Planning « Askthefm’s Weblog

Posts filed under 'Planning'

Huge Earthquake Test Validates Performance Based Seismic Design

As someone who lives on a very active part of the Pacific Ring of Fire ( Southern California) the advances that are occurring in design to withstand this potential disaster are extremely exciting!

Yesterday in Japan some scientists tested this design process by subjecting a 6 story condominium structure to a 7.5 magnitude earthquake and the structure survived with little damage! The piece on NPR’s All Things Considered is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106611639.

Here is a video about the lab in Japan where the test took place. While not the video of the actual event it is very well done and present the topic with great clarity. Courtesy of National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080922-quake-video-ap.html)

The field has advanced to the point where annual conferences are being organized and learned papers being presented like at this recent conference (http://www.ctbuh.org/EventsReferencePage/090430_ASCEStructures/tabid/680/Default.aspx).

It is looking like the old rule about earthquake building code where it is only there to make the building stand up long enough for you to get out before it falls down a thing of the past.

As always I thank you for your time and interest. Please take the time to Digg, Stumble Upon or add to the other social network of your choice to help me spread the word about these issues. Please forward any questions or suggestions to: askthefm@gmail.com

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Add comment July 16, 2009

Looking at the Neighborhood around your location

Often we look only at our buildings or even campuses and wonder why we have problems or think we are prepared to the worst nature can throw at us. If we forget to look at the neighborhood and our surrounding areas we will probably be in for a nasty surprise.

Why am I writing about this now you ask? Well the American Lung Association just came out with it annual listing of the worst places to live due to air pollution (http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/18099) (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30476335/) and of course I live in in one of the worst! Now I already knew this but it brings it back into focus and it serves as a reminder of how we sometimes operate with blinders on.

One of the basic ideas on this subject is of course flooding or how soon will my area experience a flood that will damage or destroy my site? There are lots of resources that cover this and the one you most need to look at is the FEMA site (http://msc.fema.gov/). These maps rate the area you are in in the standard annual, 10 year and 100 year risk categories. However if you are in California there is a new type of flood risk you need to be concerned about, that which will occur due to global warming. As part of your building permit approvals you now have to take into account potential sea level rise when building near the coast. Here is a great resource to start with on this subject (http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=43.3251,-101.6015&z=13&m=7).

The next set of resources need to be used in conjunction with Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/).

First we have the FEMA maps overlay for Google Earth (https://hazards.fema.gov/femaportal/wps/portal/NFHLWMSkmzdownload).

Next we have three overlays that deal with real time and historic earthquake activity (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/virtualtour/global.php)

And to be really topical we even have one that maps the spread of the flu! (http://declanbutler.info/blog/?p=58) or (http://www.mapcruzin.com/swine-flu/)

I also have an overlay that shows various pollution causing entities such as power plants and the like but am unable at this moment to find the link. When I do I will put it in a follow up post. However here is on that shows maps of toxic releases reported to the EPA (http://www.mapcruzin.com/toxicrisk/index.htm).

All of this technology is nice but I also encourage you to get out and walk or drive around your neighborhood and note the names of those businesses that seem to have operations that might be at cross purposes to your mission.

As an example I was noticing and receiving complaints about the amounts of dust in our offices. This was easily answered by the fact of the asphalt plant and the concrete plant both with in 3 blocks of our location, not to mention the freeway interchange visible from our front door. All of these would be important to me if I were planning for an optimal location as I am the proud possessor of life long asthma. However it is also good to know if you have a fireworks factory next door when preparing your fire fighting plans!

Lastly this information will certainly affect you organizations insurance costs and may allow you to negotiate some cost savings as situations change. FEMA occasionally updates their flood maps and you may find yourself suddenly better off!

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2 comments May 3, 2009

Swine Flu – Time to dust off those disaster plans

It is beginning to look there might be a serious chance that we might be facing another true flue pandemic threat. This swine or Mexican flu depending on what country the news is coming from sounds pretty real from a threat perspective.

Often we concentrate on our physical assets when we create a disaster plan for our organization, forgetting that you can’t run a business without people!

It is important to have call in procedures distributed to your staff so that current and accurate information can be handed out. Also your Human Resources department should be reviewing medical leave procedures and sending out reminders in case of a general emergency.

