Gateway National Recreation Area
Summer Fire GIS Technician

This summer Gateway will be offering a paid Fire GIS technician position. The goals of the position will be to improve maps and datasets to allow the GATE fire management program to respond more effectively and efficiently to fires, and will help in the planning, development, and implementation of future fuels management projects by identifying areas that are the most threatened by fire.  We are looking for people with GIS skills not necessarily wildland fire skills.  The technician will receive training in wildland fire on the job.  This is also NOT a front line position, but will require the mapping of fires after the area has been made safe.

Data layers to be developed:
Priority (1) Prepare Maps for fire reports and planning purposes
Proximity to urban populations, locations of fire breaks, locations of local municipal fire resources, water sources, etc.

Priority (2) Research and update existing historic fire GIS layer

The current historic fire layer for Gateway suffers from poor data management.  The seasonal would review park fire record to improve location and attribute accuracy of data

Priority (3) Fire Risk Assessment for Park
Identify areas of high risk based on vegetation type and proximity to urban populations on key structures.  This will hinge on items 1 and 2 and will require a lot of other data to conduct a proper risk assessment.

The GIS Technician will work to develop maps and datasets described in priority 1 – 3. Each dataset will be required to have metadata and be posted to the Natural Resource Info Portal.  The data will also be provided to the northeast regional fire program and the GIS division of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), the New York City Office of Emergency Management and the Highlands New Jersey Fire Department which aids in Sandy Hook fires.  In addition, the GIS technician will prepare a presentation for the chiefs of Natural and Cultural Resources and Facilities management at Gateway. The presentation will focus on fire risk assessment to resources and facilities around the park. Local FDNY and New Jersey fire chiefs will also be invited.  This presentation will help to further strengthen the relationship with local resources and help plan future responses.   All the data and maps produced will aid Gateway NRA in completing its Fire Management Plan.

Interested applicants should send a resume and cover letter addressed to Mark Christiano to Mark_Christiano@NPS.gov

Image Courtesy of 66 Square Feet

That same concept has been applied by New York Sun Works, BrightFarms Systems (also an original collaborator on the Science Barge) and PS 333 parents to the Sun Works Center, with financial support coming from City Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer and the Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer. However, despite its food-producing capacity, the greenhouse is first and foremost a learning laboratory for students. Sidsel Robards, one of the founding parents, was quoted in the City Room piece as saying: “it’s important to remember that it’s a science lab and we want the kids to be able to fail, too.”

Robard’s insight into using food as a learning tool reflects one of the greatest benefits that urban agriculture can provide to cities: education. It is unlikely that cities will ever be able to produce enough food to feed themselves, and the question remains as to whether or not this is even a desired goal. But for city dwellers- one of the benefits of urban agriculture can be the opportunities it provides residents to learn about the food system. Surrounded by concrete, it is easy to loose site of the seed to table process (forgetting about the “seed to” and focusing mainly on the “table”).  For urban dwellers young and old, it can be an eye-opening entry into the world of food. Integrating urban agriculture into New York City school curriculum through hands-on opportunities to grow food is a way of encouraging children to become curious- to start asking questions and finding answers- about the food that they eat (and sometimes play with) every day.

You can read more about the Sun Work Center for Environmental Studies at Food + Tech Connect and BrightFarm Systems.

Interview with the parent founders of the Sun Works Center for Environmental Studies about the importance of interactive science and food education courtesy of Danielle Gould of Food + Tech Connect:

Untitled from Food Tech Connect on Vimeo.

Image Courtesy of New York Sun Works

The Solar Decathlon competition is a biennial event hosted on the National Mall in Washington D.C. The competition is scheduled to take place next year from September 23^rd to October 2^nd 2011. Since 2002 when the competition was first held 92 collegiate teams across the U.S. have participated. During the competition the National Mall will be converted into what they call the Solar Village. There, the twenty solar houses will be erected and tested rigorously to measure efficiency metrics, judged for architectural design and structural integrity (metrics and design are judged in 10 subcategories) and visited by hundreds of thousands of people from across the country. It is important to note that the competition stresses the need for the houses to be affordable and provide a healthy and comfortable living environment.

