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Resilience

NYC Flooding

Learning Objectives

  • Recognize the connection between resilience and sustainability.
  • Breakdown approaches to resilience.
  • Communicate why resilience is necessary.

Agenda

  1. Activity - Town Hall Meeting
  2. Discuss connection between resilience and sustainability
  3. Assign Resilience Op-Ed
  4. Assign Videos to watch for Systems Thinking

Town Hall Meeting

Scenario: Your community, Southface, GA is considering upgrading their local sustainability measures. Specifically, the community is looking into upgrading the requirements for the following:

  • Require that all new appliances (refrigerator, washer, dryer, dishwasher, hot water heater) be Energy Star compliant.
  • Require that all new residential roof covering materials be impact (hail) resistant (Class 4) per UL 2218 or FM 4473 test standards.
  • Require multi-family dwellings to include the following:
    • Fire sprinklers conforming to National Fire Protection Association Standard 13 – Installation of Fire Sprinklers, resulting in additional fire sprinkler protection installed in concealed spaces such as open-truss floor assemblies and attics constructed of combustible materials. This reduces the possibility of fires spreading between units, and from floor to floor.
    • Provide 1-hour non-combustible internal fire barriers (walls, shafts around floor openings and horizontal floor systems) to establish multiple fire area compartments and restrict the spread of fire between floors of multi-story buildings
    • Provide 2-hour non-combustible fire walls to enclose fire areas for larger buildings
  • Installing an incentive program for homeowners where those who use less than 12,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year will receive a rebate of $0.05/kilowatt-hour for each kilowatt-hour less than 12,000.

Community hearings are scheduled and stakeholder groups are preparing to present their cases for supporting or opposing these changes. You will be assigned to groups representing different stakeholder interests to develop recommendations on these new sustainability measures.  Consider the potential impacts and stakeholder questions identified below in the preparation of your positions.

Handout Links to an external site.

Resilience and Sustainability

  1. What is the relationship between resilience and sustainability? Write down a response (5min)
  2. In groups discuss your responses (5-8min)
  3. Draw your response (10 minutes)
  4. Present (10 minutes)

Assignment

  1. Begin working on your resilience op-ed. To help you develop an idea for your op-ed start by reading example strategies from 100 Resilient Cities Links to an external site..
  2. Find your video here - Assigned videos from Complexity Theory Course Links to an external site.. Watch your systems thinking video and google as much as you can to learn about that topic. Be prepared to teach classmates about your topic next class. 

References