 Aloha, and welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy, and I'm your host, Michioen. Our underwriter is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, which is a program of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. So welcome to, I'm pleased to welcome back our guests, Adam Struvic, who's a graduate assistant with the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, and we're going to be talking to you today about community resilience hubs, everything you wanted to know about them, but we're afraid to ask. Adam, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me back on, Mitch. I'm excited to talk story again. So let's get going on what is resilience, and we're going through what constitutes a resilient hub. So what is resilience? So resilience, I think, has come into play a lot more recently in terms of discussion among politicians and stakeholders and communities. It's really means the way that we bounce back from some sort of emergency or disaster, but it also can mean just kind of how tough you are, how you deal with adversity. So there's differing contexts for resilience. It could be psychological, emotional, talking about an ecosystem, how it bounces back from some sort of shock, or even in our case, an energy system or food system could be resilience. I think maybe about 10 years ago, there was a lot of talk about sustainability, but it's important to make a distinction between sustainability and resilience, because something could theoretically be very sustainable, but not necessarily resilient. I think the wildfire on Maui's really brought us in the focus in the last month or so about what resilience is all about. So it's very, very... Yeah, a timely discussion. A timely discussion. Yeah. So why is resilience so important? Why is everybody so interested in it now? I think a big reason why resilience is so important right now is because of climate change. There's been a lot of scientific study that shows that humans are changing the climate, and there's a number of effects such as stronger storms, sea level rise, coastal flooding, and then erratic rainfall patterns, which could lead to drought or long periods of intensified heat. So communities are looking at this from a local approach and saying that we want to have the ability to encounter these obstacles and overcome them, or at least have them not be too big of a setback, because we're aware that climate change effects will be impacting our community. So that's why resilience has come to the forefront of a lot of discussions today, and especially... Oh, yeah, we're so geographically isolated that resilience is a huge, huge thing. Yeah, one of the things we have because we're on an island, so sea level rise is an important issue because as the oceans heat up, they expand, and you can already see it when you drive up to the North Shore on high tides, you know, the water is getting pretty close to the road. And I think in one of our other slides, we talk about that, what one community is like, basically blocked off. If you get a Category 1 storm, it blocks off the whole road because there's only one road that goes up to the North Shore, it's sort of you're stuck on a two-lane road. If it's underwater, you're stuck and can't go anywhere. So let's talk a little bit. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was going to say that a lot of the development here in Hawaii is based on sort of a one-way and one-way out road because a lot of our roads are coastal roads. So it's a road that wraps around the whole entire island. So just by the nature of that, there's only one way and in one way out of a community. And that plus the geographical isolation of our whole state makes resilience really important. Just to speak to the geographical isolation, the closest U.S. port, which is Los Angeles, is about 2,500 miles away. So if there is any sort of major catastrophe, we are kind of on our own in terms of age reaching us in a timely manner. I think the emergency agencies are pretty well aware of that, but it's really hard to prepare for something like that when aid is so far away. You know, I'd also like to make the comment when researching this show is look at food sustainability, for example. You know, according to the article I read, we only have five to seven days worth of food available in Hawaii. And most of that is at the store or in a store's warehouse. We don't have a lot of huge amount of food storage. And typically the cycle takes about 14 days from the time you're on the mainland to the time it gets to Hawaii. And I guess on the shelf, you know, it's got to go by ocean, which is like a four or five day trip. Now you're talking 14 days. So food, we don't produce that much food anymore here in Hawaii to support itself. That's a big issue for Hawaii. It's, you know, the level of resilience we have on our food chain. Not good. So what kind of factors affect resilience, so, Adam? So there's a lot of things that come into play when you're talking about resilience. Part of it is the built environment. So how our community is structured, how our city is structured. And that affects the way that we're protected from natural disasters, but it also affects the way that we recover. Additionally, the natural environment has an effect if we're altering ecosystems too much. We're probably lowering our community's resilience. And like you mentioned, talking about food systems, a lot of times food production is part of or can be part of the natural environment. So the more that we're degrading those sorts of areas, the less food we may be able to glean from our natural environment. Additionally, the ecosystem services that the natural environment provides for us. For example, coral reefs block a lot of wave energy coming in from storm surge. So if coral reef goes away, then we're going to be much more exposed to those sorts of disasters. And