{"id":13774,"date":"2018-06-30T13:47:15","date_gmt":"2018-06-30T13:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ierek.com\/news\/?p=13774"},"modified":"2024-10-30T06:45:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-30T06:45:34","slug":"resilience-new-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ierek.com\/news\/resilience-new-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"Resilience: is it the new sustainability?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The relation between \u201cResilience\u201d and Architecture<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\u201cResilience\u201d as a term is spread these days between environmental designers. In some regions, it\u2019s threatening to take over another popular word, \u201csustainability.\u201d This is a ramification to some events like Hurricane Sandy, adding to growing impact of other catastrophes like tsunamis, droughts, and heat waves.<\/p>\n

We know that our designs can\u2019t resist unpredictable events, but we can make sure our buildings and cities are more able to endure when facing these disruptions. At a larger scale, we must sustain consequences of climate change<\/a>, resource destruction and depletion<\/a>, and a host of other confrontations to human wellbeing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We need more resilient design<\/a>, in other words, \u201csustainable\u201d, not as a fashion, but as a requirement for the human race to survive. Aside from a nice idea, what does \u201cresilience\u201d really mean, from a structure point of view? What can designers do in the way of achieving it? Especially, what can they learn from the obvious resilience of natural systems?<\/p>\n

Resilient and non-resilient systems<\/strong><\/h2>\n

First of all, we have to recognize that we have a vast amount of complex and advanced technologies these days, from power plants to building systems, to jet planes. These technologies are in general, magnificently stable regarding their design criteria. This type of stability that C. H. Holling*, the pioneer of resilience theory in ecology, called \u201cengineered resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, they are not even close to \u201cresilience\u201d outside of their designed operating systems. Trouble always happens with the unintended consequences that happen as external factors, often related to results of disasters.<\/p>\n

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Japan earthquake: The 6.1 quake has struck off the coast near Fukushima<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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iStock\/Michael Utech<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A clear and recent example is the Fukushima nuclear reactor group in Japan. For many several years, it operated with no problems, producing reliable power for its region, and was a very clear example of \u201cengineered resilience\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, it was not designed on the basis and theories that Holling called \u201cecological resilience<\/a>\u201d, that is, the resilience to the messiest disorders and disasters that ecological systems must resist. One of those messy disorders was the earthquake and tsunami that invaded the nuclear plant in 2010, causing a catastrophic collapse. The Fukushima reactors are built based on obsolete U.S.design from the 1960s, that depends on an electrical emergency cooling system. When the electricity failed, as well as the backup generators, the emergency control system stopped responding and went out of service and the reactor cores melted.<\/p>\n

It was also a fault (according to this time\u2019s aspects) to centralize power production by placing six large nuclear reactors so close next to each other. The problem with catastrophic disasters is that they are and will remain always very hard to predict as well as it is almost impossible to foretell its impact in case it was precisely anticipated. Actually, we can predict, but with a high error possibility, the probability of an earthquake and tsunami in a way that is considered better than other natural phenomena. Thinking of how hard it is to predict the time and location<\/p>\n

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Hurricane Sandy on October 28, 2012.<\/p>\n

Courtesy LANCE MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

of an asteroid collision, or harder yet, to take proactive actions for the consequences. Physicists mention to this kind of chaos as a \u201cfar from equilibrium condition.\u201d This problem is what designers are beginning to take more seriously into consideration, as we face with more violent and mysterious events like Hurricane Sandy \u2014 actually a chaotic combination of three separate weather systems that devastated the Caribbean and the eastern coast of the U.S., in 2012.<\/p>\n

Biology lessons and its applications to \u201cResilient\u201d human designs<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What can be learned from biological systems? They are insanely complex. Take, for example, the complexity of a rainforest. It too generates complicated interactions among many billions of components.<\/p>\n

Yet many rainforests remain stable over many thousands of years, besides countless disorders and \u201cshocks to the system.\u201d Can we understand and benefit from the lessons of their structural characteristics? It seems we can. Mentioned below are four lessons concluded from various biological systems that put into study cases:<\/p>\n