By Alex Wilson
For the past seven years—ever since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast—I have devoted considerable time to the related ideas of resilience and passive survivability. I have increasingly come to believe that resilience can become a leading driver of sustainability, and I’m thrilled that BuildingGreen has helped launch the nonprofit Resilient Design Institute to advance these ideas.
Resilience is the ability to bounce back after a disturbance or interruption. By emphasizing the
life-safety benefits of creating homes and communities that can maintain safe, livable conditions during extended power outages or interruptions in heating fuels or gasoline shortages, we may be more successful at convincing mainstream designers, builders, consumers—and even code writers—to embrace the sort of energy-efficient design and land-use planning strategies that are at the heart of green building.
Initially, I referred to this issue as
passive survivability, which I first wrote about in a
December 2005 editorial. But I have more recently concluded that
resilience and
resilient design are far better, more positive terms to use in conveying these ideas (see the March 2012
EBN feature article, “
Resilient Design: Smarter Building for a Turbulent Future”). Resilient design goes beyond buildings and planning to address agriculture and local food systems, ecological restoration, and even economic systems.
The Resilient Design Institute (RDI) is a solutions-based organization that will offer practical guidance for making our buildings, communities, and systems more resilient in the face of global climate change, with its more intense storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires. We will produce fact sheets, handbooks, videos, and other educational resources on resilient design. We will lead in-depth roundtable discussions and retreats on such issues as integrating resilience into building codes and redefining emergency preparedness. And we hope to develop methodologies for assessing the resilience of municipalities.
While RDI has its origins in BuildingGreen, it will delve into issues that aren’t directly building-related, and as a nonprofit it can benefit from donations, foundation grants, and sponsorships. (You’ll find a “donate” button on the website.) I am particularly interested in reaching out to the insurance industry, which should be all over the issue of resilience. If you work in or have connections to the insurance industry, let me know!
Please visit
www.ResilientDesign.org and pass along any feedback you might have, along with suggestions on direction, fundraising, case studies of resilient systems, and so forth. Send those suggestions to
alex@resilientdesign.org.
While I look forward to continuing my role as executive editor of
Environmental Building News and
GreenSpec, and leading various new projects at the company, I’ll also be devoting a portion of my time to RDI. The two organizations will retain a close working relationship that should be mutually beneficial—and should help speed the transition to a more sustainable future.
October 1, 2012
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Trying to fly out of Hartford to speak on resilience
Posted by Alex Wilson on Oct 29, 2012, 09:33 AMThe irony is not lost on me as I'm sitting at the Hartford airport hoping that the last flight out of Hartford today will actually make it out--so that I can give the keynote presentation at the Sustainable Communities Workshop in Sarasota, Florida tomorrow morning. Except for this gate, the airport is largely deserted.