It should also enforce as a good general practice, encouraging employees to stay home until they are well or at least non-contagious.

Here are a couple of web articles, one that gives some goo, green advice on how to reduce your overall risk from Supereco (http://www.supereco.com/news/2009/04/27/swine-flu-update-protect-yourself-naturally/) and an argument for stronger public heath systems from the NRDC (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/gsolomon/swine_flu_the_need_for_a_stron.html)

Stay safe and help your organization weather the possible crisis!

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Add comment April 27, 2009

Asking your Landlord to “Green” your space

It is an interesting problem that a landlord faces when a tenant asks about green upgrades for the commercial or residential they would like to rent. This is the first of several articles where I plan to discuss this problem from both ends.

Tonight we will pretend we are the landlord. The process of providing green upgrades to the space and general energy efficiency improvements can usually only be justified on a return on investment basis (ROI). As such to the landlord it is critically important that there be some cost savings to the building and maybe a premium to the rent that can be charges. The later is less likely in the current environment.

One way to help the ROI calculation is with the help of government incentives. Here is a handy and well thought out page that summarizes the current crop of these programs by location (http://www.dsireusa.org/index.cfm?&CurrentPageID=7&EE=1&RE=1). Also there are any number of fairly simple projects that have a ROI of less than 2 years, a winning number in most accountant’s books.

The other side of this problem is that the tenant either wants or must have in the case of government agencies some guarantee of a certain level of efficiency or compliance to another standard like LEED. There is a significant risk for the landlord in this case. In an ongoing series on the Green Real Estate Law Journal (http://www.greenrealestatelaw.com/2009/02/legal-risks-of-green-leases/) there is a fairly thorough explanation and assessment of these risk and issues. I would encourage all landlords contemplating the world of green leases to read this series and understand it. It would also be helpful for all potential tenants to read it as well to better understand the landlord’s concerns as well as being prepared in what you can negotiate away to get the deal done.

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2 comments February 19, 2009

Green Building Standard Approved

Well it appears that progress is being made on building codes and standards that will support greening the construction and the use of buildings.

ANSI (American National Standards Institute) has completed its standards set for green building for all residential construction. The story on Environmental Leader (http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/02/04/national-green-building-standard-approved-by-ansi/) goes into some detail.

Excerpt: “Key provisions of the standard include, construction of smaller homes to conserve resources; energy performance starting at 15 percent above the baseline requirements of the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code, use of low VOC materials and homeowner education on proper maintenance and operation to maintain a building’s green status throughout its life cycle.“

Also today via Green Building Law (http://www.greenbuildinglawblog.com/2009/02/articles/resources/resourcedepartment-of-energy-code-map/) the US Department of Energy has given us a map of the US giving the electrical building code standards by state. This could be very useful for advocacy and for those builders who work in multiple jurisdictions. The map can be found here: http://www.energycodes.gov/implement/state_codes/index.stm

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Add comment February 5, 2009

If you could predict an earthquake, should you?

I just finished reading a couple of very interesting articles in Disaster Recovery Journal. They are kind of a point, counterpoint on the subject of disaster prediction. Here they are considering earthquakes and what would be the ramifications of warning a major population center of an upcoming event.

The first article which appeared in the Fall 2008 issue (http://www.drj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2335&Itemid=419&ed=48) argues in favor of not warning because of the potential for panic, looting, civil unrest and a run on the local banks. It is a pretty scary scenario.

Excerpt: “In fact, an advance prediction of any major natural disaster like an earthquake will let loose another kind of man-made disaster that can actually cause more damage than the impending natural disaster. To understand how, just imagine any densely populated city in any country containing a few million citizens. Imagine a situation where some reliable agency predicts a guaranteed major quake that will hit the city in the next 24 hours, and blasts the warning through mails, text messages, radio, TV, public address system, etc.
Now imagine what will happen next.“

Now on the other or counterpoint side is the arguement that yes you should, as long as the predicition can be made accurately. (http://www.drj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2411&Itemid=419&ed=49)

This piece carefully rebuts all of the points in the previous article using the experiance of the US hurricane and tornado warning systems showing that warnings made have saved lives, property and have not resulted in any of the panic driven scenarios drawn up in the first article.

