141st APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Home Events & Meetings Annual Meeting Schedule & Program

Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

293505
Building resilience, one development at a time


Wednesday, November 6, 2013 : 12:50 p.m. - 1:10 p.m.

Adele Houghton, AIA, MPH, LEED AP, Biositu, LLC, Houston, TX
     
Evidence continues to mount that extreme weather events do not affect all neighborhoods equally. Some populations are more at risk of negative health outcomes than others because of the social, economic, demographic, and/or environmental characteristics of the neighborhoods where they live, work, and play. While zoning regulations and master plans can build resilience at the community or regional scale, developers and their project teams ultimately decide whether or not to incorporate design strategies that could reduce the localized vulnerability of a project site to the health and environmental effects of climatic events. It is therefore essential to provide design and construction professionals with decision support tools that are informed by evidence of the links between specific building strategies and positive health outcomes following exposure to climatic events. This presentation will share just such a tool, the results of the literature review that underpinned its development, and examples of how the tool can be used to provide real-time decision support to project teams during the design process.

Learning Areas:

Assessment of individual and community needs for health education
Communication and informatics
Environmental health sciences
Other professions or practice related to public health
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines

Learning Objectives:
Discuss the role of the private sector in prioritizing green building design decisions that will enhance neighborhood resilience to climatic events.

Keyword(s): Climate Change, Healthy Buildings

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been principal or co-principal of multiple projects developing climate change vulnerability assessments climate change and environmental public health indicators. I am a registered architect and green building expert. And, I am collaborating with the U.S. Green Building Council to develop an online decision support tool to raise awareness among design professionals of a project site's localized vulnerability to specific climatic events.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 5158.0: Coast is clear: Don’t be so sure!