 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2015 Trust Live Preservation Innovation. Please welcome to the stage Paul Edmondson. Good morning. Since 1998, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development have partnered to award the National Trust HUD Secretary's Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation. This award recognizes organizations and agencies for their success in advancing the goals of historic preservation while providing affordable housing and or expanded economic opportunities, particularly for low and moderate income families and individuals. This year, we honor the 3010 Apartments Limited Partnership for their renovation of the historic Newsboys Home in Midtown, St. Louis. The Historic Newsboys Home in Midtown, St. Louis has been serving the homeless community for more than 100 years. The Salvation Army's recent renovation of the building provides 58 affordable one-bedroom apartments and is part of a larger project that will develop four new buildings that will house supportive services for residents. To present this award, I welcome to the stage Marion McFadden. Marion is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Grant Programs in HUD's Office of Community Planning and Development and is responsible for overseeing affordable housing and community development programs. Welcome, Marion. Thank you, Paul. I'm so happy to be here with all of you this morning to present the National Trust HUD Secretary's Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation to the Salvation Army for the restoration of the 3010 Apartments in St. Louis. As you heard and you saw, built in 1906 as the father Peter Joseph Dunn's Newsboys Home in Protectorate, the building was used to provide housing and education for St. Louis's orphaned boys and abandoned boys. And now, nearly 110 years later, I'm so happy that the building is once again being used to house those most in need. Here to accept the award are Gary Busiek, Lieutenant Colonel Leneal Richardson and Lieutenant Colonel Patty Richardson for the Salvation Army's Midland Division, along with John Weist and John Kennedy of the St. Louis Equity Fund. Those of us at HUD are inspired every year evaluating the projects that come in. The nominations display such a level of creativity and innovation, and it's just so inspiring for us to review them. So congratulations again. I appreciate the chance to join you here today to talk about what we do at HUD, which our Secretary Julian Castro has renamed from HUD to the Department of Opportunity. We have a far-reaching mission to provide opportunities for some of our most vulnerable citizens, to have better housing, better communities, and better lives. As you can imagine, it's a tall order. Let me say a special word about the inclusivity portion of our mission. I see preservation's efforts to recognize and honor the cultural heritage of minority and ethnic groups as a valuable component of strong communities, and in particularly many of the communities that HUD serves nationwide. I don't just mean the preservation of buildings and places, but also of diverse cultural heritage, ties and traditions, the intangible dimensions of heritage that together enrich us as a nation. I applaud the field for your collective work on inclusivity and the preservation movement, and really just want to thank you for doing that because it benefits us all. We're here today to talk about innovation. When I think about innovation, I think about the hardest challenges that we're facing. What are the worst and most vexing problems? What are the most important things we need to do? The things that really matter long-term? And what can we as HUD, as the federal government, do to address them? True innovation isn't changed for change's sake, but improvement. I'm going to focus on two areas of innovation in my remarks this morning. Facing the challenges posed by climate change, including natural disasters of increasing frequency and intensity, and using technology to make the actions of the federal government transparent and inclusive for the citizens that we serve. Let's start with Hurricane Sandy. Three years ago, Hurricane Sandy caused tens of billions of dollars of damage across the eastern seaboard, hitting the worst New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maryland. The storm caused more than 150 fatalities. The damage to homes was hitting more than 650,000 homes, totally destroyed or damaged, and more than 8.5 million people were without power. The damage to infrastructure is almost incalculable. Three months after the storm, Congress passed and the president signed a bill providing $50 billion for the recovery. For HUD, FEMA, the Department of Transportation, the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies, you may not think of HUD as a disaster recovery agency. Many people who work at HUD don't think of us that way. But in fact, we've become a large player in disaster recovery and received the single largest appropriation after Hurricane Sandy. So we got $15.2 billion for Hurricane Sandy and other major disasters occurring in a three-year period. And that money flows through our Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program, which we also called CDBGDR. Billions of dollars in CDBGDR are being invested in infrastructure repair, including investments to make communities more resilient for when not if the next disaster strikes. This map shows the extent of the storm's impacts on federally assisted affordable housing in the New York City region. The peninsula in the center of the picture is Manhattan. One of HUD's goals in resilience planning is preservation of affordable rents for existing community residents. Federally funded improvements should not displace long-term residents of modest means. Many of the most vulnerable residents live in the most physically vulnerable places, whether that's flood plains or other places across the country that are the most dangerous. That's the cheapest land and where we're most likely to find the poorest community members. These are also the people who have the greatest vulnerability physically and the hardest time recovering after a disaster hits. Historic Roe House neighborhoods, often built as working-class housing, pose a special challenge after disasters. One alternative to make homes safer in the flood plain is to elevate them, lifting them up so water flows underneath them, but you can't raise an entire block if one homeowner refuses. In lieu of elevation in these kinds of cases, the President's Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force recommended moving electrical and mechanical