Excerpt: “Generally, the tornado and hurricane warning systems have cut death rates (deaths per thousand population) by more than 90 percent in the last 60 years!
Storm warnings aren’t just a matter of interest just to the public: B2B warnings of high-impact weather are an essential element of business continuity. On Feb. 5, 2008, I was involved in issuing a tornado warning to the Caterpillar plant in Oxford, Miss., allowing them to move more than 80 employees on-site at the time to shelter before the storm hit. The story of Caterpillar’s people rallying to restore production in less than two weeks is the story of a feature article in The Wall Street Journal of May 19, 2008. The fact the warning kept their people safe and ready to return immediately to work underpinned the recovery effort.

In my book manuscript, “Warnings – The Remarkable True Story of Science’s Battle to Tame the Weather,” I document the development of the storm warning system in the United States that protects us every day. Other geosciences can adapt what meteorologists have learned into more effective warnings for tsunamis and volcanoes and, when scientifically possible, earthquakes.

There is no reason, given sufficient accuracy, earthquake warnings should not be made public just like warnings of tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards. Let’s hope earthquake science progresses to the point we have that opportunity to save lives and property.“

I agree with the author in that warnings should absolutely be issued when they become accurate and I sincerely hope that they become so soon as I live in Southern California!

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1 comment January 21, 2009

New Web Tools to help you green up your building!

Tonight we have a couple of shiny new toys for those of you looking to green your buildings and companies.

The first is a site called GreenFormat.com (http://greenformat.com/). It is a mateials database that should be a great help to architects and contracotrs everywhere. I came across it in a story on Real Life Leed (http://www.reallifeleed.com/2009/01/csi-greenformat.html).

Excerpt: ” CSI made a wise choice in deciding not to try to define “green” in any way. Instead, they opted for an approach where they just provide information in an agnostic manner and leave you to your own conclusions. The reporting for each product is extensive… VERY extensive… perhaps even TOO extensive, which is saying something. You’ll find info about third party certifications, manufacturing and extraction locations, background info on the manufacturing process, shipping materials, product lifespans, buyback/recycling programs, and a host of other non-environmentally related testing info.“

The next is brought to you by the folks at the Environment Defense Fund and their tool is call the Innovation Exchange (http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagid=31186). The link takes you to the getting started section.

Excerpt: “If your company is just starting to address its environmental impact, welcome. You can make satisfying progress through near-term changes, and we encourage you to do that.

But you’ll see the biggest environmental and financial gains in the long term by incorporating environmental opportunities into your overall business strategy.

Regardless of the type, size or location of your company, here are five fundamental steps you can take to understand your company’s biggest environmental opportunities, then set ambitious yet achievable goals across your entire organization.“

Enjoy and I hope that this trend continues as it is often the hardest part of greening a poject is to choose the materials that are to go into it.

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Add comment January 12, 2009

Cities heading in the right direction toward carbon neutrality!

I ran across an interesting pair of articles tonight showing that cities across the USA are really getting into the act on minimizing climate change and going even carbon neutral.

First off we have Atlantic City, not usually known for its frugal ways is installing what will be the largest roof mount solar array in the USA on the roof of its convention center. The story is here at Greenbang.com (http://www.greenbang.com/6445/gambling-city-convention-center-bets-on-solar-power/) goes into more detail.

Excerpt: “The Atlantic City Convention Center has begun installing what officials say will be the “largest single-roof-mounted solar array in the United States.” When completed, some 290,000 square feet (26,942 square meters) of solar panels will cover about two-thirds of the structure’s rooftop, generating 2.36 megawatts of electricity.“

However the City of Atlanta, Georgia is rasing the bar even further by creating an area in the city that is actually carbon neutral. The story via environmentalleader.com (http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/11/18/atlanta-establishes-first-carbon-neutral-zone-in-the-us/) talks about these 18 businesses and what they are doing to help us all save the planet.

Excerpt: “Verus Carbon Neutral and Antje Kingma, founder of Eco-Bella, say they have established the first “Carbon Neutral Zone” in the U.S. The zone – a community of 18 businesses in the Virginia Highland shopping district in Atlanta – completed carbon footprint audits and volunteered to purchase the required offsets to create a carbon neutral zone.“

Pretty awesome stuff it you ask me and I look forward to more cities getting on this bandwagon. Cities are nothing if not competitive with each other for this type of bragging rights and I am certainly going to push my local officials to do their part.

