Qualify for your MOJO ribbon by reading a Planning article this fall, then commenting on it. Find out more. Sign up now.

As the drought in Texas, and most recently all over the midwest, illustrates, water concerns are, ahem, rising. One of the featured articles in the October issue of Planning for Higher Education will focus on a comprehensive and integrated look at campus water planning. That, and related topics, will be the core of the Campus-Space MOJO during the week of October 22. Note that Campus Sustainability Day 10, started by SCUP, is October 24, 2012. This article takes a worldwide look at water.

The Aqueduct Alliance, which allows users to create maps by combining hydrological data with geographically specific details, gives companies and investors unprecedented detail of water availability in some of the world's largest river basins.

The promoters say the data should help companies use water more responsibly while helping them to manage their exposure to risk.

But critics fear the data could be used to cash in on an increasingly scarce natural resource - two thirds of people are expected to face water shortages by 2025.

Qualify for your MOJO ribbon by reading a Planning article this fall, then commenting on it. Find out more. Sign up now.

At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of Victor E. Sidy, Head of School and Dean, Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, served up from YouTube. An organizing slide from his presentation is also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

He shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about some of the best new trends and campus buildings this year.

A Summary Slide

Qualify for your MOJO ribbon by reading a Planning article this fall, then commenting on it. Find out more. Sign up now.

At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of Cathrine Blake, Associate Director/Landscape Architect, Stanford University, served up from YouTube. Some of the slides from her presentation are also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

She shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about:

• Sustainable landscape planning;
• Transit Transitions; and
• Urban campuses.

Some Summary Slides

Qualify for your MOJO ribbon by reading a Planning article this fall, then commenting on it. Find out more. Sign up now.

At SCUP–47, the awards jurors took the time to make several presentations about themes and trends they observed among the awards applications. We captured the remarks of three jurors on (handheld) video. These are the remarks of James Goblirsch, Vice President, HGA Architects and Engineers, served up from YouTube. Some of the slides from his presentation are also shown below. (Click on them to see a larger version.)

He shares juror observations, using examples from award recipients and from those which did not receive awards (not each project illustrated in this talk received an award) about:

• A new baseline for sustainability;
• Learning space evolution; and
• Community space.

Some Summary Slides

Gregory Trencher and Masaru Yarime, writing in OurWorld2.0, a publication of United Nations University, provide a call for more town and gown collaboration and partnerships for area sustainable development. They also provide a nice list of some current projects that fit into their category of "Universities Co-Creating Urban Sustainability." That list, with links, is below—after the quote, which is the first two paragraphs of their essay:

The sustainability crisis has provoked an unexpected and dramatic response from academia. Until now, higher education institutions have tended to focus on sustainability within their own borders. This has predominantly been via sustainability education, research and designing green or carbon neutral campuses. Yet borders between society and academia are dissolving. Many high-profile universities across the world are reaching out past campus boundaries to form ambitious partnerships with industry, government and civil society organisations. In this role of ‘co-creation’, a university attempts to materialise sustainable development by working with society, to create society. That is, it collaborates with diverse social actors to trigger and then drive the sustainable transformation of a specific region, city or community.

Table 1. Various cross-sector collaborations for sustainability transitions

 ^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

• Cool Campuses? (PDF) by Walter Simpson (downloadable)
• The benefits of Guided Facility Self-Assessments by Keith O’Leary (if not APPA member, must read interactive PDF)
• A Study of State Tax Appropriations for Capital Needs in U.S. Public Higher Education (if not APPA member, must read interactive PDF)
• Can We Make a Difference in Campus Sustainability by Steve Glazner (if not APPA member, must read interactive PDF)
• The Facilities Stewardship Oversight Role of Governing Boards (PDF) by Lander E. Medlin (downloadable)

From Simpson’s piece, one important point: Deep energy conservation in existing facilities is a necessity

The cleanest BTU or kWh is the one we don’t consume. Thus, deep energy conservation should be the top priority in campusclimate action plans. However, most plans project modest conventional retrofits of existing buildings paired with larger-than-necessary purchases of renewable energy credits (RECs) and carbon offsets to eventually mop up the remaining energy waste. Paying someone else somewhere else to reduce emissions for you—as is the case with carbon offsets—does not model a strategy consistent with the task at hand, essentially quitting fossil fuels within a few short decades. That goal can only be achieved if energy users are successful at sharply curtailing and eliminating to whatever extent possible fossil fuel use on-site. 

