Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemDistributed Systems: A Design Model for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure(VEIL, 2010)How do we prepare now for a future of unprecedented resource scarcity and environmental change? Unless we take radical steps to increase the resilience and sustainability of critical infrastructure, access to vital systems and services is at risk. This paper highlights the dynamic forces increasing the vulnerability of current infrastructure and services and presents the case for distributed systems as an alternative design model. We suggest this model exists in the natural environment and in production and consumption systems that have already begun adapting to conditions of increased uncertainty, resource scarcity and a ‘low-carbon’ future. A distributed approach to system design offers many benefits over traditional infrastructure models. Research and case studies strongly suggest such an approach can: - Increase the physical resilience of infrastructure - Foster social and institutional flexibility and innovation - Reduce the environmental footprint of production and consumption
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ItemLocalised Solutions: Building capacity and resilience with distributed production systems(VEIL, 2010)In the national debate about how to address climate change, the role of individuals and small organisations is rarely considered. Yet households, communities, local governments and small business represent the largest body of consumers of energy and critical resources and have the most to lose from climate change and resource scarcity. Equally concerning is the way the opinion and ideas of these smaller stakeholders rarely enters the debate. Communities tend to be seen as only reactive to new government initiatives, rather than vital participants in climate innovation. At a time when many recognise individual and community creativity as the greatest source of innovation, it would be wise to learn from those tackling climate change and resource problems at a local or community level. Growing evidence points to a recent and significant growth in local initiatives that tackle social and environmental challenges. This development is significant, for it indicates community-scale actors are showing leadership on issues that are often cast as national or global in scale - beyond their ‘sphere of influence’. Furthermore, initiatives are occurring despite the inertia of state, national and international level actors. Also significant is the way these solutions involve a re-localisation of resource and service systems such as energy, food and water infrastructure. These initiatives represent a shift to more distributed methods of production and consumption and are a radical break from conventional services. To understand the nature of these ‘localised solutions’, the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) and the McCaughey Centre organised a forum in Melbourne at the end of 2009. That event explored the value and implications of local initiatives that follow the distributed systems model. The forum brought together perspectives from the private sector, utilities, non-profit organisations and research bodies - reflecting the diversity of examples in Victoria. This paper presents key findings structured around three themes: • The shape of localised solutions and parallels with distributed systems • Implications for adapting to climate change and resource scarcity • The factors enabling and limiting further development of localised solutions
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ItemVisions of Resilience: Design-led Transformation for Climate Extremes(VEIL, 2014)Climate change is re-writing the record book on weather extremes and communities face the brunt of these impacts. In the wake of recent extreme events agencies at all levels of government are turning to concepts like resilience to emphasise preventive disaster management. But resilience is a novel concept for Australia’s emergency management institutions and translating it into practice will be challenging. Significant innovation is required to enable this process. The way disaster risks are currently conceived, how adaptation is planned and which voices and views shape the planning process must change. This report puts community stakeholders at the heart of building resilience to climate extremes. It demonstrates why and how local perspectives and values must have a seat at the table when disaster mitigation strategies are conceived and designed. Methods to develop community-led strategies and identify local barriers to change, like the one developed in this project, are essential to this process. Emergency management practitioners surveyed and interviewed for this report acknowledge climate change will cause major and irreversible change at the community level over the next two decades. However, these people also believe communities and emergency management agencies are failing to grasp the scale and urgency of the issue. Familiar institutions are not helping. Emergency management practices are overly geared to disaster response at the expense of disaster prevention. Planning for extreme events is reliant on predictive methods and unrealistic certainty, and local stakeholders are not effectively integrated into the design of mitigation strategies. Furthermore, at the organisational level, long-term decisions don’t reflect the severity of climate change risks. Building local resilience to climate extremes requires new tools, thinking and practices to address shared risks and guide adaptation planning under extreme uncertainty. We don’t have the ability to predict future extremes. At best, our climate models and natural disaster experts can provide only a vague idea of how severe local weather events will become. Preparing for this future is made more challenging by poor clarity over what commensurate climate resilience looks like. Every community faces its own unique risks and its own opportunities for change. This report outlines a tested process to help agencies and communities engage creatively with the issue of extreme climate risks. Results show communities bring essential perspectives of local vulnerabilities and potential impacts to the design table. The report case studies emphasise that building local resilience will depend on how much communities own the mitigation and adaptation strategies that affect them. The primary lesson is that building resilience to climate extremes should be seen as a social innovation process. Findings show communities confronted with extreme climate scenarios can develop highly sophisticated proposals for building local resilience. Many involved radical changes – indicating communities can and will re-prioritise valued assets when allowed to explore and comprehend the scale of climate risks. Critically, proposals involving compromise and radical change were not designed exclusively to manage risks. They added services, skills and new assets that were aligned to community identities and aspirations. These lessons suggest emergency management and other relevant agencies would benefit by framing disaster mitigation as community development, with risk management an integral but secondary outcome. Climate mitigation strategies driven solely by risk management considerations are unlikely to gain widespread buy-in.
