Green Building Drives Distributed Infrastructure Alternatives

Faced with economic instability unlike any seen for decades and awakening to a level of awareness that no longer permits a careless attitude towards environmental matters, the world appears perched to begin a new era which embraces the overall concept of “sustainability”, a catch‐all phrase which establishes a higher level of accountability for our present day decisions and actions. Being sustainable means that we must make careful decisions today and establish means of assessing performance and impact so that we can be certain we don’t compromise things for future generations. Focusing strictly on the vital services which we require in support of our present quality of life, and forgetting for the moment about the luxuries and niceties that are associated with the various products which have become a routine part of our existence, there is now emerging a new perspective on infrastructure services that is captured in the title to this article: Efficient, Effective, Integrated, and Distributed. If we can fully appreciate the value of efficient, effective, integrated, distributed systems and make such changes, the green infrastructure market will rise with great velocity. If we do not make such changes, sustainable infrastructure programs will see a slow and cumbersome evolution mired by large scale capital investment programs and general lack of integration. Source: WEFTEC 2009 Proceedings