NIST World Trade Center Investigation Team Calls for Improvements
Draft Report and Recommendations on Safety, Emergency Response Released for
Comment
NEW YORK-The U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today called on the organizations that develop building and fire safety codes, standards and practices-and the state and local agencies that adopt them-to make specific changes to improve the safety of tall buildings, their occupants and first responders. The recommendations result from the agency's investigation of the fires and collapses of New York City's World Trade Center (WTC) towers following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Based on the findings of the most detailed examination of a building failure ever conducted, NIST is making 30 recommendations. "We believe these recommendations are both realistic and achievable within a reasonable period of time, and should greatly improve the way people design, construct, maintain and use buildings, especially high-rises," said WTC Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder at a press briefing in New York City. "The recommendations also should lead to safer and more effective building evacuations and emergency responses. However, improvements will only be realized if they are acted upon by the appropriate organizations." - see here
watch
this NIST press briefing
regarding recommendation given:
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Enhanced Fire Resistance of Structures: The procedures and practices used to ensure the fire resistance of structures should be enhanced by improving the technical basis for construction classifications and fire resistance ratings; improving the technical basis for standard fire resistance testing methods; using the "structural frame" approach to fire resistance ratings; and developing in-service performance requirements and conformance criteria for spray-applied fire resistive materials (SFRMs, commonly referred to as "fireproofing" or "insulation").
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ON 9-11 - where did the fire that was supposedly a high enough temperature to melt steel
and/or compromise the structural integrity come from?
if fire cannot find a hold with fire-proofed materials
it naturally looks for things that will sustain it...
If this heat came from the burning office contents on a few floors: then
does this mean that all the contents of a high rise structure should be
fire-proofed to the same standards?
is that economically viable?
will the occupiers of these buildings be
asked to buy special fireproofed goods?
[now there's a new market...!]
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regarding recommendation given:
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Active Fire Protection: Active fire protection systems (i.e., sprinklers, standpipes/hoses, fire alarms and smoke management systems) should be enhanced through improvements to design, performance, reliability and redundancy of such systems.
Among the recommendations in this group are:
enhanced fire protection systems that provide redundancy and accommodate greater risks associated with increasing building height and population, more open spaces and higher threat profiles of particular buildings;
fire alarms and communications systems that provide continuous, reliable and accurate information on life safety conditions; and
real-time secure transmission of data from fire alarm and other monitored building systems for use by emergency responders at any location, and presentation of that information either off-site or in a black box that that can survive a fire or other building failure.
Improved Building Evacuation: The process of evacuating a building should be improved to include system designs that facilitate safe and rapid egress; methods for ensuring clear and timely emergency communications to occupants; better occupant preparedness for evacuation during emergencies; and incorporation of appropriate egress technologies.
Among the recommendations in this group are:
improving occupant preparedness for building evacuations through joint and nationwide public educational campaigns;
designing tall buildings to accommodate full building evacuation of occupants if needed-including stairwell and exit capacity that accommodates counterflow due to access by emergency responders;
maximizing the remoteness of egress components (i.e. stairs, elevators) without making them hard to reach;
using pagers and cell phones for broadcast warning systems and Community Emergency Alert Networks; and
evaluating for future use such advanced evacuation technologies as protected/hardened elevators, exterior escape systems and stairwell navigation devices.
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Aren't these recommendations a little obvious?
Preparedness? Sprinklers? better evacuation routes? stronger elevators? No shit Einstein!!!
are we really left with a scenario wherby the inner space of a building
can be allowed to burn - if the structural shell is garaunteed via fireproofing ?
isn't this scenario just perfect for floor based insurance fraud?
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concerning this statement in the above recommendations:
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"real-time secure transmission of data from fire alarm and other monitored
building systems for use by emergency responders at any location, and
presentation of that information either off-site or in a black box that that
can survive a fire or other building failure."
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does the term 'monitiored building systems' also imply a possible future
'command and control' scenario, whereby in an emergency
1.
the building can itself 'sense' where people are evacuating to...
[rfid via ID card / verichip tagging would render this functional]
2
could a building based future command and control structure
thus react accordingly and herd people into safety by remotely controlling
byways to accept an optimum safe capacity of evacuees
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statement:
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"The procedures and practices used in the design, construction, maintenance,
and operation of buildings should be improved to include encouraging code
compliance by nongovernmental and quasi-governmental entities"
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Does this imply that nongovernmental and quasi-governmental do not have to follow the
same compliance to safety as other organisations?
