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Constructing a Resilient Future for New York State’s Buildings
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CONSTRUCTING A RESILIENT FUTURE FOR NEW YORK STATE’S BUILDINGS
by Nicholas Rajkovich, PhD, AIA, State University of New York at Buffalo
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), New York State is home to more than five million buildings, containing approximately 14 billion square feet of space and collectively valued at more than 2.3 trillion dollars. What is impossible to quantify is this portfolio’s role in the livelihoods of New Yorkers across the state. And yet, virtually all buildings have been designed and built to withstand climate conditions that no longer exist, based on data that looks at historical trends rather than climate projections. Without retrofits and modification, the building stock is not ready for climate change and the severe, dangerous, and extreme weather that will bring a multitude of climate hazards damaging to the built environment—heat waves, heavy precipitation, increased coastal and riverine flooding, and heavier lake effect snow—to name just a few. To prepare, we need to understand the data, details, and demands of climate change impacts on New York State and how it will affect our built environment. By understanding the hazards’ what, when, and where, we can better prepare, plan, and advocate for more resilient buildings. The future of buildings needs to involve mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to changes in the climate, and creating resilient buildings. In the best case, solutions synergistically address all three “ To prepare, we need to understand the data, details, and demands of climate change impacts on New York State and how it will affect our built environment. ”
areas. For example, well-designed, energy efficient buildings have lower associated emissions (mitigation), provide greater comfort and indoor air quality (adaptation), and increase passive survivability (resilience). Long-term investments to help make buildings more climate resilient should be scaled and timed to meet projected hazards over the next century. At the same time, these investments should only apply to buildings that will still be standing and usable when the climate change impacts occur, so determining the feasible useful life of a building given changing climate parameters is becoming increasingly important. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is leading an effort to provide important data and fill in gaps in our understanding of climate impacts
Photo credit: Dena Krichinsky Buildings in urban and rural areas of New York State are likely to experience the impacts of a changing climate. Photo credit: NYSERDA
on New York State. NYSERDA has convened a diverse group of leaders from all regions of the state; all levels of government, including tribal nations; the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and community advocates; and academia and other research organizations to author a statewide climate impacts assessment. The assessment will document how climate change is affecting and will continue to shape every industry, ecosystem, community, and region of the state. When completed, the document will be a powerful tool for decision makers, including architects, engineers, developers, planners, and others in our industry, to make climate-smart decisions to prepare our buildings for the climate of tomorrow. The climate assessment that is underway is drawing on the latest data and modeling to develop a science-based evaluation of observed and projected climate impacts on the state. The final research will provide an accurate, scientific understanding of probable climate change-related impacts, and associated outreach products will be developed to foster informed decisions around climate resiliency, preparedness, and environmental disaster response and recovery. The assessment’s leaders will consider different geographic needs and concerns of underserved communities—including those in urban and rural areas, those on tribal lands, and those disproportionately impacted today and in the future. The Assessment is scheduled for completion by the Spring of 2023, and its findings will be released in languages, formats, and topics that are accessible to and resonate with New York’s decisionmakers, practitioners, and diverse communities across the state. In addition to defining climate impacts and explaining their threat to the built environment, the assessment will highlight case studies of innovators and communities in New York already working on climate-smart solutions that not only build resiliency but also serve community needs. For example, in Binghamton, Our Lady of Lourdes Memorial Hospital is a 197-bed community hospital providing emergency and surgery services, cancer treatment, and outpatient care and is located on the Susquehanna River within the designated 100-year floodplain. To avoid impacts from flooding, such as occurred in 2006 when the earthen berm separating the hospital from the Susquehanna was overtopped by rising flood waters causing $20 million in damages and required a full evacuation, the hospital undertook extensive adaptation and mitigation planning. The final plan included building a 1,365-foot-long concrete T-wall at the 500-year floodplain elevation that surrounded the facility on the east, west, and south side of the property. The project also included 11 automatic floodgates that can be operated electronically and manually, interior drainage and pumping stations, relocation of essential utilities, and the development of an operations and maintenance plan for the new system. In September 2011, only a few months after completion of the project, Tropical Storm Lee brought heavy precipitation that overtopped the Susquehanna River’s banks. The flood waters exceeded the previous record of 25 feet, but the hospital was able to remain fully operational for the duration of the flood. While over 2,000 buildings in Binghamton were damaged, the hospital was able to remain open , saving hundreds of lives and millions of dollars. Another example is in Breezy Point, Queens, where after Superstorm Sandy, Illya Azaroff, FAIA, Director of Design, Resilience, and Regenerative Strategies at +LAB Architect PLLC, designed a home to higher standards as a “hurricane strong” home. This building combined the resiliency principles of the national #HurricaneStrong initiative with international passive house standards. The home is designed so that it can be a saferoom in the event of a disaster with hardy materials and a renewable energy system that allows the home to support itself without access to the grid. The structure is lifted 15-feet from the base flood elevation with an additional 3-feet for projected water level rise on a reinforced concrete foundation. Stainless steel dual-action flood vents allow flood water to enter and exit the foundation to prevent structural damage from hydrostatic pressure. While the materials used are strong, they do not look out of place in the community as the use of “relatable materials” was important to have the house blend in with the surrounding context. The new hurricane-strong home was only 9-10 percent