systems to upper floors to areas least likely to flood. And in response to concern about rising flood insurance premiums, HUD fostered an agreement with FEMA to allow credit for dry flood-proofing measures as a way to decrease premiums. When Hurricane Sandy devastated communities in the region, we were reminded of the importance that climate change, including rising sea levels, will have in development and planning decisions. Our communities need to become more resilient and sustainable. So after Hurricane Sandy, with the $50 billion in appropriations, we saw a real chance to harness the power of the federal government to bring the best science and data to communities and to bring worldwide expertise in planning and design to address the big challenges collaboratively. We created a design competition to define and address large-scale vulnerabilities in the Sandy-affected region. By thinking big, we hope to foster innovation and creativity in resilience planning. Large infrastructure projects can be key to protecting many historic communities along the East Coast, but after disasters, communities often feel a strong pull to put back what was lost exactly as it was, even if that means putting it back in danger. We pushed for better designs for new plans to protect people and property in ways that could benefit communities every day, not just in times of bad weather. The results of the Rebuild by Design competition were remarkable. Don't just take it from me. We recently received an award from the General Services Administration, GSA, for conducting the most groundbreaking federal challenge or prize competition of the past five years of government competitions out of more than 100 nominations and were named by CNN.com as the first of 10 great innovations in 2013. There was a lot of excitement sparked by the competition. We chose from 148 international applicants, 10 interdisciplinary teams that comprised a diverse set of complementary skills and approaches. These teams and this process of engagement brought together architects, engineers, hydrologists, ecologists, landscape architects, academics, community organizers, federal, state, and local governments, and affected citizens, bringing everyone together in a new way. With the partnership of the Rockefeller Foundation and other philanthropic organizations in the region, Rebuild by Design didn't just engage stakeholders to develop solutions that had been pre-identified by the federal government, but rather it engaged them to help define and better understand the problem, as well as understanding other community goals and desires. From the beginning, we recognized the value of bringing multiple agencies and disciplines to the table so that the designs would not just be encapsulated in a book on a shelf or some pretty drawing somewhere, but would be implementable and replicable. We chose six projects as winners. The winning projects include the Living Breakwaters Project on Staten Island. This is going to create offshore breakwaters using oyster beds to provide a reef habitat for fish and shellfish, reduce shoreline erosion by decreasing wave heights, and enhance beaches for waterfront recreation. The project also includes an educational component and a learning center so that we can foster a new generation of shoreline stewards. This is the so-called Big U around New York City. It's an eight-mile flood-proofing park. The first phase, which HUD is now funding, will create a containment park with a protective berm with recreational uses on and along it, providing both protection and much-needed recreation in New York City. It's going to serve the residents of 14,000 units of public housing and many others living and visiting the Lower East Side. The last one I'll highlight is a flood control project to protect Weehawken, Hoboken, and Jersey City, New Jersey, that strategically resists delays, stores, and discharges storm surges. The project protects the historic Hoboken Ferry Terminal, creates new civic and recreational spaces, and restores ecological systems like wetlands and marshes. These projects represent true innovation in that they offer spaces not just protecting areas from flood and future disasters, but being enjoyable amenities every single day. I said we didn't just want them to be in a book, but we did actually write a book. It's been just released and is available for download free on RebuildByDesign.org. I would encourage you, if you have even the littlest bit of interest, to go ahead and take a look at the projects because the designs really represent the best thinking from across the world. We're very proud of the work there. So as a result of the competition, we awarded $930 million for the initial phases of the six winning projects. With an overall plan in place, future local infrastructure recreation and community development appropriations and other federal, state and local funds can be steered towards implementing additional phases of the plans. Number of elements of innovation resulted from the project, including the value of the multidisciplinary participatory process and the integration of multiple benefits. But we didn't stop there with the Sandy region. Last year we took the best elements of the RebuildByDesign competition and created the National Disaster Resilience Competition, or the NDRC, which will award a billion dollars to recovery and resilience projects nationwide. It's a two-phase competition. In the first phase we invited 48 states and 17 cities and counties that had the worst presidential declared disasters between 2011 and 2013 to come in to compete. South Carolina, you may notice on the map, is one of the two states that's ineligible because it didn't have a disaster in the 2011 to 2013 period, which is really too bad given the recent flooding that they've had. It's just the luck of the draw that they had three good years. So much like with RebuildByDesign, we spent the first phase engaging communities in defining their vulnerabilities and generating ideas to foster resilience, not only physical infrastructure, but social and economic resilience as well. The competition requires communities to demonstrate a long-term commitment to resilience. We're encouraging communities to incorporate resilience into everything they do, all of their planning, not just what they would do if they received a portion of this $1 billion, but in thinking about all of their planning decisions so that resilience just becomes a de facto way of operating. We continued our great partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, and in this competition they're leading a series of resilience academies to teach applicants about the