Introduction
This post is a “work in progress”. It is not a scholarly article, insofar as it does not quote other scholarly articles. Mostly it is a dump of thoughts I have on the subject of resilience. It is intended only to stimulate conversation on the subject.
Questions to be addressed
- Resilience: what is it?
- What needs to be resilient?
- Are we resilient?
- How do we become resilient?
Resilience: what is it?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines resilience, in part, as: “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.”
This is a great definition if we are concerned with surviving environmental disasters. What we want to be able to do, is to survive changes in weather patterns that cause disasters that affect our home, our work, our municipal infrastructure, our ability to procure/sell goods and services, our provincial or federal infrastructure and our economy.
In essence, we want to be able to “roll with the punches”, dealing expeditiously and inexpensively with misfortune that befalls us or the people and things we care about. And we need to be able to do it over-and-over again, because these disasters are going to happen more frequently as climate change speeds up.
What needs to be resilient?
Well, for starters, we need to be personally resilient. We need to maintain our physical, mental and spiritual health as things change around us. We need to be able to survive, adapt and then thrive when disaster strikes and we need to pull everyone with us.
To do this, we need our municipal/provincial/federal and privately held utility infrastructure to be resilient. We depend on that infrastructure for transportation, communications, governmental services, banking, security, health care, power supply, water supply, sewage treatment and garbage removal,
We also need our homes and workplaces, cities and countries to be resilient.
Are we resilient?
In a word, No. Recent disasters have shown us that many of the systems we rely on are on the edge of breaking down. Hospital emergency room closures, increasing number of ambulance code-0 days (where no ambulances are available to attend to emergencies), Roads washed out, gas stations with gas but no power to pump the fuel, gas stations with power but no fuel, electricity grids that are huge and complex where one bad component can bring down half a continent, floods and wildfires that are impossible to control. We, as a developed nation, have been fortunate insofar as we have had the resources necessary to repair things and keep them limping along, but this may not always be the case. Other nations that were once rich are now living hand-to-mouth because they were subjected to one-too-many disasters and they were not paying attention to resilience.
How do we become resilient?
To become resilient, we need a multi-pronged approach that deals with the macro issues (reducing carbon emissions, for example) as well as the micro issues (making our homes more resilient, for example).
When looking at the macro issues, we need to consider a range of best practices that provide optimized levels of redundancy at a reasonable cost. But we have to make these moves toward better practices AT THE SAME TIME as we deal with increasingly emerging disasters and help our neighbours, family and fellow travellers cope with them as well. Not an easy task.
Distributed vs. Centralized
- Distributed generation means that energy does not have to be transported as far from source to use. This reduces costs.
- Distributed generation means that the overall system is more resilient because if one source of energy goes down, others can back-fill for it while it is being repaired.
- Distribution of heterogeneous power generation technologies means that a problem with one can be mitigating by one or more alternate sources.
- Centralized generation may provide better/cheaper reporting on fault areas for quicker problem resolution.
- Distributed generation does not imply that monitoring does not happen. It may imply that the complexity of monitoring is higher.
- Inspectors must be trained to understand “green” technology.
- Trade schools and apprenticeship programs must provide training in green technology.
Building code changes/enhancements
- Homes
- Electrical
- Net metering
- Power panels that have two “zones” – critical infrastructure and other
- Critical zone to include:
- Freezers and Fridges
- Furnace fans
- Sump pumps
- Hot water heater sparking unit (gas heaters)
- Critical zone to include:
- Power panels that can accept input from outside sources
- Solar
- Wind
- Generators (Natural gas, propane and other fossil fuels)
- UPS/Batteries
- Power panels that will isolate home from the grid when a the grid’s power is out to stop locally generated power from going back onto the grid and endangering power repair crews.
- Whole home spike and brownout protectors
- Whole home power “cleaners”
- Homes built to support EV automobile charging
- Use of conduit for electrical so that new or upgraded lines from the grid can be installed without digging
- Water/sewage
- Backflow protection (sewage)
- Pressure reduction valves (dealing with momentary high pressure on city side of connection)
- Whole home filtration (large particulates that gum up valves)
- Method for flushing hot water heaters to get rid of scale and grit buildup
- Use of multiple small water heaters in various parts of the house to reduce the amount of water that has to run before hot water is available
- Use of insulated pipes for water runs of more then x metres.
