Resilient communities
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BuildingGreen.com LIVE: Resilience: Designing Homes for More Intense Storms by Alex Wilson on 12/20/2011
Route 4 near Killington, Vermont was closed for more than a month due to flooding from Tropical Storm Irene. Photo: Lars Gange and Mansfield Heliflight. Click on image to enlarge.
Exploring Community Resilience in Times of Rapid Change: Inspiring Animation (Video)
Cultivate Center /Video screen capture "How do I make sure my community has the ability to cope in times of rapid change and is also a brilliant place to live." As we read the news about declining suburbs , rising energy prices and a dangerously unstable climate , we can be forgiven for reacting with denial, anger or a naive hope that "somebody will do something". According to this beautiful and timely animation from the Cultivate Center in Dublin, these are very normal responses to shock or disruption. But by understanding them, and by building resilience in ourselves, our social circles, our communities and our global systems, we can learn to ride the waves of change, and even begin to see them as an opportunity.
Designing buildings to effectively meet the conditions and realities of a Post Carbon, Climate-Changed world will require a shift in our current understanding of what constitutes good building design and sound building practice. Many of the practices that we now take for granted, like cladding our buildings in curtain wall building envelopes, in future, may no longer be economically feasible.
Building Design Principles
The Hosting Partners for immersive and experiential learning | T2R Alliance
Transition Towns, The Transition Network (UK), offer Training for Transition in an ever expanding list of countries. The Pe rmakultur Institute. V. (Germany) offer both the Permaculture design certi ficate and a diploma course, which are also available throughout the world, partnering with Dragon Dreaming, empowered eco-project management design and implementation systems. The Center for Human Emergence ( CHE ) is a community, a movement and a company. It is an in novative and unique organization wherein people with different backgrounds from multiple disciplines combine their strengths and share their growing consciousness.DIY Aeroponics System - Miiu.org
From Miiu.org Back to Food Unimpressed with the wild costs associated with purchasing commercial aeroponics systems, I put together my own variant of a few different DIY models running around online. A DIY aeroponics system has to be cheap, use readily available parts, and be aesthetically pleasing.
The Real Grass-roots Innovation by Indian wins Best Product Design!
When I saw this low-cost low-tech simple yet extremely useful Product design – I was quite amazed as to why have we not seen it as yet. It would have saved back aches of thousands, if not millions of people who carry / push load on daily basis. In a contest arranged by Core77 , the product – Load Carrier for Labor – designed & created by Vikram Dinubhai Panchal of The National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad won in the product / equipment category! This winning product was made at a miniscule cost of Rs. 300 and has potential to affect lives of millions of people across the globe. “ Load carrier for labor ” project aims to improve the working condition of labourers and workers at many places globally like construction site, factories, ports, railway stations, etc The objective is to prevent various occupational hazards and demonstrating Product design and ergonomic consideration in welfare of human life. [A push cart as well as a backpack which can pick-up heavy loads]
Aug. 4, 2011 Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden is on duty in Afghanistan now after tours with the Army in Iraq.
Remote Controlled Truck Sent to Soldier in Afghanistan Saves 6 Soldiers' Lives
Tools
How Can I Do This? Our whole toolkit is linked out below, but really fast: 1)Buy our balloon kit, assemble your own, or buy/make a kite. 2) find a good camera. 3) determine how you will trigger the camera,(we suggest a rubber band) or pick out a timelapse app for your smartphone. 4)build a simple... Order a spectrometer kit (including one which attaches to your smartphone) now at the Public Lab Store Quick Links contributed open-source Spectrometry research Foldable Mini-Spectrometer Desktop Spectrometry Kit Spectral Workbench - software for using your DIY spectrometer Spectral Workbench... Infrared cameras for vegetation analysis Infrared photography can help assess a plant’s health, and has been used on satellites and planes for agricultural and ecological assessment, mainly by vineyards, large farms and large-scale (read: expensive) research projects. By creating a low-cost camera...