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why did the WTC towers HAVE to come down?
Is this really an excuse for the infringement of privacy on a building wide
level
under the ruse of safety?
a scenario:
the fear based behavioural management of incumbents
based on an already existent survival / success / business structure
dictates the 'important' or compliant-obedient evacuees are shown a faster
safer exit ?
IE each ID Card has a level
each level is treated differently
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"People who work in the building will enter it by swiping ID cards that will tell the elevators their floor; readouts will then tell them which elevator to use."
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Most commercial buildings in the United States still lack the most rudimentary technology, such as timers for lights, but the idea of buildings that use technology to save energy got a boost from the 2000 energy crisis, when California experienced blackouts and electricity prices rose.
That year, the U.S. Green Building Council launched a program to accredit building professionals in environmental design. Interest in the program, called LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, has skyrocketed. Since 2000, about 19,000 people have been accredited, 9,000 in the last month alone.
About 4 percent of new commercial construction is now completed under LEED guidelines, said Taryn Holowka, a spokeswoman for the Green Building Council.
Many new building materials are first developed in Europe, where energy is more expensive. "The construction industry is behind the times in some ways, compared to many other industries," said Patrick Mays, chief information officer of architecture firm NBBJ.
Smart building technology in the United States was formerly reserved for large projects and college campuses.
"Now we're seeing it make its way down, even to the residential market," said Jim Jones, an architecture professor at Virginia Tech. Think of the motion-sensing lights common outside garages and front doors.
As technologies such as sensors become cheaper, their uses spread.
The elevators at Seven World Trade Center, which is under construction at New York's ground zero, a dispatch system that groups people traveling to nearby floors into the same elevator, thereby saving elevator stops and trips.
People who work in the building will enter it by swiping ID cards that will tell the elevators their floor; readouts will then tell them which elevator to use.
detnews.com
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this is a command and control structure for a building within a city
of thousand of similarly structured buildings - centres - parks
interconnected via enforced
lifestyle 'choices' & threataganda
[as we can see in the above example the 'energy crisis' is used to great effect]
see also:
Home - Leisure - Work
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Can building automation systems overcome interoperability problems to assert control over our offices, hotels, and airports?
If only you could work in a building where you could keep your office as you like it, icicle-cold, while your neighbor turns hers into a sauna. If only your office lights and computer could flicker on every morning when you swiped your security card in your building's lobby, so that you would be ready to work when you sat down with your first cup of coffee. And while we're on this flight of fancy, wouldn't it be reassuring to know that your building would shield you from harm in the event of an earthquake, or even a chemical or biological attack?
Buildings could do all these things and more, if only they had brains.
As it happens, a few buildings already do, and they're getting smarter. The brainiac of buildings, the U.S. Pentagon, opened for business on 12 September 2001, the day after terrorists crashed a plane into it. Thanks to a network of digital sensors and controllers that let operators close dampers and turn off fans, the fire from the crash was confined to one wedge of the building.
[For more details, see "Saving the Pentagon"] which states that in 2001 - the Pentagon had a 'laptop accessable' automation system in place:
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On the morning of 11 September 2001, Steve Carter was in his office at the Pentagon. Carter, an electrical engineer who is the real estate and facilities liaison to the Pentagon's US $1.85 billion renovation program, has worked in the building for 17 years.
Carter's office is in the newly renovated area called Wedge 1, in the Building Operations Command Center (BOCC), which opened 8 June 2001. If the Pentagon's building systems-heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), fire safety, lighting, and security-are its nerves, then the BOCC is its brain. It's the place where all these systems come together through a network of thousands of sensors, actuators, and controllers.
Rather than dispatching technicians to fix a problem, operators in the BOCC can fine-tune many building systems remotely-for instance, raising the set point on a thermostat or turning off a fan in an air-conditioning duct to prevent smoke from a fire from spreading.
Carter and his colleagues were watching the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York City burning on television when a plane struck Wedge 1. "All the control boards in the BOCC went to the fire alarm system, and the alarms came up bright red," Carter says. "We immediately started shutting down some of the air handlers; our first thought was, nothing could be this massive." Shortly afterward, the BOCC lost power-and the operators their ability to make adjustments to the building systems from there.