Leading Team New York City is Professor Christian Volkmann. He’s the faculty in charge of the putting the project together and assembling the student team. I was able to talk two students involved in the project, Asher Salzberg, a fourth year undergraduate architecture major and Master of Sustainability in the Urban Environment graduate student Michael Catalano.  Salzberg is a part of the core group of students working in conjunction with engineering students on the design of the solar roof pod. His motivation for this project stems from his personable belief that his profession has a responsibility to curtail the energy consumption of buildings. Salzberg believes that “the planet is our site, so we always have to design based on what our planet can provide.”

The solar roof pod is approximately 700 square feet and has a tripartite design, the deck, body and roof. The deck is a structural support for the weight of the pod on the roof.  It will also allow for plants to be grown, creating a green roof serving as a carbon sink (minimizing carbon release into the atmosphere) and reducing heat gain. Salzberg points out that a variant of the deck is being designed for the competition because the pod will be assembled at ground level. The body also contains a core which provides the living functions to enable the customizable layout consisting of a kitchen, bathroom, living room and a Murphy bed. Catalano and his team are conducting research to design a smart façade system that will be integrated into the Solar Roof Pods curtain wall. He says that the smart façade will “take advantage of solar heat gain principles and thereby passively regulate internal air temperature” to a section of the pod. Air filtration may also be a smart facade component. Finally the roof is described as a  “trelliswork space frame which supports a solar array”, the space between the roof and the solar array serves as a cooling mechanisms for the panels to facilitate maximum efficiency.

What is remarkable about the design of the pod is that it has an effect like it’s floating in mid air. The structure is designed to be mass-produced with many parts that can be transported to the roof via an elevator.  Salzberg does concede that some parts of the pod may have to be crane lifted but for the most part they are working to eliminate this scenario. Both Salzberg and Catalano expressed to me that the solar roof pod is unique because it is built to be plugged into an urban environment and work symbiotically with the existing building infrastructure. What that means is the pod will capture energy from the sun and distribute the surplus energy to the building. It reduces the heat island effect and will also provides infrastructure to support a green roof or some other form of biodiversity that’s non-existent at the ground level.

The competition serves two main purposes. The first is educational; it provides a platform for the public demonstration of practical uses of renewable and clean technologies, in addition to innovative, efficient and cost effective building design. The second I believe to be the teambuilding component, students work collaboratively across academic disciplines to bring the project together affording them with a sort of real world experience.

I wish Team New York the best of luck on the project and look forward to seeing the solar roof pod in D.C next year.

However, with all of their many faults, grand Modernist proposals were still earnest attempts to compile the world’s many problems, analyze them, and offer solutions.  When Corbusier dreamed of tearing down all of Paris and extruding skyscrapers on an endless grid of parks one can’t help but recognize the urgent attempt to make sense of a rapidly changing world.  To neatly and summarily solve many pressing issues in one bold, tidy statement is, after all, what architects are hired to do every day.

Luckily, many architects today are looking forward by not only admitting that they alone cannot solve all of our city’s problems, but also by embracing the unpredictability of a dynamic city (while also positing that sustainable cities can be messy and eco-friendly at the same time).  One recent instance can be found in Popular Science’s Life On the Edge: Four Visions For Inhabiting a World Transformed By Climate Change.

The first characteristic that strikes one when looking at these four different visions is the small scale and adaptability of each design. Here are four human-scaled building blocks to deal with climate change. Each one offers a projection of one instance in a very different environment; nowhere is the hand of the architect constructing a rigid formality to the city. Instead, we find some possible solutions to some very specific, entirely environmental and climatic changes that can be endlessly formed and modified.