then one final factor is the connection between actors in the community. So this would be the final bullet point there, the strength and collaboration between stakeholders. So in order to have a resilient community, you really need good cooperation between all levels of government from local up to federal. And then a lot of times resilience is helped by local groups like churches, community groups, schools, NGOs, things like that. Delight. So let's talk about a resilience hub now. This is kind of a new concept. It's not that new because I understand there's been efforts as far back as 2011. But we haven't heard, we've heard about hygiene hubs, but we haven't heard about resilience hubs. So let's talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so a resilience hub is really a place that's in the community that people can gather in case of an emergency. And it provides different services that increase the community's resilience. A resilience hub can take a lot of different forms and we'll look at a couple of them in a few minutes here. But really resilience hubs kind of have already existed in communities, whether it be like a school or some place where you would gather if something goes wrong. But formally calling them resilience hubs kind of lends to more complex energy systems or stockpiling reserves. So really just taking areas in your community and making them into one of these resilience hubs would give you everything you need to make it through a disaster. So now with our transition to clean energy, a lot of times resilience hubs will be on a microgrid so that they can be isolated from the main power system and then keep the community running if the power gets knocked out. Well, like we had on Maui, so there's absolutely no communications at all. And you know, that was one of the major issues in trying to get the word out to people what was going on. So if we go to the next slide, here's kind of a graphical display of what a resilience hub might look like. I think this is like almost a two-story building. So do you want to describe it, what the components are? Sure. So this is a graphic I found from the local government in the District of Columbia. So it just shows some of the elements that you would find in a typical resilience hub. I think most notably are the resilient power systems and communications. So that's ensuring that your community has power and the ability to communicate with others even if lots of people have lost power and those communications. So I'm planning to come out and recharge their cell phones that can get on the internet and find out what's happening in the world and also communicate with their families and friends. I think an important thing to mention is that resilience hubs can function as community centers in times where there's not an emergency. So this is what's referred to as blue sky versus gray sky operation. So blue sky meaning everything's okay. This is just functioning as a normal community center where we can run programs, have community meetings, things like that. But then gray sky when there's some sorts of emergencies that's when the resilient design power system and communications all become very important. Okay. So let's go to the next slide and talk about what they actually do. So resilience hubs really act as a community center and provide security for people, whether that be energy or food security. So a lot of times you need energy to preserve food so that you kind of go hand in hand. They also reduce the burden on local emergency personnel because they make it easier for them to coordinate a response to an emergency and also communicate with whether it be the state or federal government or emergency management agencies. In both blue sky and gray sky times they can provide access to technology. They could have a technology center where people can come in and use a computer or printer or something like that. And finally they back up communications networks. But a big part of both resilience and probably sustainability are reducing carbon emissions. So a lot of the resilience hubs that we're seeing proposed today are using clean energy systems are advertised as carbon neutral. So one final kind of service that they provide is reducing the overall carbon emissions of the community. Very good. So I really like this next slide where we're talking about a mobile model. I want to make a comment about it after you say what it is here. Yeah well I had lived in Florida for a few years so I am familiar with how warm it gets there. So this was a mobile resilience hub that was designed for the Orlando city government and it actually acts its primary function is as a cooling station for people that may be vulnerable to heat. You know we talk a lot about the urban heat island effects where cities get a lot hotter than surrounding areas. So in places like Phoenix, you know California, Florida, probably Texas I imagine that we'll be seeing more and more of these mobile kind of models and when I found this graphic it reminded me a lot of a hydrogen bus. So I'm hoping you can speak a little bit on that. Yeah I was going to speak about that. Thanks for the intro on that. So we've developed fuel cell electric buses on the big island and one of the things we did on one of them is we put in a power export system which is a 10 kilowatt system that runs off the bus's power system and I can produce 110 to 20 volt DC power for about 30 hours so it could totally power up something like you're talking here or you can connect it into a building to provide these extra power supplies at a mobile basis when you have a civil defense emergency. And so the other beauty of it is that you can refill it or charge it back up again charge it back up again in about 15 minutes because that's how long you just have to refill the bus with hydrogen you're off the races again so you get another 30 hours of power on it. So