growing field of resilience and give them practical feedback on their approach to resilience. We've heard from several of the applicants how grateful they are for the process of having gone through the discussion, meeting with other jurisdictions and experts in the field, and are very encouraged that they will find that the process has been useful to them, even though we probably won't be making awards to every single participant. So in that way, we feel that the process itself has been an innovation. As a part of the National Disaster Resilience Competition, HUD offered a webinar on historic preservation in the NDRC to encourage preservationists to participate in local NDRC partnerships, meaning those groups that are planning the application, and to highlight some resilient strategies for historic buildings, like GIS mapping of historic resources, floodgates, like the one shown here in Georgetown, which I understand was discussed somewhat yesterday. More than 500 people have viewed the webinar, and it's still available online. If you're interested, please check it out. It was organized by Nancy Boone, who's HUD's Federal Preservation Officer. She's a tremendous resource, and I encourage you to take a look at it and get to know Nancy. Following the first phase, 40 applicants were invited to proceed to phase two, and they put their proposals in just last week, and we're very excited to take a look and announce the winners in January and see what results. So, recent experience has shown us that the best results come from collaboration at the local level. These one-time appropriations give us a great opportunity to experiment in collaboration, but how do we integrate that into our everyday business? At HUD, the core of what we do is using the Consolidated Plan to engage citizens. The CON plan is a locally driven process that determines priorities for HUD funding in the Community Development Block Grant Program, for affordable housing development and preservation, and other HUD grants totaling about $5 billion annually. 1,200 states and local governments have consolidated plans. I have a question for you. Is your community taking advantage of the CON plan process to foster preservation goals? The answer is probably no, unfortunately, because many are not, so this is the part where I call you to action. Recent technological innovations have made the CON plan process more transparent and accessible than the old days where communities would put a posting in the newspaper, hang it in the library, or some kind of other public facility. Now anyone can go on the web and look inside of their community's Consolidated Plan and see how the city or urban county expert expects to spend the HUD funds. Smaller communities are typically addressed at the state level in a statewide Consolidated Plan. So, through this process, the participants can provide housing and economic development data that they get from HUD to the community to show how they're making their priorities for funding. Localities can add other data layers beyond what HUD provides like environmental and historic property data. The CON plan website gives citizens a point of transparency and an opportunity for advocacy. I encourage you to take a look at your CON plan and see whether historic preservation is a stated goal as it's in this example that you see here from Chester. Look pleased to see if activities are included to implement the goal using HUD funds. If not, there's an opportunity for you to influence the local process. If you're disappointed to see revitalization funds in struggling neighborhoods skewed towards demolition, this is your opportunity to make your voice heard for preservation. But maybe your community uses HUD funds for projects that have multiple benefits, such as a pilot project for HUD assisted housing in an historic district in Toledo. Solar panels were sensitively installed out of sight at a low angle on the roof, which is clearly a historic building, and the project qualified for historic tax credits. It's a renewable energy project and affordable housing project and an historic preservation project. Again, we're seeing enhanced value achieved through co-benefits. I encourage you to use the consolidated plan online to better know the housing and economic challenges communities facing and enhance your advocacy efforts for preservation activities to benefit the community. When projects are selected for funding in advance, you can take a look at them online through the new HUD online environmental review system, or HEROES, where you can see documentation on all the components of the Section 106 review of a project, as well as other environmental compliance areas. At HUD, as you can see, we're committed to providing support to help local decision-makers realize their vision for their own communities. These are inherently local decisions. HUD's providing the tools and the information, but it's up to you to shape where your funding is spent. In conclusion, I believe that historic preservation is critically important because it keeps places as places where we want to be. We feel better when we're in a place that's not freshly minted. Places where we can feel history and tradition feel better to us. In the words of my boss, history isn't just a subject for books and documentaries. It's alive and well in building sites and structures that shape our communities. They tell us who we are and where we come from, and it's critical that we protect our past for present and future generations. This is a year of historic anniversaries, like the National Historic Preservation Act in 2016. HUD is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Our headquarters, pictured in the background here, is a mid-century modern landmark designed by Marcel Breuer and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We've made some barely noticeable changes to the exterior to improve energy efficiency, and we've opened up some of the interior walls to improve the flow of traffic and the flow of light in the building. With these changes, we're preserving our history and addressing our current and future needs. I wish you all good luck in preserving your landmarks, and thank you for your great work and your attention today. And now, please welcome to the stage our session moderator, Wayne Donaldson, and our TrustLive responders, Lance Davis, Catherine Lavoie, and Gina Weiser. Thank you very much, Marianne. I sort of came away with maybe three points that you raised on that, which I think is applicable to all of us sitting here. One was to foster the competition to build resiliency and to building plans after disasters. And the rebuild by design, I