more expensive to build than a typical home, but with energy, maintenance, and insurance savings the upgrades can pay back in 8-10 years. Innovative approaches such as these show not just what is possible but also what is imperative if we are to protect and sustain the state’s building stock. We cannot turn away from the challenge: homes and structures across New York State are facing significant risk from a changing climate. The NYS Climate Impacts Assessment will help provide the data and analysis to help make the best decisions to preserve and stabilize New York’s most vulnerable communities and ensure that our state will be able to adapt to and thrive in the face of a changing climate. l
To learn more about the assessment, visit https://nysclimateimpacts.org/ and stay tuned for updates on the assessment Twitter page, @NYSClimate, and on LinkedIn by following NYSERDA. Nicholas B. Rajkovich is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo (UB). His work at UB focuses on the intersection among climate change, energy efficiency, and community development. Nicholas is currently the buildings sector co-chair for the New York State Climate Impacts Assessment, examining how the built environment of the Northeastern U.S. will need to adapt to climate change. He has also supported organizations like the American Institute of Architects and the U.S. Green Building Council as they incorporate resilience into their programs. He is a licensed architect, has a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan, a Master of Architecture from the University of Oregon, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University.
cove.tool, the automated building performance modeling platform, has been making waves in the AEC industry - transforming the typical architectural workflow and democratizing high-performance building design. The company’s robust suite of products empowers users to quickly create multiple iterations of their building in the early stages of their project, enhancing cross-team collaboration between architects, engineers, contractors, and clients through automation and data-driven design. In addition to speed and collaboration, the platform’s ease of use can equip any novice architect to perform carbon studies, analysis for 2D/3D design, and HVAC sizing and selection at any design stage. Sandeep Ahuja and Patrick Chopson founded cove.tool in 2017 after leaving their consulting practice, Pattern r+d, to focus on exploring new ways to help architects, mechanical engineers, and contractors adopt sustainable design practices. With the help of Patrick’s brother, cove.tool co-founder Daniel Chopson, the team created their first version of the software. At that time, architecture firms had few resources available to make their projects competitive while focusing on hitting their performance targets. While many large firms had inhouse analysis teams, many organizations were limited by the number of projects they could take on per year or lacked the necessary consultancy budget. Resultingly, the cove.tool team set its sights on helping firms run analysis in-house to reduce the operating and construction costs of their designs. We see this in the naming of the software, cove.tool, because of its ability to optimize for cost against energy across projects (cost vs. energy, i.e., cove). cove.tool’s mission is to fight climate change by empowering the AEC industry to streamline building performance analysis. With many architecture firms pledging to develop actionable climate strategy via the AIA 2030 Commitment, the company designed the software to generate the minimum amount of information required to set up and report a project to the 2030 Design Data Exchange (DDx). Once signatories have agreed to the commitment, they can report their data directly from cove. tool to the DDx to track progress toward their commitment goals by measuring their projects against industry sustainability averages. Inputs include calculating the baseline and predicted Energy Use Intensity (EUI), Lighting Power Density (LPD), Renewable Energy (PV), and Embodied Carbon (kgCO2e). These values demonstrate where a building falls on the performance spectrum for Energy Use and Carbon Reduction. Buildings are responsible for nearly 40% of all carbon emissions, but today, embodied carbon studies are often inaccessible to the average design team. Earlier this year, cove. tool announced the development of a new embodied carbon feature, which will allow architects and engineers to capture the total embodied carbon of their project in the product stage. The tool taps directly into the EC3 database, enabling organizations to investigate building materials and their carbon footprint quickly and easily. It delivers valuable insights for early decision-makers by providing automated estimates of structural quantities. This offers them a holistic look at the project’s carbon profile, comparing embodied carbon with operational carbon to make critical project decisions. The feature is anticipated to launch later this year. Climate change is one of the most significant threats to our quality of life. The observable effects of climate change on the environment, including loss of glacier ice and intense heat waves, have left researchers fearful about the future of our planet. By working towards strategies to lessen the carbon output of the built environment, architects and engineers have the potential to significantly mitigate the effects of climate change. cove.tool CEO Sandeep Ahuja announced at the Collision Conference in Toronto that cove.tool is responsible for helping architects offset 33.7 Million Tonnes of Carbon, which is equivalent to 83,650,327,391 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle. Today, cove.tool has more than 19,000 users worldwide, all of whom are committed to making sustainability a part of their practice. Many of these firms, who previously relied on consultants, can now perform various complex analyses independently. The product suite makes building performance analysis more accessible, allowing many users to leverage their findings to create sustainability-first buildings without sacrificing the aesthetic of the building.