All of the projects deal first-hand with self-sufficiency in terms of energy production – this isn’t anything new in the realm of architecture, but in terms of scale, I think (and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m sure there are more examples out there of this) these projects are some of the few that stand out in their self-resignation as components to a whole system rather than trying to be single, bold statements of sustainability as a mere marketing tool (Dubai, anyone?). Rather, their bold statement is our impending crisis of climate change. If, for example, New York City does become “an archipelago that could lose as much as a fifth of its landmass by 2080” and Mustafa Bulgur and Sinan Gunay’s City(E)scape proposal for self-sufficient modules suspended from Manhattan’s skyscrapers becomes a reality, then a wonderfully anarchic agglomeration of individuals within a collective network of support (literally and figuratively) becomes a daring new paradigm for sustainability. No single building (or architect) here will save us.

However, the social interactions between those single buildings and the people contained within are given little consideration in these four designs. What kind of public life can result from these new forms? How would habits and ideas change by living in these environments? Sustainability means far more than energy independence. As a concept it needs to infiltrate our daily lives as a theoretical shift that changes public perception of space, economics, social realities, health, art, politics, etc, etc. And without that fundamental shift, we won’t find ourselves anywhere near a City(E)scape in 2080. But we will find ourselves under 30 feet of water.

This information was taken from the NYC.gov site, which includes detailed information for each sewar drainage area. And as a bonus, you can watch a Public Service Announcement that features the Blue Man Groups walk through the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Facility in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The voice-over is slightly ominous and the complexity of our water treatment systems and combined sewage overflow management are not as clear as they could be, but there is one takeaway message that IS clear: you are part of the system so learn about it and act accordingly.

More to come on green infrastructure. If you are not on our mailing list, but would like to learn more about our upcoming events, please email me at cmolnar@hunter.cuny.edu.

However, a new pilot project currently conducted by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) could provide some comfort in knowing that when the brakes grind against the rails, they’re also making energy.  The pilot project, funded by the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority and partnered with Viridity Energy, hopes to install a smart electrical grid in the Philadelphia transit system to cut electricity bills.  Currently, the project involves 38 substations within the transit system and is expected to generate $500,000 worth of electrical energy per year.  The ultimate goal is to be able to cut SEPTA’s electrical bills by 40 percent as well as generate revenue through selling electricity back to the grid.

The smart grid system harnesses regenerative braking technology in order to generate electricity as the subway cars brake.  The electricity produced is stored in large batteries within the cars and released into the electrical grid when needed.  This is different from the current system in SEPTA’s, which can redistribute regenerative energy from one train’s braking action into another’s acceleration, but only when they happen simultaneously.  In fact, many city subway transit systems have some sort of regenerative braking ability; for example, the MTA subway car-models that run on the , , , ,  and  routes have regenerative braking that feeds energy back to the Third Rail.

Many systems, however, don’t have a storage capacity, which is useful since not all energy can be used the minute its produced.  The SEPTA project is geared towards finding a storage solution to the issue.  However, the project is faced with two challenges.  One is finding a battery that can store and release electricity for hundreds of thousands of cycles.  The other is developing software to be able to simultaneously analyze electrical data from SEPTA’s grid and the surrounding electrical grid in order to determine energy use from the stored energy.

While cutting its own electrical bill is one goal, the project also has the broader objective of helping to contribute to the surrounding energy grids.  When demand for electricity is high, price for that electricity also rises; so, it may be more economical during these times to sell electricity back to the local energy grids.  This would help more urban areas where energy demands fluctuate greatly simply because many more buildings and electricity using facilities exist within a small area.

With the economy still struggling to pick itself up and city budgets still tight, public transit systems should watch this project closely.

Maybe if the MTA picked this up, I wouldn’t mind hearing the brakes screech.  At least I know that on a cold autumn day, part of the heat energy will probably come from those annoying brakes.

via huffington post.

We know that sustainability as a concept has remained nebulous. Save for the idea that it implies an equitable distribution and consumption of resources, that will not compromise future generations use of said resources, we have little else to agree on about what sustainability looks like in action, in day to day existence.

