Planning Infrastructure to Sustain America: Next Generation Concepts to Guide the Community, Design and Infrastructure Professions
This report has been prepared by PERSI’s Task Committee on Planning for Sustainable Infrastructure, based in part on PERSI’s June 25, 2009, Workshop on Planning for Sustainable Infrastructure.
As far as available volunteer efforts permitted, it addresses the objectives of the task committee to assess current knowledge and practice for planning the integration of infrastructure systems for sustainable communities and recommending agendas for:
- Improvements of practices to exploit available knowledge
- Research to address important gaps in knowledge
- Education of infrastructure professionals
The report does not fully address the task committee’s objectives, but is a step toward achieving them. The task committee invites additional contributions to the report and comments for strengthening it which can lead to future versions more fully responsive to our objectives.
View the REPORT
Please send your comments/contributions, preferably as a WORD file using track changes, to: information@persi.us.
National Academy of Environmental Design
The National Academy of Environmental Design (www.naedonline.org) was incorporated in 2009 and held research symposia on sustainable materials, sustainable sites, and water. PERSI participating organizations AIA, APA, ASHRAE. ASID. ASLA. CNU and USGBC are members of the NAED Coalition.
Environmental design addresses the impact of the built environment on individuals and the natural world and creates a wide range of interventions informed by human and environmental systems. Environmental design comprises architects, planners, landscape architects, interior designers, preservationists, building technology specialists, and researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Their shared body of knowledge and professional skills affect communities, landscapes, buildings, products, and the individuals who occupy and use them.
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Geomatics for Sustainability
PERSI's Task Committee on Geomatics made an excellent presentation of its work at the ASCE National Conference on October 30, 2009. Carolyn Merry, chair of the task committee and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science at Ohio State described the work of the task committee, Milo Robinson described the relevant work of the Federal Geographic Data Committee, Terry Bennett of Autodesk showed how geomatics and BIM support sustainable infrastructure, and Jeff Harrison of the Carbon Project described how the US-Canada pipeline is automatically accessing geomatics data.
Links to their presentations are given below:
Jeff Harrison - Harrison's presentation illustrates how geomatic data standards allow rapid, accurate and secure access to key information for the planning and design of a major US-Canada pipeline.
The PERSI Task Committee on Geomatics has issued a report on sources of geomatic information for infrastructure- a copy is available for download at: Geomatics for Sustainability.
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Carbon Management
The Engineering Founder Societies’ Carbon Management Project (http://www.aiche.org/FSCarbonMgmt/index.aspx) goal is to assure that engineering communities, educators, the general public, and public policy makers have the best-available information, analysis, sound engineering advice and recommendations regarding the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions which contribute to climate change.
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Engineering Solutions for Sustainability: Materials
and Resources (ESS:M&R), An International Workshop
The workshop on July 22-24, 2009, at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland involved a cross-disciplinary team discussing how engineering can best help address societal challenges in the areas of energy, recycling, transportation, housing, food and water, and health. The event was led by the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, co-sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and supported by a grant from the United Engineering Foundation. The program is given at www.spe.org/aime; a report soon will be available.
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ASCE Task Committee on Sustainable Design
The Board of Direction of the American Society of Civil Engineers has made sustainability a key strategic issue and established a Task Committee on Sustainable Design to work with the various ASCE units and institutes to raise awareness and increase action regarding issues and opportunities for advancing the principles of sustainable development in civil infrastructure. For progress of the task committee see http://www.asce-susdev.org/.
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Planning for Sustainable Infrastructure
PERSI’s Task Committee on Planning for Sustainable Infrastructure held a workshop at ASCE Headquarters in Reston, VA on June 25, 2009, to assess knowledge and practice for planning the integration of infrastructure systems for communities, cities and regions, and recommend agendas for implementation of best practices, improvement of practices, research and education. A report based on the workshop is being prepared.
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High Performance Building Congressional Caucus Coalition
A Briefing on Sustainable Infrastructure was presented to the High Performance Building Congressional Caucus Coalition by PERSI on March 17, 2009. For the program announcement,
click here. Information on the coalition and other presentations is available at <http://www.hpbccc.org/events.php>
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ASCE 2009 Report Card
ASCE has announced its 2009 Report Card for America's Infrastructure. Because decades of underfunding and inattention have endangered our nation's infrastructure, $2.2 trillion in repairs and upgrades is needed over the next five years to meet adequate conditions. That's the conclusion of ASCE's new 2009 Report Card for America's Infrastructure, which assigns an overall grade of D to the nation as well as individual grades in 15 infrastructure categories. Since ASCE's last assessment in 2005, there has been little change in the condition of America's roads, bridges, drinking water systems, and other public works.
One of ASCE's five key solutions is to Promote Sustainability and Resilience.
For more information, see http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/.
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Sustainable Building Alliance
The Sustainable Building Alliance is a non-profit, non-partisan international network of technical assessment organizations, national building research centres and technical assessment organizations that is intended to accelerate the international adoption of Sustainable Building practices through the promotion of shared methods of building performance assessment and rating. Its website is www.sballiance.org.
The SB Alliance initiative is supported by the UNESCO Chair for sustainable buildings, the UNEP sustainable building and construction initiative UNEP-SBCI and the World Federation of Technical Assessment Organizations WFTAO. It's Board of directors is currently compose of representatives from the following organizations: BRE (UK); FCAV (Brazil), CSTB (France), DGNB (Germany), ITC-CNR (Italy), VTT (Finland).
Its technical working group currently represents 24 countries from all over the world and has links with ISO TC59 SC17, CEN TC 350 and FIDIC.
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International Standards Effort For Sustainable Infrastructure
The International Standards Organization (ISO), Technical Committee 59 Building Construction, Subcommittee 17 Sustainability in Building Construction, has established Working Group 5 Sustainability in Infrastructure. Its activities are described in the linked presentation given in Australia in September 2008. This international activity appears very complementary to PERSI.
For a copy of the presentation, follow the link provided:ISO-TC59-SC17-WG5.
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The Sustainable Sites Initiative
The Sustainable Sites Initiative is an interdisciplinary effort by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the United States Botanic Garden to create voluntary national guidelines and performance benchmarks for sustainable land design, construction and maintenance practices. For more information, visit the link provided: http://www.sustainablesites.org/
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Federal R&D Agenda for Net-Zero Energy, High-Performance
Green Buildings
This interagency report responds to Section 913 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The report identifies the research and development needed to make buildings more efficient and to better use energy, water, material and other natural resources.
The report can be downloaded at Federal R&D Report.
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Metrics and Tools for Tall and Green Buildings
NIST Metrics and Tools for Tall and Green Buildings by Sunder, Lippiatt and Helgeson describes the progress of PERSI's Task Committee on Metrics for Sustainability.
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National Green Building Research Agenda
The USGBC National Green Building Research Agenda has been published:
National Green Building Research Agenda.
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Residential Remodeling Guidelines
ASID and USGBC are working on Residential Remodeling Guidelines:
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Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Technology & Management
The Arizona State University offers an interdisciplinary program that helps managers, engineers, and organizations meet the business and engineering imperatives of sustainable development in a globalizing and increasingly competitive economy. Learn more.