think, is a great step of an outreach that you did on that. Also, the partnerships outside the agencies that we're always looking at, and we say a lot about it, but we really don't do it, and I think your exemplary models that you presented was really great. And then harnessing the power that we see all the time of doing the online services. And I think your last few slides of checking on where your project is and everything else. Every time I come to these things, I see all the other online things that you just don't see anymore. So I think this interconnection that you have is really great. So a lot of the federal agencies that are out there, we tend to think of them as perhaps not being responsive or innovative. But I think you'll find from the panel as we go through this is that although they do have their primary mission, which is very important, the preservation and how they use their historical resources within their agencies to achieve these goals are really examples. So I'm going to ask each of you, if you share part of your innovations that we have, in terms of the challenges that you didn't think that you would have when you stepped into it, but also those opportunities that rose, especially for all of you that tend to work with the communities and stuff. And I think I'll start with Gina, if you don't mind. Gina is filling in for Steve from the Army Corps. She's with the trust in the Trust Green Lab. I'm sure that you read that. I know that you have partnered recently with the Army Corps and especially with Annapolis for the non-structural flood proofing. Tell me how the Green Lab and the Trust has found innovation opportunities in that program. Yeah, thank you. So the Army Corps of Engineers, many of you or all of you are familiar, I'm sure, but probably a lot of you aren't familiar with the special advisory committee at the Army Corps called the National Non-Structural Flood Proofing Committee. And this is actually the committee that we got to work with in Annapolis, our national treasure project. And this committee looks at non-structural ways to deal with flood mitigation. So these are the strategies that are not the levies that reduce the actual risk of flooding, but the non-structural deals at the site level. And they do things like berms at the site level. They do dry flood proofing, maybe elevation. It's actually an interesting way to kind of think a little bit more creatively at the site. And what we found was that this non-structural flood proofing committee is actually really interested in working in historic districts and with historic buildings. And so that's kind of where we're starting to find some innovation at the Army Corps on covering this special advisory committee that is really interested in working in historic districts and with us. Thank you. We're going to go through each and then we'll get into a little interchange here. Katherine, the HABS-Hairs programs had started back in the 1930s to put people back to work in some of the great old drawings and that even in my own profession, you know, working on the Mylar's and stuff. Now that you've moved in to the 20th century with the CAD and the more engineering things, how has that changed your perspective on the importance of the HABS-Hairs and now the HAL drawings and let us know what some innovations that you have provided in the program. Sure. As you said, we've been documenting America's architectural, industrial, and now landscape legacy for over 80 years in producing measured drawings and buildings. But of course, in the 20th century, now we're faced with much larger, more complex buildings, you know, covered bridges that span great rivers or, you know, rocket test stands for NASA that are really huge machines with more than structures. And, you know, we're working at Ellis Island, too, doing large hospital buildings and huge cultural landscapes. And so in order to make that possible, we're really using laser scanning and adding textured panofotography and photogrammetry and all these other tools and then the myriad of software that has to power all these different things. So it enables us to do larger structures and also endangered structures at Ellis. There's a lot of complications there. People can't really pass through there. So you can document it remotely and it's much safer to do that. And it also as a byproduct of that, we're able to do virtual tours and things of that, too. And how sustainable is that information? I mean, the techniques that you're using right now... Right. That's a great question because for us, laser scanning and photogrammetry is a tool towards an end, and that is to reduce the measure drawing, which is an interpretive tool. Our audience is the American public, so we feel very strongly that we need a lasting, an understandable tool that laser scans are really for the profession. They're geared towards the profession. And as Marion was saying, with her online innovations and stuff, can we just go online and find all of the haves-hares drawings? Well, yep, right, absolutely. Luckily, the Library of Congress is our curator, so it's made available online copyright-free so anyone can use it. So that's wonderful. Thank you. Lance, you were telling me that during the flooding in Mississippi that your family experienced 17 feet of water going through the house. I hope it was two stories, at least, going through there. What are some of the innovations that you have done now at GSA in looking at sustainable programs following like Marion had, for instance, with Superstorm Sandy that's coming out of GSA? Yeah. So we've really been looking at this idea of resiliency and going back to our older structures and thinking about how we can appropriately take care of it. One of the big things we learned during Hurricane Katrina was this whole idea of fuel. You know, our job at GSA is to make sure that the federal agencies have buildings that they can operate. Well, FEMA has a tough time operating if their building doesn't have power and isn't able to be open. So during Katrina, we had diesel generators and they worked for a few days until we couldn't get more diesel to them. And so all of a sudden these hubs of where we were trying to get the recovery going again fell apart because now the diesel generators were out of power and now they had to go and try to find some other place. They had to figure out where that fuel. So now we're really starting to get into how do we make these buildings, going back to an idea of passive survivability, operable windows, making sure that they can still get some sort of fresh air in some way, looking at bringing in renewable energy and providing some battery backups