- Integration of grey-water systems and downspout rain capture for watering gardens
- Roofing
- Hurricane hangers for all roof members
- Shingles to be light colour to reflect heat
- Solar shingles rebates for installation on South facing surfaces
- Heating/cooling
- Geothermal or Air source heat pump
- Passive solar heating and shade-based cooling
- “Earthship”
- Telecom
- All outlets to be RJ45 allowing for either LAN or telephony connection
- All cables to be laid in conduit at least 18 inches into ground
- Wildfire protection
- Centralized sprinkler systems mounted on roof to stop flying embers
- Clearing buildings of adjacent shrubberies and trees.
- Light or white shingles
- Moving away from asphalt driveways to gravel, etc.
- Rain-gutter cleaning to remove flammable debris.
- Flooding protection
- Backflow preventers for sewage
- Automatic shutoff for city water flow
- Sump holes for sump pump installation
- No building in flood plains
- Ground elevation designed to optimize sandbagging
- Near water development using shoreline naturalization and natural stabilization techniques
- Porous driveway and patio materials
- Electrical
- Apartment buildings and Condos
- All roofs to be either solar voltaic or covered with gardens
- Buildings with more than ? units to have a clean water reservoir with sufficient water for all families for 3 days.
- Integration of greywater reservoirs for garden/lawn maintenance
- Power panels that can accept input from outside sources
- Solar
- Wind
- Generators
- Batteries
- Generator that will power elevators, common area heat pumps, and unit fridges and freezers
- All units to have access to compost and recycling
- Human scale building (6 floors or less – allowing for walk-up when required)
- Urban gardening allowed by default and integrated into designs
- Geothermal heat pumps for common areas or for distribution to all tenants
Fuel
- All service stations to have generators for fuel pumps
- Public electrical charging stations for automobiles and electronic devices
Water/sewage
- Location of reservoirs relative to neighbourhoods
- Backup reservoirs for each neighbourhood
- Sewage storage facility for cases when treatment plants have no power
- No building in flood plains
Transportation
- Rapid transit availability
- Bicycle and walking friendly neighbourhoods
- Traffic signals must be visible at night even when the power is out (reflective paint, etc.) so that people can identify intersections requiring “four-way-stop” protocols.
Local Amenities that need priority service
- Hospitals
- Fire and Police
- Grocery Stores
- Pharmacies
- Hardware/general stores
- Schools
Hydro
- Generation
- Distributed
- Hydro dams
- Solar
- Geothermal
- Wind
- Centralized
- Nuclear
- Distributed
- Transmission
- Distributed model to minimize transmission losses by using power nearest to where it is produced
- Underground to minimize disruption due to climate events
- Above ground to keep expenses low for long distance transmissions
- Storage
- Batteries
- Hydro reservoirs and pumps to move water UPSTREAM to reservoirs during times of high energy availability
- Liquid salt heat storage
- Hydrogen generation and storage for use in Ballard fuel cells
- Distributed storage and use whenever possible to minimize transmission costs and to provide redundancy
- Use of fly-wheels to provide constant clean power for critical infrastructure
Telecommunications
- Land lines to home or office
- Protection of infrastructure with battery backups and generators
- Constant automated monitoring of system looking for weaknesses with proactive maintenance and better reporting
- Internet
- Wireless telephony
- Wireless data
- Distribution stations to have both battery backup and backup generators
- Critical situation mobile data stations on mobile tethered balloons to provide cell services.
- Use of local radio stations to inform public how, when and where to receive services.
- Activism
- Building Codes
- Civic engagement
- Climate Change
- Communications
- Community Involvement
- Corruption
- Democratic Institutions
- Education
- Energy
- Energy Storage
- Environment
- Food Production
- Food Safety
- Food Security
- Genealogy
- Health
- History
- Human Interest
- Innovation
- Integrity
- Investment strategies
- Paddling
- Planning and Design
- Policy Development
- Poverty
- Privacy
- Recycling
- Regulation
- Reuse
- Rideau Experience
- Rideau Roundtable
- Social values
- Software support
- Solar Thermal
- Solar Voltaic
- Survey Methodology
- Technology
- Uncategorized
- Urban planning
- Waste Management
- Waste water management
- Water availability
- Water desalination