Carter grabbed a two-way radio and a laptop and headed to neighboring Wedge 5 to a mechanical room housing HVAC equipment. From his laptop, he tapped into the Pentagon's automation network and sent out commands that closed dampers and turned off fans around the building to contain the smoke and starve the raging fire of oxygen.
When he learned that a break in a water main had dropped water pressure to a point too low for firefighting, Carter dispatched engineers to the bowels of the building to remedy the problem. All in all, eight people stayed in the Pentagon that day, controlling the fire damage remotely via workstations from various mechanical rooms in the building, with Carter directing the effort by radio.
The next day, the Pentagon reopened. In all, 189 people had been killed, 125 on the ground, and the building suffered $501 million in damages. But the Secretary of Defense's office, the National Military Command Center, and other mission-critical areas like data storage centers and wiring and switch rooms were spared.
None of this was possible back in 1997, when Carter convinced his superiors to build the BOCC to streamline day-to-day operations. He also convinced them that, while they were installing brand-new HVAC equipment in Wedge 1-the first area to be renovated-they should also retrofit the 55-year-old HVAC equipment throughout the rest of the Pentagon with new digital controls.
Not only would the new equipment, and the old equipment with new controls, be automated and operated through the BOCC, but it could be programmed to work more efficiently, which would help slash energy use by 35 percent by 2010, saving up to $5 million per year.
Johnson Controls Inc. (Milwaukee, Wis.) designed and installed the new HVAC system, linking it to the fire safety system. Engineers also added leak detectors to the natural gas system and to the air chillers, and linked them to the BOCC. Johnson's equipment uses Metasys, the company's own control language.
"In 1997, we couldn't find a vendor with a fully interoperable system for either BACnet or LonWorks," says Carter, adding that these protocols could be used in the Pentagon as the renovation progresses. The BOCC itself is linked via fiber-optic cable to network control modules in each mechanical room, which allows for remote (laptop) control.
New capabilities will be added to the Pentagon's building automation system over time. Next up is an improved lighting control system, which may incorporate Internet protocol-addressable fixtures and occupancy and day-lighting sensors.
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remote access to building controls? Any questions???
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The Pentagon's costly, proprietary automation system isn't likely to find its way into ordinary office buildings any time soon. But that doesn't mean that we'll be stuck with "dumb" buildings for the foreseeable future. The good news is that two open communications standards for building automation are finally taking hold in the marketplace. One, known as BACnet (for Building Automation and Control Networks), has been endorsed by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Atlanta, Ga. The other, called LonWorks, was developed by Echelon Corp., San Jose, Calif. ("Lon" stands for local operating network.) These two standards have the best chance yet to turn the tide of the long, disappointing history of smart building control and automation.
In the meantime, technologies like those deployed in the Pentagon, along with some even more advanced, are being tested in government and university research labs. Among other things, they'll let future buildings minimize damage when an earthquake hits by automatically changing the way weight is carried by internal structures. Or upon detecting a harmful chemical substance in the building's air ducts, the system would instantly seal them off and contact authorities [see " The Road Ahead"].
For now, though, efforts to make buildings smarter are focusing on cutting costs by streamlining building operations like air conditioning and lighting. Building automation is critical to these efforts, mainly because it could reduce the annual operating costs of buildings by a whopping 3.6 to 7 cents per square meter, according to a 1999 study conducted by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology - [see Getting a Handle on Costs]
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Towers of Babel
If building automation is such a fabulous boon, why hasn't it caught on everywhere? Start by considering that the term building automation is a catchall for a sprawling category of control and communications technologies that link building systems that are typically controlled separately-like electrical distribution, fire, security, heating and air conditioning, and elevator and escalator systems. To be effective, any automation system must enable all these mechanical and electrical systems to work from a single building control point.
That's a tall order because those systems, and the digital controllers that run them, are made by scores of manufacturers, use proprietary hardware and communications protocols, and may even be administered through special workstations that are almost impossible to integrate into a single control setup.
Smart Buildings
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This diagram shows how "building automation systems today rely on open, industry-specific protocols such as LonTalk (shown) or BACnet for device-level communications. But they increasingly leverage Ethernet and TCP/IP for home runs back to the control systems."
