New trends in hospital design are helping health-care systems to better choreograph care and provide a soothing yet energy-efficient environment.

Consider the Shands Cancer Hospital at the University of Florida, which opens Nov. 1. The new 500,000-square-foot, $388-million medical tower is an extension of the Shands at UF academic medical center on its new south campus. The tower will feature 192 private beds and will house the Shands Critical Care Center for emergency and trauma services. Medical teams will serve a variety of inpatients, including those receiving diagnostic and therapeutic oncology care.

“Through academic medicine, we offer patients novel diagnostic and treatment options by expert physicians, researchers and teachers, and skilled and compassionate nurses and clinical teams,” said Timothy Goldfarb, Shands HealthCare CEO. “Now we have added a truly innovative, healing setting that incorporates industry best practices and therapeutic design to enhance our patient’s overall health-care experience. This is the hospital of tomorrow.”

Shands and Gainesville Regional Utilities partnered to establish the GRU South Energy Center to provide 100 percent of the hospital’s energy needs. The onsite power plant will ensure uninterrupted power, independent of the city’s energy grid, regardless of a prolonged outage elsewhere in the community. It will efficiently convert fuel into electricity and provide 46 percent savings compared with traditional fossil fuel-burning generations. Officials estimate this will save 27 million kilowatts per year, enough to power about 3,000 homes.

The commitment to use environmentally sustainable construction methods to build the hospital has earned Shands HealthCare the silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design designation per the U.S. Green Building Council rating system.

“We used insulated windows that are treated to reduce solar glare and white rooftops designed to reflect heat,” said Brad Pollitt, Shands HealthCare vice president for facilities. “The facility’s air-conditioning heat wheels help to recover lost energy and irrigation and drainage systems use reclaimed water. We provide showers for employees who bike to work and special parking for hybrid cars.”

Pollitt says that Shands is now being considered for gold-level LEED certification and will be one of a few academic medical centers nationwide to achieve this rating.

“Opening the Shands Cancer Hospital at UF marks a milestone for us,” said Dr. David S. Guzick, UF senior vice president for health affairs and president of the UF&Shands Health System. “It will enable us to meet the growing needs of cancer patients, advance our ability to care for emergency and critical care patients and ensure our long-term commitment to meeting the region’s health-care needs.”

In designing the building, hospital facilities teams worked with architects whose expertise is health-care environments. Nursing and medical staff provided input to incorporate features such as nurse stations that improve sight lines to patients and monitoring systems and details that give patients control of their environment, allowing them to adjust lighting and window shades with the click of a remote. There is abundant natural light on each floor and hallway lights are wall-mounted or recessed so patients aren’t subjected to blinding glare as they are wheeled from place to place.

“Every planning and design decision we made as a team was centered on patient comfort and ease for hospital staff in providing safe and healing care,” said Laura Stillman, principal-in-charge/project director at Flad Architects.

“The new building is light-filled, welcoming and easily navigable for patients, families and staff – and we believe it offers hope to those who will experience it,” she added.

In 2009, more than 100,000 cancer cases will be diagnosed in Florida, second only to California in the nation’s cancer cases. In north Florida alone, at least 4,500 new cases are diagnosed annually. One in seven adults treated at Shands at UF has a cancer-related condition.

The new tower also includes the Shands Critical Care Center at UF, which combines an emergency department and Level I trauma center. The emergency room has 62 treatment areas and provides clinical teams the capacity to treat 100,000 patients a year. The trauma center has four large treatment rooms and is strategically located directly beneath the rooftop helipad that can hold the weight of two helicopters at once – making care a brief elevator ride away when every moment counts.

In addition, in mass-casualty situations the emergency department capacity can be quickly doubled. The private exam rooms have break-away doors, are 18 inches wider than code requirements and can hold side-by-side beds.

The hospital also includes 12 high-tech operating rooms designed to accommodate anticipated evolutions in robotics and 3-D imaging; surgical intensive and intermediate care units; and a bone marrow transplant unit, outpatient clinic and stem cell lab. A full-spectrum radiology department features the “crown jewel” of imaging, the Aquilion ONE 320-detector row CT scanner. The $2.5-million diagnostic tool, the second Shands HealthCare has acquired, helps physicians diagnose cancer, and it can detect stroke and heart disease in minutes, replacing dozens of other tests that typically take hours or even days. Shands was the first in Florida and one of only a handful in the nation to acquire this technology.

Ultimately, hospital officials worked hard to create a setting that underscores their commitment to hope and healing, from the Garden of Hope, which provides a place for quiet reflection, to the Sanctuaries of Silence and Peace, areas for meditation and prayer.

“As our clinical teams focus on each patient’s medical and physical condition, the beautifully designed building creates a healing environment and helps us support their emotional well-being,” Goldfarb said.

Some studies indicate that design improvements lead to improved patient outcomes, although more research needs to be done, according to Robert Cassidy, editor-in-chief of Building Design+Construction magazine, based in Oak Brook, Ill.