Many tools and strategies are needed to achieve this objective, including submetering of buildings and even of individual building energy systems, so that the real effectiveness of conservation measures is accurately assessed and understood. The cost of submetering can be made up many times by the additional savings it allows facilities managers to achieve

Enjoy this succinct, two-page summary of a concurrent session from SCUP's 2010 annual conference. You'll be reading a 50-page set of such summaries that until very recently were only available to SCUP members and others who attended SCUP-45 in 2010. We've left the page open for you to "How Do Smart Meters Make a University More Intelligent?" Just click on the image below.

With the help of SmartSynch, the University of Mississippi (UM, or Ole Miss) has embarked on an ambitious energy-management pilot. SmartMeters transmit data on individual buildings’ real-time energy consumption, providing analysis capability that is yielding granular understanding of buildings’ efficiency levels and occupants’ utilization habits. Social media is being used to disseminate the data transparently, engaging the campus community. Financial reward programs will drive deeper engagement and more behavior change. Dashboards will facilitate comparisons and analysis, with the insights leveraged to inform policy decisions and intelligent building design. The program’s educational and societal value will be compounded when graduates spread its philosophy and practices far and wide.

This content was previously unavailable to the public. SCUP members and those who attended SCUP–45 in 2010, can download the entire 49-page booklet of SCUP-45 executive summaries here. The document, below, cannot be downloaded, printed, or copied from—only viewed.

The plan was a catalyst for the establishment of an integrated planning process at VIU that will coordinate planning for strategic, academic, research, and ancillary services, and fiscal, operational, social, and physical activities for maximum focus and performance of future developments. The plan supports the academic plan by addressing required infrastructure and facilities deficiencies, enhancing research and learning capacity, and accommodating new programs and technologies.

The above quote is from the 2010 SCUP Awards Jurors, 2010 SCUP Award for Institutional Innovation and Integration. Below, a SCUP concurrent session executive summary:

Consider visiting and contributing to SCUP's LinkedIn discussion about if and how college and university campuses may be inventorying and valuing their trees, and how integrated that is to master planning and overall planning work. We're looking for people to share current best practices.

It turns out that a campus tree has more value, and more kinds of value, than most people would think. A 2006 study of the value of New York City's tree inventory is one of a number of such studies, reflecting a growing number of institutional entities which consider trees to have both capital and operational value. If your campus is planning in an integrated way, in fact, it makes good sense to understand your tree inventory and its value to the institution.

• The article linked-to here, mentions i-Tree, a free software suite that lets people managing tree inventories to do so while taking many important variables into account.
• If you have an interest in campus heritage landscapes, you should visit SCUP's Campus Heritage Planning Network where, among other resources, there are several reports on campus-wide heritage landscape planning.

Trees provide solar reflection for energy savings, clean air pollutants, and intercept water to reduce stress on storm water runoff. New York figured that measuring the value of its 600,000 trees in this way results in a savings for the city of nearly $120 per tree, annually. Figure in aesthetics and things like property value, public health (visible trees reduce the length of hospital stays), stress, and so forth, and another $90 per tree per year in value brings the total to $210 per tree.

In New York City, that is a total of $122M in benefits from a department of the city that spends less than $15M on trees and forestry staff, resulting in an annual net positive value to the city of more than $100M, from urban trees.

We heard some pretty rational thought and conversation about climate change and about energy on NPR last week, on Science Friday.

Planners will enjoy the story and interviews about the American military's work to save money by energy efficiency. And also to save lives: A retired general spoke about saving $1B and many American lives by vastly reducing the number of shipments of fuel/energy to troops in the field. Fewer trips, less cost and fewer American's killed by attacks during the dangerous trips.

The other segment was on Americans and Climate Change and brought together a recent report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication at Yale University and Representative Bob Inglis (R-SC). No one yells at anyone else. It's a nice discussion.