where that they can continue to keep the critical systems operational so that they can do their job. And now the federal government is also going to be a much more mobile workforce. So one of our great stories from Sandy is a lady who actually went to a pet boys with her laptop and convinced them to allow her to get on the Wi-Fi and she was then able to put out contracts to get other buildings within New Jersey open so that federal agencies could get in work. And so that sort of innovation, I think, is really what we've been seeing, thinking really creatively outside of the box. Well, that's a very good model with the partnership. And also you brought up an interesting point is as I was practicing architecture in the 1960, we went through the windowless environment. You know, HVAC could cure it all. We could concentrate on our work. And now we're really going back and looking at our older historic buildings and those intrinsic values outside of the architecture has provided for us. Marion, as a federal agency, what were some of the risks that maybe you got pushed back from not only staff but higher up, but you still forged ahead to do this great innovation with Rebuild because, you know, when CNN awarded you as one of the top 10 innovations for 2013, you had to have some risk in mind when you went into this. Yes, absolutely, that was the case. Although I will say the risk was actually coming from below, not from above, within HUD. So the president had tasked then HUD Secretary Sean Donovan, who was from New York City, to lead the recovery, and he was all in on innovation. It was the people used to operating recovery programs in the agency who were more risk-averse, who were afraid if we did something too risky, maybe Congress wouldn't make us an appropriation next time. We joked, you know, that at HUD, we can find the know in innovation if we look hard enough. But we absolutely got there through a process of talking about what the community's wanted and what the community's needed. So ultimately, we weren't just providing, hey, the federal government thinks the climate is changing and we want you to agree and do what we're saying, but providing a forum and a process to get that buy-in at all the levels. And that's how we mitigated that risk, I think. So I'm going to ask you all a joint question. Have any of you worked together as partners in sustainability and recovery and resiliency? Agency-wise, yes. I don't think none of us have worked personally with each other, but I think agency-wise, you know, we have an interagency sustainability working group that we try to bring many of the federal agencies together to make sure that all of our sustainability goals are being raised together. That, you know, GSA likes to be innovative and really push the sustainable aspect, but sometimes our idea of sustainability is potentially, you know, not appropriate for a fish hatchery. And so how do you balance that along the way? And so that's part of what this group works to bring together. It's where we want to do right by our federal buildings, but we want to do right for all of the federal buildings. Yeah. And with Stephanie's plenary opening session and stuff, is we need to combine both public and private sector as we do this, because as most of you know and from federal agencies, as we come into communities, it's really about preservation of that community and also getting it back up and operating, getting it back to the normalcy before then. Yeah. I'm going to jump in a little bit about the cooperation amongst agencies. One of the things that we heard from the Army Corps when we were talking to them about their work in historic communities is that that's something that they would like to see, that oftentimes when they're working with a historic building at the intersection of, like, climate impacts and flood mitigation and historic buildings, they run into issues where they don't know, like, which federal agency they need to ask about something to do with the building, you know, where they're intersecting with federal agencies. And so something that we're looking at with our partnership with the Army Corps is pulling together some type of a working group that is specifically made up of federal agencies that kind of all intersect around historic buildings when it comes to climate change and disaster mitigation. And so I think just increasing the communication and knowing who's who will definitely help aid in the innovation efforts. We took a similar approach after Hurricane Sandy, a regional infrastructure working group where all the federal agencies, particularly those that issue permits, come together and state and local governments that are using federal funds to create infrastructure projects have one forum to go to to talk to the various agencies and see where the overlapping needs are with the hopes that it will actually shave years off the amount of time it takes to get projects complete. You know, at HABS we tend to be on the front end of things, be proactive. I mean, HABS was actually formed, you know, by the American Institute of Architects Library of Congress and the Park Service because they recognized that we were losing our colonial buildings at that time. And so they were focused on endangered buildings. So, I mean, that ethic has not changed. In fact, it's probably gotten worse. I mean, what's the lifespan of a 20th century building and you had climate change onto that. So we're getting a lot of calls now from coastal sites, from park sites. You can sort of, you know, use GIS to overlay what, you know, the locations of our important sites, historic landmarks, national historic sites, overlay that with areas that are most impacted coastal areas, and then you can identify those sites that are most important and most endangered and sort of focus on those to document before the hurricane hits. Right. I was going to ask you, Catherine, we've always found in terms of any major events in California the documentation of historic resources is always a struggle to get online and for the agencies as they move on, especially FEMA in terms of coming up with costs that they're going to give to the president and stuff. And are you working like with FEMA to also, even though you're in the Habs Hares thing with the overlays and the great stuff that you're doing now, is to work through NPS and developing that more formal list of structures and stuff. Yes, we've been working most closely with our cultural resource GIS lab. They've been very instrumental in Katrina and other instances like that. So we've been helping to identify sites that should be focused. You know, once it's hit, you know, just finding