ASHRAE Journal - April 2021 - 33

COLUMN ENGINEER'S NOTEBOOK

demonstrate how the requirements
FIGURE 1 Graphical representation of the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. See https://www.un.org/
under this code directly support some sustainabledevelopment/. (Disclaimer: the content of this publication has not been approved by the United Nations and
does not reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or Member States.)
of the tangible technical outcomes of
the U.N. SDG framework.
In addition to the areas of tangible
support, I would also argue that
the activities of the architecturalengineering-construction industry
will need to address an intangible
aspiration within SDG 9, Industry,
Innovation, and Infrastructure, speciﬁcally Target 9.4:
" By 2030, upgrade infrastructure
and retroﬁt industries to make them
sustainable, with increased resourceuse efﬁciency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally
sound technologies and industrial
recovery paradigm of resilience from the National
processes.... "
Academy of Sciences, namely " the ability to prepare and
MEP engineers will be at the forefront of addressing
plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully
resource efﬁciency to reduce carbon emissions in all
adapt to adverse events. " 9
buildings, new and existing. Improvements to working
Three other documents adopt a pre-disaster view of
efﬁciencies in equipment, more widespread and intelsocial resilience, by assessing the aspects of energy use
ligent use of control technologies, greater sensitivity to
and indoor environment that are typically within the
the source of materials, and planning for electriﬁcation
remit of building design professionals.10 - 12
are in the immediate future. In the U.N. SDGs, we see
A designer's sensitivity to energy poverty (i.e., energy
the world's social needs calling for the creativity of its
cost's volatility and 20+% burden on income) and
building engineers as well.
improved ongoing indoor air quality are two excelExpanding Our Concept of Resilience
lent examples11 of how a community resilience lens
Whether written in the negative or positive, the tangihelps develop integrated design solutions focused not
ble targets noted in Table 1 are mitigation efforts, i.e., acts only on protecting a building during an unexpected
taken to reduce harm. In the current decade of climate
crisis, but also alleviating the inherent vulnerabilities
awareness, we know that mitigation of carbon emissions of its occupants. Indeed, the Resilient Cities Network
have not been accomplished quickly enough to prevent
(https://resilientcitiesnetwork.org/urban-resilience/)
climate-related harm to certain vulnerable populations, deﬁnes urban resilience as " the capacity of individual,
whether from extreme weather events or slower effects
communities, institutions, businesses and systems
on water sources and productive land use.5 Thus, the
within a city to survive, adapt and grow no matter
U.N. SDGs have targets (Table 2) that clearly stress the
what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they
need for simultaneous work on adaptation measures
experience. "
that build community resilience in the face of climateAn example of when an apparent shock is only the
related and natural disasters.
most recent revelation of a chronic stressor can be found
Daniel Nall wrote an excellent Engineer's Notebook
in 2020's extreme heat in the western part of the U.S.
column6 on building-level resilience related to recovBesides the tragedy of the ﬁres, the summer of 2020
ery after a natural disaster. Similarly, the U.S. building
showed us that the inability to effectively use congregate
industry7 as well as ASHRAE and CIBSE8 have recently
cooling centers and swimming pools safely, combined
published position statements based on a disaster
with the economic downturn (both the result of the
APRI L 2021

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ASHRAE Journal - April 2021

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