I recently read an essay in Grist, Environmentalism’ can never address climate change, written by David Robert, who literally opens his piece by saying, “I’m not an environmentalist and these aren’t environmental challenges.” It made me think about what exactly the challenge is then. What kind of challenge is the climate change (and related sustainability) challenge then?  The idea that framing matters is not new; communication scholars have long been studying the fallout—both positive and negative—from the way in which we talk about certain issues.  Somehow though, we in the climate movement seem to have thought we were exempt from this phenomenon for far too long; that somehow data would speak for itself.  Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of people thinking about how to talk about this stuff before; artists, scientists, policy makers, students, but to make an impact, to have a critical mass, we all need to have a shared vocabulary and clear vision about what we want, when we want it, how we get there and most importantly how we talk about it.

I see the new blog as an opportunity to showcase and discuss living proof of sustainability, of people working towards a clear vision, and not always through novel technology (although, yes, sometimes we will discuss this), but more importantly, a reading between the lines of where we are and where we want to be. In Robert’s essay, he argues that if we succeed at the sustainability challenge (a big if, he points out), it will be a groundbreaking, revolutionary new model. “…it will be a tidal shift in human history on par with the agriculture, industrialization, or democracy itself.”

The difference is, those that lived through these histories only had a slight understanding of the massive impact they were about to have on the physical and social operating systems of the planet. We, on the other hand, with our science and blogs (and science blogs), living in the data explosion era, know better, maybe.  So, let’s get to it. We have a lot of re-making to do.

Keri Facer – Learning to live in interesting times from FutureEverything on Vimeo.

The video I share with you today comes from one of the keynote speakers at Future Everything, a design and technologies conference held in Manchester.  Keri Facer gives a provoking talk on how we think about the future–psychologically, collectively, technologically–and what it means for the lived experience of our cities, as well as the development of complex biological systems.  Folks here at the Institute are particularly interested in this subject because we are also utilizing collaborations between artists, environmental scientists, and learning specialists to help move the discussion of climate change forward.  One of the keys, as Facer illustrates so well, is getting people to think about the future of their everyday lives in ways that are empowering at the same time as they are realistic about the changes that need to be made.

Solar Map for San Francisco from sf.solarmap.org

Green reports that there is a comprehensive ‘solar map’ in the works for New York City.  They quote CUNY’s very own Tria Case and explain that a new LIDAR dataset will allow users to calculate potential energy generation capabilities for individual rooftops.  (We have learned from other sources at CUNY that this data is going to be used for much more than a ‘solar map’–as it measures elevation at such a fine scale that even sidewalks and fire-hydrants become visible, the LIDAR data will be invaluable for storm surge models and urban planning.)  Here is an excerpt from the post:

Now New York City, where it is estimated that solar arrays could generate about one-fifth of the electricity consumed by eight million residents, has climbed on the bandwagon. As I wrote in The Times on Monday, an airplane equipped with a laser system known as Lidar, for Light Detection and Ranging, took images of the city’s surface terrain and structures last month. The goal is to collect data that can be used to, among other things, update flood maps and develop a solar map by this fall.

Tria Case, director of sustainability for the City University of New York, which has teamed with the city to develop the solar map, said the images offered highly precise information about the shape, angle and size of rooftops and the shading from trees and structures around them.  Read more…

A record 10,010 megawatts of new wind capacity was installed in the United States last year, accounting for 39 percent of new electrical generation, the American Wind Energy Association said in its annual report.

That raises the nation’s total wind energy capacity to more than 35,000 megawatts, or enough electricity to keep the lights on in 9.7 million homes. “Over the past five years, wind power and other renewable energy technologies, combined with natural gas, have provided over 90 percent of all new generating capacity in the U.S.,” the report’s authors stated.

Read more…

Growth in solar power capacity, in comparison, has slowed but still shows some positive trends:

Total capacity installed for all types of solar energy grew by 5.2 percent in 2009, compared with 9.6 percent the previous year. But Rhone Resch, the chief executive of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which released the report Thursday, said that the overall number hid tremendous variation within the industry.

For example, he said, the residential market for photovoltaic panels (the type used on rooftops) grew at its fastest pace ever in 2009, and utilities’ demand for these panels also stayed strong. On the other hand, the large commercial market — companies putting solar panels on their rooftops — lagged. As a result, overall growth in capacity for photovoltaic panels stood at 38 percent last year, down significantly from 84 percent growth a year earlier.

Read more…