those buildings, then you realize, wow, you know, we should have gotten to that before. Mary, and I was happy to see that California was black on your screen for getting some of the grants. We've had our share of earthquakes, of floods, of slides, of fires, and now it's pestilence up in the forest with all the rats running around. Don't say that. Anyway, so we've had our share with that. But one thing that we did learn in California, and I'm going to ask a question of Lance on this, is that when events happen, especially when you have Northridge or Loma prayer earthquakes and stuff, the people that really know the lay of the land and know where the resources are within their own communities are then strapped with taking care of family making sure everything's there. They're isolated on freeways. They don't know how their house or their home or their office building is and stuff like that. So they're not the resource that you hope to pull from at that time. So we provided a network after Loma prayer in 1989 of preservation architects, engineers, civil engineers, and contractors that would come from actually most of the western states who could come into a zone. They're already deputized as a volunteer disaster worker. So they got their big badge because as you know in terms of emergency, the bigger the badge the more you're out front. So we really have had that and it worked very, very well in Northridge. But Lance, I know that you have been dealing with contractors as well in terms of recovery because one of the problems we seem to have is that when historic fabric falls to the ground, the first thing people want to do is scoop it up and take it to the dump somewhere. And actually those are products that we can reuse in the rebuilding of cycles. So we've developed to put it in. But I know that you've been working with the contractors as well from GSA. Yeah, actually unfortunately I've been double-booked with this event and so I've been going back and forth. So I've been working with the group Green Advantage and some really smart people about what do you do? Those first responders from a construction standpoint, coming into a building, making sure that you secure it so that it doesn't continue to deteriorate. What do you do with the water in it? And then starting to look at those materials, you know people from Greensboro, Kansas were there talking about after the tornado they came in with bulldozers and they bulldozed all that stuff away. Well, they took away a lot of valuable material and then they exposed the lead that was in the ground and so now all of a sudden they had a contamination issue that they didn't realize was there. So they thought they were doing good by getting it all clean and ready to go and they actually made it worse that really took a constructed effort and so we're working on a certification for those contractors who are coming in so that they understand that cleanup method better and so we preserve those resources we make sure we don't make the building worse or the situation worse and then we're able to stabilize things so that we can make smarter decisions moving forward. Mary in one thing that every time we have a disaster one of the biggest problems is the flow of monies not only to come in like you said to fix the problems and the damage that has been done but also to come in and then protect buildings for future and especially in earthquakes we know that we get a lot of female money to fix and put back to normal malice but then we have a lot of money to seismically retrofit those buildings but the flow of money has always been the same. How has your agency speeded that process up? So the first thing I'd say about HUD's role in disaster recovery is we don't actually have a permanent role it takes an act of congress every time to appropriate money to the community development block grant program so we're always a little bit behind the eight ball so after Sandy it was about three months later different disasters different periods of time before congress acts and tell when we think a disaster is big enough that congress might be coming and we use our existing staff and resources to talk with communities but after Hurricane Sandy once we got funding we developed a set of tool kits for communities to use to try and get some plug-and-play disaster recovery programs for housing rehab or for multi-family housing development and preservation small business assistance and other ideas so that with next disasters you can shave off some of the startup that it takes for communities to run programs because we know that no matter what we do disaster recovery is never going to be fast enough for the people who are affected but there are things we can do on the front end to try and make it faster and we've also worked on how you make the connections between the money that FEMA puts out right after an emergency often within days for temporary housing and how we can help make improvements to units as soon as possible so that people are back in their homes and out in hotels and I know Gina you have been also working on looking forward to sustainable solutions with other federal agencies especially through your GreenLab a lot of people think your GreenLab is just in Seattle because that's sort of where it began but you might want to tell the folks on your national outreach that you have yeah sure yeah preservation GreenLab is very much a national department at the National Trust for historic preservation we actually started in Seattle we have two staff there today and then now since our founding a little over six years ago we like I'm based in New York and then we also have someone in Denver the director of the GreenLab and then here in DC as well so we very much are looking at cities at a national level and then also locally sometimes we zero in on a couple of cities to look at all things sustainability and resilience related in a city as that relates to its existing older and smaller buildings and how can people out here access this information we have a website along with the National Trust embedded in the National Trust website so we have a page and we have all of our research up there as well as our current projects that we're working on ranging from policy work to demonstration projects on energy efficiency and small businesses in commercial districts across the country that's a partnership with the National Main Street Center as well as funding from the Department of Energy so another federal agency interested in historic buildings and energy efficiency and how do you work with federal agencies I know that when Katrina happened the trust was on the spot very very early down there