quiet-water canoeing and kayaking for the Appalachian Mountain Club. (Contact: alex@resilientdesign.org).