Passive Survivability:
A New Design Criterion for Buildings
This summary is a shortened, condensed version of the Full Article.
Executive Summary
Buildings are vulnerable. Climate change will bring more intense storms, flooding, and power outages. Drought and aquifer depletion may result in water shortages in some areas. Terrorists may specifically target energy distribution systems. A long-term drop in world oil production could cause shortages in heating fuels or prices that low-income homeowners or renters can’t afford.
For all these reasons, it makes sense to design homes, apartment buildings, schools, and other public buildings that might serve as emergency shelters to provide passive survivability—that is, to maintain livable conditions in the event of an extended loss of electricity, heating fuel, or water. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 taught us how important passive survivability can be.
Passive survivability can be achieved with many of the design practices and technologies used in green buildings: very high levels of insulation, windows with triple glazing and multiple low-emissivity coatings, passive-solar heating, shading to block unwanted direct sunlight, natural ventilation, daylighting, and rainwater harvesting. Other aspects of passive survivability can include solar water heating, photovoltaic (PV) power systems, clean-burning woodstoves, and fossil-fuel-fired heating equipment with pumps or fans that can operate on DC electricity from batteries or PV panels.
Passive survivability provides another motivation for creating green buildings. Advancing passive survivability will require a collaborative effort with the design community, code organizations, the insurance industry, and nonprofit organizations.
DISCUSSIONSReader-contributed comments related to Passive Survivability: A New Design Criterion for Buildings - EBN: 15:5. Comments are listed with newest at the top.
I'm curious what air quality you are concerned about considering that there are now approved, unvented propane and gas heaters, stoves, ranges and boilers. Are you saying that nuclear or natural gas produced electricity is better for the air quality than supposedly clean exhausts of propane or natural gas?
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More comments
Passive survivability discussions do not seem to cover fire safety and degradation due to moisture. These hazards, to me, have become indeed more important after looking at the consequence of our rather one-directional approach concentrating on energy and water conservation aspects alone.
In LEED rating system, these aspects must be considered as essential pre-qualification attributes.