helping with voluntary assessments and everything else so how do you integrate yourself as a partnership again with some of the recovery agencies including FEMA yeah so I think we try to learn as much as possible about what's going on locally and rely especially on our local partners in I'm based in New York and part of my job is to think about the sandy recovery in New York and the context of the older buildings in New York and how to integrate those into the resilience planning and who's working on what and how preservation can get integrated into that better I think recovery efforts take everybody and so it's really that collaborative aspect of working together and working across jurisdictions across disciplines so I think the trust wants to work with everyone so and like I asked Marion do the other three of you have resources for money for grants GSA does have not necessarily from a recovery standpoint but I think from one of the things that we found that was happening with federal buildings is GSA comes in with an influx of money to build a building or renovate a building in a community and many of these places don't have planning departments to really take advantage of that influx of money so we do have a we help fund a grant program through EPA to deal with those planning departments to take advantage of a new courthouse coming into a downtown area and to be able to to take that existing community and bring it apart of that infrastructure we've had several opportunities to the community has brought in green ways and they've looked at integrated storm water management and so they're looking at you know taking that new building and taking that flood waters or the storm waters and integrating them with with the street and the whole sort of idea of making it essentially a new type of main street going on Catherine you had mentioned climate change in your opening statements how is how is nps working with the haves hares initiatives and stuff to help identify and perhaps record prior to let's say sea rise or where you have tremendous droughts and winds and storms and all that have you had a chance to identify those particular properties that may be in harm's way and get those at least identified well as I mentioned we can certainly overlay those maps we know through just mapping where those important sites are and those sites most at risk so we have been able to identify that but actually targeting funds to get to those we're working with a lot of parks and so they individually will approach us and ask us to do documentation beforehand but systematically we've sort of got to the end of identification well I know with the historic preservation fund especially for the state historic preservation officers that are out there we have to give 10% of the money that we receive from National Park Service to our CLGs for various efforts that they do and I know that one thing that we have done in California for several years is identify those particular resources that may be in harm's way whether it's fires of canyons whether it's flood zones possible salamis and this and we give an extra 5% to the scoring sheet for lack of better words in terms of giving those particular grants out and it did two things one it allowed for a survey to be done at the local level to where they can really identify it but second I think it also raised awareness of those particular structures that are in harm's way and I don't know Marion have you done the same thing at HUD as identify future areas that may be in harm's way and also the resiliency of those particular communities so we're generally a clearing house we pass money to states and units of general local government that use that data to make the decision we've done what we can to look to other agencies that are providing information but through the national disaster resilience competition one of the things we asked of the applicants is you tell them what your risk is you look across the board at your variety of threats so not just what hit you and so you qualified because you had a presidential declared disaster but looking forward what are your vulnerabilities and come in and make the case to us about where your areas of greatest risk are I think this point about documentation and understanding which properties are at risk is a really big point and it's something nationally at a very basic level would be amazing to have not just the national register buildings but then also zooming down and looking at the state level and at the local level and getting all of those documented alongside with flood risk other climate impacts so all communities have a really basic understanding and foundation to work from I guess the risks that we face since I said we're sort of on the front end doing the documentation before the disaster the risks we take are more in the documentation that is produced and I think one of the greatest risks we face is this is using these new technologies and how that information will last into the future I think the greatest dangers become so enamored of laser scans and pano photos and all the dazzling visual impact of that that you think that laser scanning is all you need and we sort of pushed back against this scan and can and mindset we're thinking yes you can scan it and then store it away and you're done with that when in fact we feel very strongly that we need a lasting record we have to adhere to the Secretary of the Interior's standards so then make sure that that documentation lasts into the future and that is sustainable and right now National Archives I know estimates the cost of storage as 10 times that of capture so we're looking in the future if we depend only on digital media possibly using all our preservation dollars just to maintain old information and not maybe be able to collect new information so that's one of the things that most concerns us and then when we have this disaster situation of course it's gone so being proactive in making sure that we're creating documentation that we're recording those stories and that they will last into the future you know as federal stewards I think that's our responsibility to make sure that we have lasting documentation and Lance you had mentioned the unavailability for diesel fuel in order to do that I'd like to hear from each of you on how well do you think the communities are preparing for resiliency to get back to normalcy in their particular communities I'll give you an example is that we initiated a program in California to where the lumber yards would store pre-made scaffolding that would protect as shoring for historic buildings because that's always one of the problems since we do have other