The Rise of Smart Buildings
computerworld article
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Taking decisions away from mechanical switches
Networked control around the home extends beyond the relatively simple activities of turning lights on and off but this has been used as an example of how the system works. With a wide variety of devices connected to the network, previously discrete systems are able to share resources and information and to response more appropriately to external stimuli.
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Radio frequency communication
An emergent medium for smart homes is the use of radio signals to communicate. New standards developed initially for computers are now starting to be applied to smart homes. LAN, the IEEE 802.11b standard for wireless computer networking, and Bluetooth, a standard for short range wireless communication for computers, peripherals and mobile telephone, have both been suggested as new mediums for smart homes communications.
jrf.org.uk
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gated behavioural zones
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Though the technology has taken awhile to arrive, smart homes are already a $600 million-a-year business. With the further integration of computer and wireless technologies, prospects are for a multibillion-dollar industry within a very few years.
[snip]
"Over the summer we had students using remote controls to operate a variety of devices as they come into the lab to work, eat, that kind of thing," Dr. Cook said. "We collect data on these individuals, their uses and their typical activities in the lab."
This fall, that data is being used to predict activities and automatically develop patterns of use and optimization.
"Not only does a smart house make living easier, it has implications for enormous energy savings," Dr. Cook points out. "We look at factors like comfort of the inhabitant as well as saving operating costs. The smart house can adjust temperatures, lighting and other devices while you're there and while you're not, to minimize the cost while still keeping you comfortable.
- The house of the future
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Intelligent buildings
Economic Impact:
Any Intelligent Building project must provide a significant financial return. It is not acceptable to consider investing in intelligent attributes of a project, unless you can prove that there will be an acceptable return on investment. So how do you calculate the ROI? The answer to this will depend on the project, ownership structure and a series of assumptions. Lets start by looking at where we will gain returns on making a project intelligent. Intelligent Buildings provide returns to their owners through the following areas:
Lowered Operating Expenses: Adding intelligent features to a building will allow it to operate more efficiently reducing both energy usage and expense. In addition Intelligent Buildings provide tools to optimize the staffing and operations of the building allowing for improved efficiency and a potential reduction in the labor required to operate the building. Reduced operating expenses are fairly easy to estimate and document, and are ongoing expenses that can be reasonably expected to steadily increase into the future. Investments in tools and systems that reduce energy usage, allow for better energy purchasing, and reduce the labor required to run a building have a high degree of certainty in paying off as estimated.
Improved Occupant Experience: The second place that we see a return on incorporating improved building systems and technology is in providing a better experience for the occupant. This means providing a safe, secure, comfortable environment that has the necessary technology to achieve the mission of the facility. Many surveys by groups such as BOMA and IFMA show that over 20% of occupants are not satisfied with the current comfort of their space. Providing improved comfort, both in physical (temperature, lighting, humidity, IAQ) and emotional terms (confidence, convenience, empowerment, assurance) allows occupants to focus on their mission in the building and not spend time focused on the lack of comfort. Improving occupant productivity even a few minutes a day provides for a dramatic return to the employer.
Calculating Economic Impact:
The ROI obtained for a project also depends on the ownership structure of the building. Buildings that are owner occupied, such as schools, hospitals, corporate and government facilities, directly accrue both the benefits both of reduced operating expenses as well as the improvement in occupant productivity. Calculating the returns are fairly straight forward. Buildings that are owned by a developer and leased out to tenants become a little bit more complicated. In the leased building model the building owner typically accrues the benefits of reduced staff expenses. Energy costs are often passed on as part of the lease to the tenants. Therefore any energy savings is seen by the tenant and not the building owner. Likewise improvements in the occupant experience are gained by the tenant and not directly by the owner. So why would a commercial building developer (or REIT) decide to create an Intelligent Building? The answer is that a building with improved technology, comfort, safety and productive space is more desirable to tenants. The expectation is that when a tenant has to select between similar buildings, that the one that is intelligent will tend to get better occupancy rates and improved rents along with fewer tenant concessions. The net result for the savvy developer is an advantage in buildings with improved occupancy. This coupled with the reduction in operating expenses provides for the ROI to the building owner
- automatedbuildings.com
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Science & Technology defined & used:
They are the Masters to our slavery to the system
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