The New York City Buildings Resiliency Task Force Presents Recommendations

Thermograph of Brooklyn block — A wide-angle thermograph of a block in Brooklyn showing one row-house that is superinsulated–and will maintain habitable temperatures in the event of an extended power outage. IR thermograph: Sam McAfee, sgBuild, from the Buildings Resiliency Task Force Report.

In December 2012, the Urban Green Council in New York City assembled a Buildings Resiliency Task Force at the request of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. I was among more than 200 members of that Task Force, which was organized into four building-type committees (Commercial Buildings, Multi-family Residential Buildings, Critical Buildings, and Homes (1-, 2- and 3-family) and three Working Groups (Structure, Façade, and Interiors; Electrical and IT; and HVACR, Plumbing and Fire Protection).

The Task Force presented their findings at a press conference with Bloomberg and Quinn, on Thursday, June 13th. Urban Green published a nicely laid out, 40-page Summary Report as well as a much longer, 185-page report that includes detail on each of the 33 proposals being presented to the City.

The report proposes five levels of action for the different proposals and building types. For a very small number of measures, Required Action is proposed. This means that the action should be required even for existing buildings—necessitating retrofits. Examples include providing access to water in multifamily residential buildings at a level in the buildings where municipal pressure will deliver the water (so that residents on upper floors will have access if pumps in the building are inoperable) and keeping gas stations open when the utility grid is down.

New Code proposals would be incorporated into buildings codes that apply to new construction and major upgrades. Examples include measures to prevent sewage backflow in all building types, keeping multifamily residential stairwells lit during power outages, and ensuring that toilets and sinks work without power in all building types.

Some of the proposals are suggested as Removing Barriers to more resilient buildings. Examples include barriers to increased use of cogeneration in larger buildings, barriers solar energy, and barriers to elevating buildings and building systems to minimize flood risk.

APTOPIX Superstorm Sandy — Grace Chow helping a resident of a residential building in Chinatown get water for her 20th-floor apartment on November 1, 2012 in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. Photo: Craig Ruttle, AP, from the Buildings Resiliency Task Force Report.

Other proposals are Recommended Practices to enhance resilience, but would not be mandated. Such proposals include capturing stormwater to prevent flooding, providing quick connects for temporary generations and boilers in large buildings, and enhancing building water reserves (such as the water towers on top of buildings that are no longer mandated in New York).

Finally, some of the most forward-thinking proposals are listed as requiring Further Action; for these the report recommends either additional consideration by the City or extending the mandate of the Task Force through the fall of 2013 to come up with specific recommendations. Examples of these proposals include maintaining habitable temperatures without power (a measure that was initially being referred to as “passive survivability” in the meetings I attended) and ensuring operable windows in multifamily residential buildings. These measures, should they end up as code changes could have huge impact in changing the way buildings are built in the City.

NYU_CoGen_plant_kept_operating_Ken_Micallef — A building at NYU retained power because of its combined heat and power or cogeneration plant, while most of the surrounding area was dark following Superstorm Sandy. Photo: Ken Micallef, from the Buildings Resiliency Task Force Report.

This was a monumental effort by the staff of Urban Green and the many, many people who volunteered over 5,000 hours over five months. Hats off to Russell Unger, Cecil Scheib, and the other staff at Urban Green who pulled this off so effectively. If the Task Force continues work on the Further Action measures, I hope to remain involved. I think there’s huge opportunity here.

The Summary Report as well as full report can be downloaded from the Urban Green website.

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.

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.