overlaying laws like imminent threat you know where buildings are taken down we also have emergency areas where we can carton stuff off you know just the yellow tape there's not enough supply of it so we've we've determined in terms of a certain magnitude of earthquake what we would need to that for the communities but that's it and that doesn't really reach out to Stan because people really want to stay in their areas that's really important and I think what we learned after Katrina is that they couldn't so they moved out and it hasn't really recovered back the way so Mary I'm going to start with you if that's okay sure well the structural engineers in the nation would tell you our report card is what about a D or a D plus for the for the biggest infrastructure projects so I would say we all have a lot of work to do in all of our communities to be prepared one of the things I'm most excited about that HUD's working on now is provision of low and reduced cost internet access for residents of public housing we saw after Hurricane Sandy that that was a really important way for people to connect using social media and email to find where people are and so that's one of the most immediate things of concern to people is how's my family doing how are my friends doing so that when they're displaced they can still maintain those connections for us I know we're really starting to get into making sure that the plans of the building are readily available and that we know where they are and that they're accessible because after an event you're a lot of times bringing contractors that are not familiar with that building they don't know the character they don't know what's behind that wall and they're coming ripping stuff out potentially and they don't understand a lot of the capabilities of what that building can do and so we're making sure those plans are available because a lot of times the building managers they're engulfed in their own personal struggles that are going on and we're trying to make sure that those the manuals and the the measurement and verifications the performance aspects of that building are known and captured and so we have a whole program in place now that we call a LightMNVTouch where we're really trying to make sure we capture those electronically they're accessible they're available and that we can get them out to the teams when they need them okay I'm feeling a little bit like the odd person out here because we're more in terms of documentation but I can make a plug for our collection I know that when disaster strikes they're often looking for existing information and working from that to need to know what is there and what should we be searching for so our documentation is there and I think we're some of the areas we've been most successful is when we're able to partner with other federal agencies as we have with the Veterans Affairs and NASA to again to sort of go in and develop a baseline plan for documentation identify those types of buildings that should be preserved I mean I think the frequently the mindset is oh well we've seen a hospital like that in Milwaukee so we don't need to document and hot springs well in fact each each individual site is sort of geared towards a particular you know medical need or whatever and they each tell their own story so understanding I think that is really important but then also having that information to begin with so you know what you need to keep you know what you need to you know which can go and things like that to just be proactive yeah so in terms of communities becoming more resilient I think they absolutely are I think that most every community is working towards that the thing that I would just like to say is that I think in terms of resilience when we think about resilience in relation to you know historic buildings or older communities it's not just the physical built environment that needs to become more resilient there's also an emphasis on social connections and so the social fabric of a community that's going to increase the resilience and the ability of a community to be able to recover after a disaster or to deal with the impacts of climate change and then you also have the like local economic resilience and so the local businesses being able to like fill that need for the community in order to help them bounce back quickly very good one of the things that struck me especially in your awards was this new idea of landscape and how civil engineering and landscape are now integrating in with our plans and I know one of the things we've struggled with the GSA at sometimes is taking a historic landscape done by you know the Olmsteads and then building a new building and storm water management and I'm sort of curious like how others are handling that in your sort of toolbox you know how do we look at old civil structures and think about that in relationship to flood mitigation is that something we really want to keep was it really working or do we look to these new strategies and you know I'm sort of curious how y'all I'm going to pitch you to Nancy Boone's historic preservation webinar that I talked about earlier because that's part of what we look at right there I think another thing that's interesting with especially the role that older buildings and historic landscapes can play is in helping to tell the story and climate change now and our reaction to it and how we're dealing with it is another part of the story and so like integrating new approaches that are dealing with this kind of new normal I think it's just all kind of like collectively creating the story in a historic place I would just say you know again sort of know what you have know what you have know what you need to protect so you can focus your resources on that and that's really important I think you know you don't want to just take it at face value you know just you have to do a little research and figure out what's really important and make sure you're protecting those well you guys are amazing just about time and rate because you're going back and forth there so I would like to thank you all for this great discussion and you're not the odd person out we just need to be integrated more on that so thank you Catherine thank you all for this and thank you for the audience you can continue the conversation by taking part in learning labs and stuff that are listed here and please do you know we throw a lot of these things up on the screen but somehow you know it just gets in your packet and I know that we all get back to work and stuff but just take 5 10 minutes to get on because I think once you get on you'll be on for a couple of hours so thank you very much