Passive Survivability is the idea of building homes, apartment buildings, schools, fire and police stations and other public buildings with extended power/fuel outages and natural and human disasters in mind. These are buildings that stay at 50-55º F without heating or cooling, that may even provide their own water.
This idea is now beginning to appeal to the insurance industry and gradually working its way into building codes. New Orleans' experience in Katrina is, again, the wake up call [for those ready to listen]. Alex Wilson of Environmental Building News and Building Green is the leading theorist of the concept and was the chair of a panel on the topic at Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s (NESEA) Building Energy 08 conference at Seaport World trade Center in Boston on March 12, 2008.
Joel Gordes - Environmental Energy Solutions
Passive survivability and distributed generation as opposed to decentralized generation. The overall value proposition is raised by adding "passive survivability" to green building design. Cooling load avoidance, day lighting, natural ventilation - rainwater collection - waterless toilets... these are all possibilities. Regional diversity - southern dog-trot home or NE Cape Cod cottage - are other tools, showing that history and the vernacular has already thought through the possibilities.
Candidates for Passive Survivability include hospitals, nursing homes, police, fire... In 1998 ice storm, one insurance company paid customers $600 for portable generators to avoid further losses they might have to pay out. [Most of the suffering in ice storms comes from the lack of heat because most furnaces require electricity to work. The electronic ignition systems, fans, and pumps are not usually maximized for energy efficiency either.] New Orleans/Katrina was a wake up call for both climate change and passive survivability. Climate Change is now a national security issue - environmental refugees from natural disasters for example. Grid is vulnerable not just to ice storms and crows (crows caused a grid failure in CT once by flying into a transformer and then the same thing happened again 25 years later) but possible cyber attacks too.
Solutions:
Distributed generation in a decentralized grid
Energy efficiency is #1 tactic
Distributed generation is not just renewable [and offers opportunities for cogeneration]
Brittle Power (1982) is a classic on decentralized distributed generation [still not part of policy]
Energy storage should be built-in
LInk between buildings and transport - hybrid vehicles
EPRI's call for a smart grid (Boulder, CO is becoming the first US smart grid town)
Better back-up generation - 8/14/03 study showed 43% failure in diesel generators. PV on gas stations in Japan after Kobe earthquake (with storage unlike BP's solar gas stations in the US).
http://buildingenergy.nesea.org/... [pdf alert]
Chris Schaffner - Green Engineer
Passive survivability = passive sustainability
short term vs long term
the ability of a building to operate on its own with a disruption of power and/or water
"Livable refuges"
Breathable air, visibility, can you exit, water, bathroom, freeze, overheat, move around in building, food...?
Basics: operable windows, no reliance on elevators
conservation first - reduce heat loss/gain - passive heating and cooling
back up generators - distributed generation - renewables (with non-grid storage)
connection to outdoors, manual controls, low intake/high exhaust, day lighting, and natural ventilation, reflective ceilings and walls
5x height = depth of room is a good rule of thumb for air quality and day lighting; narrow footprint, big operable windows, east-west orientation. Passive solar 101 is design for passive survivability
need to be included in building codes
local food production
Water: rainwater harvesting, greywater, xeroscaping, waste process [Eco Machines]
Is sprawl more survivable than density?
Talk to your clients
Bulgaria - people's support first to redesign their national energy system
Diesel fuel goes "bad" when stored over time (there are additives that can help), generators failed mostly because of running out of fuel, preventative maintenance
Trade-off between natural ventilation and fire prevention (one difficulty in getting Passive Survivability into building codes)
http://buildingenergy.nesea.org/... [pdf alert]
Alex Wilson of Green Resources Institute is integrating concepts into building codes
The term "Passive Survivability" came out of Katrina experience and New Orleans building codes may include improvements [Dutch codes already far ahead?]
Alex Wilson has articles on pass surv at Environmental Building News website
http://www.buildinggreen.com/...
http://www.buildinggreen.com/...
This is not only an American trend. The Transition Town movement in the UK is holding a Building Resilience conference in September 2008. It is also not just an architectural trend. John Robb and other Fourth Generation Warfare theorists are also looking closely at the concept of resilience in relation to these uncertain times.
Previous entries from Building Energy 08
Martha, Heather, Joyce
The Power of Zero
Passive Survivability/National and Climate Security: Building Energy 2007