Hi Deborah,
The 17 factors
are listed below: and the full document TEMPLATE is attached. Most of the 478
incorporated Cities within the State of California
are required to have a General Plan with 7 Elements that form the foundations
for public service planning and land use coordination between developers, land
owners, utilities, transportation and water czars, etc.
So Building
Service Performance metrics are being used, however informally, when a request
to build or modify an existing building occurs within one of the 478 Cities or 50+ Counties
in California.
The 92
Questions asked by these 17 Factors have sources, and increasingly for these
478 Cities and related public agencies, a TEMPLATE and Controlled Vocabulary
with OCCS-FIATECH awareness has significant untapped potential (My 2 Cents….)
ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS POTENTIALLY
AFFECTED:
The environmental
factors checked below would be potentially affected by this project, involving
at least one impact that is a "Potentially Significant Impact" or
is "Potentially Significant Unless Mitigated," as indicated by the
checklist on the following pages.
|
¨Land Use / Planning
|
¨ Transportation / Traffic
|
o Public
Services
|
|
o Population
/ Housing
|
¨ Biological Resources
|
¨ Utilities / Service Systems
|
|
o Geology /
Soils
|
o Mineral
Resources
|
o Aesthetics
|
|
oHydrology / Water Quality
|
o Hazards
and Hazardous Materials
|
o Cultural
Resources
|
|
¨ Air Quality
|
o Noise
|
o Recreation
|
|
o Agriculture
Resources
|
o Mandatory
Findings of Significance
|
===========================================================
California currently uses a process called CEQA (Calif. Environmental Quality
Act) to evaluate a building proposal.
Currently the
State policies, rules, regulations, and logic are legal entities not
necessarily supported by advanced IT services.
As I mentioned
earlier, the State's Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32) has initiated a
Climate Act Team (CAT) Portal and efforts are directed towards increased
semantic capability in some domains.
I have been
involved for about 14 months, and have much to learn about the existing
Assessment Processes and opportunities to radically improve the categories (and
possibly Process Ontologies) to reduce processing time, effort, confusion, and
wide-spread frustration with good policies initiated years ago but never
effectively integrated. (And thus providing lawyers with much work).
What our review
team ( a Retired Boeing Rocket Scientist, local Attorney, and myself) have been
concerned with is the lack of an overall framework. So making a DETERMINATION
is not simple.
DETERMINATION
(To be completed by the Lead Agency)
On the basis of this
initial evaluation:
|
I find that the proposed project could not have a
significant effect on the environment, and a Negative Declaration will be prepared.
|
x
|
|
I find that although the proposed project could have
a significant effect on the environment, there will not be a significant
effect in this case because the mitigation measures described on an attached
sheet have been added to the project. A
MITIGATED Negative Declaration
will be prepared.
|
¨
|
|
I find that the proposed project may have a
significant effect on the environment, and an Environmental Impact Report
is required.
|
o
|
|
I find that the proposed project may have a
"potentially significant impact" or a "potentially
significant unless mitigated impact" on the environment, but at least
one impact (1) has been adequately analyzed in an earlier document pursuant
to applicable legal standards, and (2) has been addressed by mitigation
measures based on the earlier analysis as described on attached sheets.
An Environmental
Impact Report is required, but it must analyze only the effects
that remain to be addressed.
|
o
|
|
I find that although the proposed project could have
a significant effect on the environment, because all potentially significant
effects (a) have been analyzed adequately in an earlier EIR or NEGATIVE
DECLARATION pursuant to applicable standards, and (b) have been avoided or
mitigated pursuant to that earlier EIR or NEGATIVE DECLARATION, including
revisions or mitigation measures that are imposed upon the proposed project, nothing further is required.
|
¨
|
IF needed, I
can send the full EA and the Housing Element upon which it is based.
Cheers,
Bob
Hi BSP -
I just received an energy dictionary from Dave Conover at the International
Code Council. His explanation is as follows "This
was derived from the ICC energy code and can certainly provide a foundation for
other energy-related documents (ASHRAE 90.1, USGBC criteria, 10 CFR Part 435,
etc.) with maybe the need for additional terms and properties should what we
have developed not completely address what is covered in those documents (for
instance another property for roofs is reflectance and emissivity that could be
added as properties of roofing materials). In addition there may be other
issues such as cost that are properties of materials that while not code relevant
other use cases would want to append. The concept is as we develop these
to provide them to the Alliance
as well as CSI and others. Through CSI we hope to build a US dictionary and upload US information
to the IFD. We also develop MVDs from this, which will be available to
others as well. Clearly it makes sense to have everyone on the same page
and working together."
The Alliance is
BuildingSmart
CSI is the Construction
Specification Institute
IFD is International Framework for Dictionaries
MVDs are Model View Definitions
I'm going to start pouring over this to see how it fits with the building
templates. Bob - can you please describe more about "Factors to use in
answering 92 queries required of 17 parts of an Environmental Assessment in the
State of California"
maybe this can be an example?
Thanks,
Deborah
--
*************************************************
Deborah L. MacPherson
Projects Director, Accuracy&Aesthetics
Specifier, WDG Architecture PLLC
**************************************************