basically what it makes is your whole bus system can become a mobile power system in times of emergency with civil defense really like this and then when you're trying to justify you know costs of a bus compared to a diesel maybe now but maybe not so much later when they get to be at parity it really makes a good business case the value you know value added business case what's what's the value of being able to save somebody's life by running a dialysis machine or keep them cool like you say like you see here so that's that's that's a great concept and something we can develop as we continue to go forward. Yeah and I think that's a big part of this whole resilience hub idea is being able to stack different functions so in your case it's the community bus system but it's also functioning in times of emergency as a backup or redundancy to all these different things. So that's something that a lot of resilience hubs do is take an existing building in the community whether it be a school or hospital and then you're able to retrofit that into a resilience hub so they don't necessarily need to be built from scratch or they can stack upon functions like the community bus system like you mentioned so yeah I think that's great. Okay so let's talk a little bit more about why we want them here in Hawaii I think we covered it but let's we actually have a slide on that so go for it. Well Hawaii has a commitment to renewable clean energy so resilience hubs and micro grids kind of have to go hand in hand when we're discussing that. Micro grids again is a way to isolate yourself from the main power grid which a resilience hub would do and this is just due to the nature of reducing the use of fossil fuels but in Hawaii specifically we also have very isolated communities like we've discussed a little bit we are vulnerable here to several different kinds of natural disasters whether it be hurricane tsunami volcano or wildfire and we also have a need for food and energy self sufficiently self-sufficiency. Historically speaking we've been very Hawaii has been very self-sufficient in its food production but now we're heavily heavily reliant on imports for both food and energy so having resilience hubs that contribute to food and energy security would maybe put a small dent in that while also making communities able to respond to disasters more. As we saw on the highway that's really really important just brought it totally into focus we can't ignore this anymore I can't kick the can down the road we've got to be proactive and get out ahead of this thing you know it's kind of a false economy not to invest now because look at the cost of not investing on in Maui I mean billions of dollars as opposed to like for a few million dollars we could have been much better prepared so let's talk about what kind of agencies are out there to support this now. Yeah so I thought something that was interesting when I was doing research is I got a moped going by a lot of community resilience hubs are bottom up meaning that they're started by members in their community or like a NGO that is operating in the community but then they're supported by the higher levels of government whether that be the city and county or even state federal government. The city and county of Honolulu came out with an Oahu resilience strategy plan and a part of that plan was to incorporate resilience hubs in the most isolated communities. Additionally the Hawaii Department of Health which is a state level government has put out some publications on resilience hubs and how they interact with community health and then UH in the form of SOAS is getting involved but the main like NGO or business I guess that's driving the push for resilience hubs I found was called Vibrant Hawaii so they've put out a lot of interesting publications on resilience hubs that the listeners can check out and finally Hawaii County I think has also shown a lot of a lot of interest in resilience hubs. Okay so a prime example is what's happening on Oahu on the North Shore so let's go through that. This was an example of one that's actually being set up now as I'm speaking although it's been started quite a long time ago so tell us about this Adam. Yes so this is in the Ha'uola community which is on the windward side of Oahu. Their process started in 2011 they realized that they were a very isolated community so they wanted to pursue making a resilience hub or planning out a resilience hub. I think part of their process was analyzing what kind of disasters they were exposed to and they found that even with just the category one hurricane it's possible for both ways in and out of the community to be blocked so that kind of necessitates the need for them to be more resilient towards any kind of emergency so the resilience. I like to make one comment that was not you know a category one hurricane it's not just covering the road with water I mean the road could actually get washed away that's why it would be you know much longer than to oh well the storm's gone we're okay now well maybe your roads are totally gone and how long does it take to put in a new road well quite a long time actually even if you're going you know 24-7 trying to put in a new road you still have to spend the time to do it well that's why these people can be stuck there for you know several could it even week before they can get out of their neighborhood. Yeah definitely one interesting thing I think about this resilience hub was that they have a they designed a helicopter pad so they'll they'll be able to evacuate people or fly in and out supplies because like you said if there's no road then I guess the only way to get supplies would be a boat or a helicopter so they thought of a lot of things I also looked more closely at the design and read some other articles and it's pretty interesting that the shape of their resilience hub actually follows an overturned