Resiliency

Beyond Code: Resilient Zoning, Design Guidelines, and Specs

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM ET

AIA Credits: 1.5 AIA LUs/HSW
HSW Credits: 1.5 AIA LUs/HSW

Speaker(s)

Tom Chase, LEED BD+C + Homes, CPHC, MVP

Senior Project Manager
New Ecology, Inc.
Boston, Massachusetts
Bella Purdy

Climate Resiliency Planner
Kleinfelder
Boston, MA
Matthew Littell, LEED AP

Principal
Utile
Boston, MA
Jeff Geisinger, AIA, CPHC, LEED AP

Director of Sustainable Design
Utile
Boston, MA

The session will explore how leading municipalities and state agencies are integrating resilience in their zoning, design guidelines, and standard specifications to address climate change risks for buildings, their occupants, and neighborhoods. A panel of speakers, led by a moderator, will present on the following case examples: City of Cambridge - Cool Factor, a crediting approach to development regulations that encourages strategies to reduce urban heat islands; City of Boston - Coastal Flood Resilience Design Guidelines, a guide for designing new construction and building retrofits to be resilient to future sea level rise and coastal flooding; MA Department of Housing and Community Development - Resilience Updates to Standard Specifications, standards for incorporating resiliency measures for extreme heat and flooding into public housing design, operations, and maintenance.

Learning Objectives:

Identify and describe the strengths and limitations of zoning, design guidelines, and standard specifications as tools for integrating climate change resilience in building design, operations, and maintenance.
Compare and contrast form-based zoning and performance-based zoning as regulatory tools for requiring buildings to meet more stringent climate change resilience standards.
Apply new construction and retrofit design strategies at the site and building scale to increase resilience to coastal flooding impacts from sea level rise and storm surge.
Apply design strategies at the site and building scale to reduce urban heat island impacts, increase energy resilience, and improve public health and quality of life.