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Add comment November 18, 2008

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations – Should you install one?

Here in California we are trying to be the “greenest” of states and to that end one of the movements a foot is the pushing of electric cars either of the hybrid or plug in variety. There are already by current count 1000 charging stations throughout the state with more being added.

Well this week I got a request to install a charging station for an employee at the non-profit I work for and was taken by surprise actually. Probably because I was presented with this request after the employee in question had already purchased the vehicle and I found out that she had been draping an extension cord our of a second story window for several days to fulfill this need.

In doing some research on the subject I find that there is already quite a bit of exisitng infrastructure out there with the required building code in place (http://greenbuildings.santa-monica.org/pdf/es8.pdf) at least in Santa Monica anyway. There is also an exisitng program by the California Air Resources Board (CARB): http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/factsheets/evinformation.pdf

Recently the City of San Jose has teamed up with a green technology start up, Coulomb Technologies (http://www.coulombtech.com/) to install a network of curside charging stations. An article on CNET.COM has some of the details: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9996353-54.html

Excerpt: “The company’s products include 110-volt outlets that can be outfitted in public and mounted on poles, such as streetlights.

Coulomb is designing ChargePoint Network stations to scale to the national level, with a projected need of two stations per car, as electricity-powered vehicles become popular. Each Smartlet station would cost between $1,000 and $2,000 for a business or municipality to set up.“

This is the first place I was able to find a potential cost for my employee’s request.

The current indication is that all of the charging stations found in California are free to use, except that they are often located in private garages such as those attached to hotels, convention centers and the like where a charge for parking applies.

There are faily comprehensive lists and maps to guide users of these cars to sites where they can recharge their cars and a couple can be found here: http://www.hondaev.org/chg.html and here: http://www.evchargernews.com/.

If you are interested in providing one of these charging stations there is a company called Clean Fuel Connections who can be reached at (888) 890-4638 or http://www.cleanfuelconnection.com/

While I am not sure what I am going to do in my own case I am intrigued by the possibilities presented and as I do more research I will update this topic.

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1 comment October 26, 2008

Green Building Code Stalled!

It was reported this week that ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers http://www.ashrae.org/) has pulled the plug on standard 189 committee. Apparently this is in response to several trade associations applying pressure to halt the work. There are 2 different posts on Buildinggreen.com (http://www.buildinggreen.com/live/index.cfm/2008/10/17/Green-building-code-standard-committee-disbanded):

Excerpt: “From the article: “Speaking off the record, multiple sources reported signs that ASHRAE had been influenced by various trade associations, which were either unsupportive of ASHRAE’s involvement in a green building standard as an engineering association, or had objections to basic premises of the standard, such as its approach to various building materials.”“

The original post and full story can be found here: http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2008/10/17/Uncertain-Future-for-ASHRAE-Standard-189/

Even though there has been a comment posted on the first post stating that the committee is being reconstituted with additional members I am leery of the direction this is taking. I would assume that there would be significant disagreements in any such process, but I feel that this is a direction that may ultimately weaken the overall standard, making it far less effective.

This standard is especially needed in the face of growing desire by local and state regulatory agencies to place green building codes in force. On the site Greenbuildinglawupdate.com (http://www.greenbuildinglawupdate.com/) there is ongoing discussion about the various local pressures being placed on the construction of new buildings and how this patchwork of regulation is making it much more difficult to get green buildings permitted and built.

Lets hope that this is all straightened out soon and the committee is back on track before Christmas!

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Add comment October 19, 2008

Askthefm’s Weblog

Posts filed under 'Planning'

Huge Earthquake Test Validates Performance Based Seismic Design

Looking at the Neighborhood around your location

Swine Flu – Time to dust off those disaster plans

Asking your Landlord to “Green” your space

Green Building Standard Approved

If you could predict an earthquake, should you?

New Web Tools to help you green up your building!

Cities heading in the right direction toward carbon neutrality!

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations – Should you install one?

Green Building Code Stalled!

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