Sustainable City Year Reports 2018-19 (Dunes City)

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    Passive Heating Strategies for Disaster Relief Planning
    (University of Oregon, 2019) Naganuma, Lindsey; Rempel, Alexandra
    Three student groups collaborated with city of Dunes City city council and staff to develop passive heating strategies to achieve winter sustainability after the predicted 9.0 magnitude earthquake and accompanying tsunami that will occur just off the Oregon coast. Students investigated ways to create a shelter outside of the tsunami inundation zone for people to seek refuge after a disaster. The Dunes City city council believes they may be without assistance for an extended time period due to their distance from major highways. It is unknown how much infrastructure will be destroyed in the earthquake so the council assumes that assistance will reach them much later than nearby Florence, Oregon. The class visited Dunes City and met Jamie Mills, Dunes City city administrator. During the visit the students learned how Dunes City was already preparing for the earthquake and tsunami. City staff have determined that city hall will be their health center during a disaster and picked out select plots of land where they hope to build relief shelters. Mills also facilitated a visit to both sites. The first site was very sandy and far away from city hall. City staff expressed their concerns about resilience of the structures and the potentially difficult path for citizens travelling to this location. The second site that was a short walk from city hall on a dirt road. The ground on this site was a combination of dirt and sand making it more ideal for disaster relief shelters. At the second site the students performed a site analysis. After the site visit, the student groups discussed their findings as a class and began deciding how relief shelters could be built. Students adhered to the City’s assumptions and goals, including: • Assume post-disaster conditions (e.g. destroyed infrastructure, debris, etc.) • Lack of resources (e.g. food, shelter, medicine, etc.) for at least a month • Lack of services (e.g. electricity, heat, water, etc.) for at least a month • Create shelters large enough to house the citizens of Dunes City and potential tourists (about 50 people) Afterwards, the student groups decided how they would achieve the aforementioned goals through different contextual considerations as well as experimentation with software: Climate Consultant 6.0, EnergyPlus, and Window 7.6. This allowed them to visualize design options for disaster relief shelters that could successfully meet specified goals and serve a variety of purposes before and after a disaster. In conclusion, the student groups determined an ideal site orientation of a variation between south and east. Furthermore, the optimal tilt for any possible glazing system is between 40 and 50 degrees. The student groups experiemented with a variety of different shelter functions for before and after the disaster. Combining adaptible functionality and succesful passive heating strategies, the students show the efficiency and effectiveness of capturing solar resources in a mostly overcast Dunes City.