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ItemVisions of Resilience - A Workshop Manual(VEIL, 2014)This manual aims to help organisations and communities adapt to future climate extremes. It outlines a process designed to involve community in climate change adaptation planning and to identify novel strategies to build local resilience. Communities play a limited role in climate change adaptation planning, despite having the majority stake in the results. Many of the adaptation strategies currently considered by local and state government are small adjustments to existing ways of working. They don’t reflect the complexity and severity of likely climate impacts. Impacts we are already beginning to see. Effective adaptation demands a significant change to current thinking and practice in community and government. But significant change is also disruptive. To make adaptation work, affected stakeholders need to know why change is needed. They must also own the goals and trajectory of change. This demands a significant ‘opening-up’ of existing planning processes – making them more democratic, open to diverse input and transparent about values and assumptions involved. In most instances of institutional change stakeholders need to feel they have helped shape the direction of change before they will own it. With change needed in every town and every region, we require new collaborative decision-making tools to catalyse and support this process. This manual presents one such tool - a step-by-step workshop process to build local visions of resilience and identify barriers to change. The process can be used to identify local vulnerabilities to climate change and identify ways to build resilience that reflect community values and aspirations. It is intended primarily for a spatially defined area of interest – a town, suburb, city or region etc.
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ItemDistributed Water Systems: A networked and localised approach for sustainable water services(VEIL, 2009)An unprecedented water crisis is unfolding across southern Australia, driven by the compounding impacts of climate change, over use and a legacy of short sighted water policies. As many water strategists re-apply traditional methods to meet this ‘perfect storm’ of supply and demand challenges, a quiet evolution is occurring in water system design. This evolution has emerged as a strong and coherent trend with positive and radical implications for creating a sustainable water future. This briefing paper draws on case studies and research to describe the emergence of ‘distributed water systems’ - a highly networked and localised approach to water infrastructure and critical water services. Cases from Australia, Europe and the US show how distributed water systems can generate positive outcomes that enhance and supplement those provided by our existing infrastructure models. They are able to: • Reduce costs and resource use • Improve service security and reduce risk of failure • Strengthen local economies • Strengthen community wellbeing • Regenerate and protect the natural environment • Redefine traditional water systems Distributed systems represent an innovative approach for responding to risk and uncertainty. They can build adaptive capacity by increasing the diversity and flexibility of water systems without locking utilities, customers and future governments into rigid pathways for delivering critical services. By creating distributed water systems through infrastructure design choices at the household-to-regional level, Victoria can reduce social, economic and environmental vulnerability to climate change and energy supply shocks. In the distributed systems model, infrastructure and critical services (for water, food and energy) are positioned close to points of demand and resource availability and linked within networks of exchange. Services traditionally provided by a single, linear system are instead delivered via a diverse set of smaller systems - tailored to location but able to transfer resources across wider areas. Much more can and should be done to understand and foster the evolution of distributed water systems. Support for innovative projects and a reassessment of existing models of governance is required to enable further adaptation in the water sector. A re-evaluation of the impacts that large water projects have on emerging water sector innovation is also required. The inability of existing tools to assess and compare the long-term or non-financial benefits derived from distributed systems highlights the need for research and practical experimentation to build experience and capacity in this area.