Assessment of Housing Stock Age in the Vicinity of Chemical Stockpile Sites

Vogt, B.M.; Hardee, Harriet K.; Sorensen, John H.; Shumpert, B.L.

doi:10.2172/6884

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…A GIS has been used to address building efficiency, energy consumption, and housing characterization in numerous settings (Alexander et al, 2009;Can, 1998;Heiple and Sailor, 2008;Jones et al, 2001;Mavrogianni et al, 2009;Tornberg and Thuvander, 2005;Vogt et al, 1999) but this technology has not been used to prioritize weatherization efforts in rural communities. However, the process of developing a high resolution inventory of the temporal distribution of housing stock is frequently laborious and time consuming.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the Spatiotemporal Evolution of Building-Stock Age in Poultney, Vermont: A GIS-Based Approach to Improve Thermal Efficiency in Historical Buildings

Hoesen

Letendre

2013

Environ Plann B Plann Des

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Many industrialized countries are exploring ways to facilitate the prioritization of efforts targeting improved thermal efficiency in an aging building stock. Older buildings, typically, have inefficient building envelopes and higher energy-consumption patterns relative to new construction, which contributes to higher overall energy consumption at the local and regional scale. Reducing energy consumption by increasing the efficiency of older buildings will result in lower anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and help address the growing issues related to climate change. To address these concerns a GIS-based approach is developed to evaluate building-stock age in rural communities with limited access to historical parcel data. This approach involves georeferencing historical Sanborn insurance maps, digitizing building footprints for each year. This methodology is applied to a small town in rural Vermont and a map is produced depicting the spatiotemporal evolution of building construction over the years 1885–1940. 1091 structures built prior to 1941 are identified and it is argued that weatherization efforts should focus on the oldest buildings first and sequentially address younger structures, lowering both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the least-efficient building stock.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the Spatiotemporal Evolution of Building-Stock Age in Poultney, Vermont: A GIS-Based Approach to Improve Thermal Efficiency in Historical Buildings

Hoesen

Letendre

2013

Environ Plann B Plann Des

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“…This variability can lead to considerable differences in their ability to protect building occupants against outdoor releases. Vogt et al (1999) speculate that residences constructed before 1970 may be more leaky then newer residences, owing to changes in building codes and construction practices. As a result, older dwellings may be less fit to function as emergency shelters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of urban shelter-in-place—II: Residential districts

Chan

Nazaroff

Price

et al. 2007

Atmospheric Environment

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In the event of a short-term, large-scale toxic chemical release to the atmosphere, shelterin-place (SIP) may be used as an emergency response to protect public health. We modeled hypothetical releases using realistic, empirical parameters to explore how key factors influence SIP effectiveness for single-family dwellings in a residential district. Four classes of factors were evaluated in this case-study: (a) time scales associated with release duration, SIP implementation delay, and SIP termination; (b) building air-exchange rates, including air infiltration and ventilation; (c) the degree of sorption of toxic chemicals to indoor surfaces; and (d) the shape of the dose-response relationship for acute adverse health effects. Houses with lower air leakage are more effective shelters, and thus variability in the air leakage of dwellings is associated with varying degrees of SIP protection in a community. Sorption on indoor surfaces improves SIP effectiveness by lowering the peak indoor concentrations and reducing the amount of contamination in the indoor air. Nonlinear dose-response relationships imply substantial reduction in adverse health effects from lowering the peak exposure concentration. However, if the scenario is unfavorable for sheltering (e.g. sheltering in leaky houses for protection against a nonsorbing chemical with a linear dose-response), the community must implement SIP without delay and exit from shelter when it first becomes safe to do so. Otherwise, the community can be subjected to even greater risk than if they did not take shelter indoors.Keywords: sorption, infiltration, air-exchange rate, toxic chemical, emergency response. * Corresponding author. Tel: +1-510-486-6591; fax: +1-510-486-6658.Email address: ajgadgil@lbl.gov (A.J. Gadgil). 2/31Submitted to Atmospheric Environment November 21, 2006 IntroductionIn the event of a sudden, large-scale release of a toxic chemical into the atmosphere, nearby populations may be advised to take shelter indoors. Shelter-in-place (SIP) requires simply being indoors, closing doors and windows, and turning off fans. Broadly, SIP offers protection through two modes. First, lower peak indoor concentrations compared to outdoor concentrations are encountered after a short-term release because building envelopes limit indoor-outdoor air exchange. Second, sheltering may reduce cumulative exposures through one or more mechanisms, including transformations of toxic chemicals on building surfaces and timedependent manipulation of ventilation rates.The effectiveness of SIP for protecting public health can depend upon many factors.Attributes of the release, such as the quantity emitted, toxicity of the chemical, release duration, and atmospheric transport and dispersion, influence the effectiveness of protection. Building characteristics, including leakiness of the building envelope and the interactions between the toxic chemicals and building surfaces, also play an important role. Finally, human factors such as delays in notification and response, and the t...

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“…Other reports out of the CSEPP program are more policy related, discussing issues such as planning for SIP, deciding between evacuation and sheltering under a given scenario, managing building occupants [17][18][19][20][21][22] and assessing the housing stock near chemical storage sites [23]. This latter document looks primarily at the age of houses near these sites and discusses airtightness in general, but does relate building age to the airtightness of these houses.…”

Section: Csepp and Other Fema Documentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Airtightness evaluation of shelter-in-place spaces for protection against airborne chembio releases

Persily¹,

Davis²,

Emmerich³

et al. 2009

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ii iii ABSTRACT Due to concerns about potential airborne chemical and biological releases in or near buildings, building owners and managers and other decision makers are faced with a number of options for increasing their building's level of protection against such events. Among the various technologies and approaches being proposed and implemented is shelter-in-place (SIP). SIP strategies involve having the building occupants stay in the building, generally in a space designated for such sheltering, until the event is over and the outdoor contaminant levels have decreased. While much guidance is available on the implementation of SIP in buildings, important technical issues remain about the degree of protection provided by a particular space and the factors in determining the level of protection. In particular, many recommendations suggest tightening the walls of SIP spaces, but there has been insufficient analysis of the relationship between shelter tightness and the protection provided by the SIP space. In order to address some of these questions, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has undertaken a project for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop and demonstrate evaluation methods to relate shelter airtightness to the performance of shelter-inplace approaches for airborne chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) protection of building occupants. The focus of this effort is on short term sheltering, on the order of hours, rather than longer term sheltering which generally employ filtration and air cleaning equipment to supply clean air to the occupants of the space. This project has consisted of the following tasks: a literature review of SIP strategies and performance issues; development of a study plan for testing SIP airtightness evaluation methods; implementation of the study plan through a combination of experiments and simulations; and, finally, development of recommendations on SIP evaluation and possible performance criteria for candidate SIP spaces.

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Assessment of Housing Stock Age in the Vicinity of Chemical Stockpile Sites

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Characterizing the Spatiotemporal Evolution of Building-Stock Age in Poultney, Vermont: A GIS-Based Approach to Improve Thermal Efficiency in Historical Buildings

Characterizing the Spatiotemporal Evolution of Building-Stock Age in Poultney, Vermont: A GIS-Based Approach to Improve Thermal Efficiency in Historical Buildings

Effectiveness of urban shelter-in-place—II: Residential districts

Airtightness evaluation of shelter-in-place spaces for protection against airborne chembio releases

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