canoe design when when native Hawaiians faced big storms I guess they would paddle their canoes out and then flip them over and it it has the whiff funnel right over the top so that's the design of this resilience hub so I thought it was an interesting way that they're integrating you know traditional knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge with modern design and resilience so like we were talking about too I mean when we're not not in an emergency situation it can also act as a community center you know reading the article where we where we both saw that Sykes to you about researching this out it's like you can have all sorts of other services here at this hub like they were talking about you know dental services you know medical services so all sorts of various services of the community could want and the other interesting thing is that they had a pretty large budget for this it's about a 30 million dollar deal but we compare it to billions if you wipe out a community and and people are hiding at risk and that's it's certainly worse than money although money is always hard to get and my understanding is they've already submitted an environmental assessment and they are looking there there are federal agencies that might be able to support this uh with grants and so they've submitted an EA environmental assessment and we'll see how they go but like you said it started my understanding of the third in 2011 so it's it's not a short not a short time deal to get these things in place but now that we have a have a prime example of what happens if you're not ready then maybe there'll be more incentive uh to get these kinds of uh facilities and capabilities set up yeah and I think like you mentioned um this this might have taken a long time because it's a new project um but maybe some sorts of resilience hubs that are retrofitting already existing buildings or perhaps the mobile resilience hubs that we that we looked at could be you know undertaken in much less time because you're right we do need to get these things going as soon as possible yeah it's too late once it happens fingers stuck but let's have some final thoughts well what do you think about all this with what how can we thumb up for the audience here right so there's I guess there's no really specific picture that should come into your head when you think of a resilience hub because each resilience hub should be unique to the community that it serves um for people what the community looks like uh what kind of disasters they're exposed to um and that's why the priorities for each resilience hub will differ so I guess before a resilience hub gets developed they should probably have a really good analysis of what disasters they might be facing um and then like we talked about resilience hubs can act as community centers even in normal times so that's this idea of blue sky versus gray sky functionality so when the sky's blue and everything's normal it can act as a you know robust community center maybe have community gardens and stuff like that um but when there's emergency it has the backup power the medical supplies the communications um and then you can harvest that garden for your food uh many resilience hubs are from the bottom up so they're founded by community members um but then supported by local governments so I think that's where having really strong community organizations comes into play because it's those organizations that need to do the planning and the analysis to justify uh getting grants or having the government come in and fund and then uh there's plenty of resources that people are interested in learning more about resilience hubs um they're kind of a big topic in urban and regional planning which is what I study so that's how they came onto my radar but I think for your average person they probably you know haven't heard too much about resilience hubs unless they just read this news story that came out so I think it's a good trend and I hope it I hope it continues well it's also very important to have a community involved because if the community is involved and they can stimulate the political class to do something and if the political class doesn't understand that there's a need from the community to who I act on it you know where the community really gets behind it that it sounds like the North Shore crowd uh really got behind it at the I've been pretty aggressive in getting this thing going even though it's taken like for 12 years now they've been at it but they're you know they're they're persistent and persistence wins in the end at the end of the day they're going to win especially now in the current climate we have is much more emphasis on this so I really I really appreciate the work you've done in your Adam and pulling all this information together I wasn't really familiar with myself with resilience hubs and when you recommended that as a topic for today I went ah Bravo that's a great idea so nice job so thank you for that and so we've got to go now we're down to our last half minute it went pretty fast so we've been talking story today with Adam Strubeck from a graduate assistant with the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum and we've been talking about resilience hubs bouncing back from a disaster what they are and why your local community should consider having one and this program will be available for you on ThinkTech Hawaii and of course the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum website so thank you again Adam for educating us on this important subject thanks Bech great to have great to have this convo and thanks to all our viewers for tuning in I hope you found this information interesting and informative and please share it with your friends or your community and start one of these hubs and I bet you and we'll see you back in two weeks with another edition of Hawaii State Clean Energy Aloha