“There’s great value in saving energy, improving day-lighting and providing views of nature and other amenities, such as healing gardens and family centered patient rooms and facilities,” Cassidy said. “One of the ways the patients and families evaluate a health-care setting is how bright and cozy it is. Whether those elements have a benefit in reduced length of stay or other clinical benefits is not scientifically proven, but our gut tells us they do.”

In today’s tight economy, the lengths apparel stores go to lure customers with deep discounts and colorful interior designs are likely to fall short if shoppers don’t like how they look in the mirror, said Anne Baumstarck, who did the research for her master’s degree in interior design at UF.

“The dressing room represents the final moment when the consumer decides whether or not to make a clothing purchase,” she said. “It is where the sale is made.”

Yet retailers often overlook the importance of how the room is illuminated, thinking all shoppers need is an overhead light to be able to see when trying on merchandise, Baumstarck said. But shoppers may have other needs, and lighting direction appears to affect how people see themselves, she said.

“After all sorts of money is invested in a store’s atmospherics, it gives shoppers a letdown to have poorly planned dressing rooms,” she said. “Retailers diminish the feeling they’ve worked so hard to create in the main store.”

While other studies have examined lighting on the sales floor, none have looked at the effects it has on shoppers in dressing rooms, Baumstarck said.

In Baumstarck’s study, 60 female shoppers ages 18 to 35 who tried on clothes in the dressing rooms at Wolfgang, a Gainesville clothing boutique, showed a clear preference for frontal lights — those installed along the sides of the mirror — to overhead lights, which were mounted on the ceiling.

“Women complained that overhead lighting created shadows on their face, making them look unattractive,” she said.

To avoid these unflattering shadows, shoppers had to step back from the mirror and move around, Baumstarck said. “They were constantly engaged in trying to negotiate the best spot to stand and ended up dancing around the dressing room,” she said.

When customers notice the negative aspects of their surroundings, it distracts them from paying attention to the merchandise, Baumstarck said. “You never want a consumer to be thinking ‘I hate this lighting’ instead of ‘I like this dress,’” she said.

Overhead lighting also makes a room seem smaller — even cramped — creating a need to escape, Baumstarck said. With frontal lighting, dressing rooms appear roomier, and shoppers said they were willing to stay longer and even try on more clothes, she said.

Women most impressed with frontal lighting were those who placed a high priority on personal appearance and how they looked in clothes; by comparison, more utilitarian shoppers cared only about finding a particular article of apparel that fit, the study found.

Results showed that this “self-oriented” shopper would sometimes comment about frontal lighting giving their skin a healthy glow, making their cellulite less visible or being so soft and flattering that it made it appear they were in a bar or restaurant in the evening, she said.

Previous research shows consumers choose a store with a particular image, such as one that is healthy and sporty or sexy and trendy because they want to be seen as having those attributes, Baumstarck said.

Lighting was so important that it captured a majority of the comments — 51 percent — that women made in the study, Baumstarck said. Of the 36 comments made about overhead lighting, 25 were negative, representing 69 percent of the total, and 11 were positive, making up 31 percent. In contrast, frontal lighting generated 34 comments, of which 20 were positive — 59 percent — and 14 were negative or 41 percent.

Lighting in stores varies, with overhead lights common in lower-priced bargain stores, Baumstarck said. Some retailers don’t even designate lighting for dressing rooms; the same overhead light fixtures serve both dressing rooms and the main sales floor, she said.

“It’s not all about the clothes,” she said. “What woman doesn’t go into a dressing room and engage in a dialogue with herself about how attractive she is? You don’t want to give her any opportunity to feel badly about herself.”

Baumstarck’s study has great implications for retailers and consumers, especially with the economic downturn, said Paulette Hebert, an Oklahoma State University design professor and lighting expert. “One important variable, such as dressing room illumination, may mean the difference in a store remaining viable in today’s economy,” she said.

“Determining a specific dollar value for quality of life is a challenging undertaking,” said project co-director Timothy McLendon, staff attorney at the Center for Governmental Responsibility at UF’s Levin College of Law, which conducted the study along with UF’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning. “Therefore, we offered local decision makers a number of options for protecting historically valuable assets that contribute to the community.”

Florida residents also recognize the importance of historic preservation, according to a survey commissioned as part of the overall study. Based on surveys of more than 1,500 Floridians during November and December 2005, and January 2006, the most threatened historic resources in Florida include historic and scenic landscapes; old homes and neighborhoods; and old downtowns. Respondents, likewise, saw a need to preserve Florida’s historic resources for future generations, scenic reasons and education. The survey was conducted by UF’s Bureau of Economic & Business Research as part of its monthly statewide consumer confidence survey.

The report includes models and tools available to further historic preservation in Florida and to measure the impact of historical structures, events and related activities on the enhancement of the quality of life in Florida.

Specifically, the use of community indicators is described as a tool for decision-makers to measure their success in improving the quality of life in their communities. Community indicators are bits of information that are combined to provide a picture of what is happening in a community. For historic preservation purposes, these may include items like the number or type of local ordinances; the number of projects qualifying for historic tax credits or exemptions; changes in property values; numbers of historic districts; and visitors to and support for local historic museums. Other tools included in the report are preservation laws and policies, tourist-related tax revenues, and creative solutions to conflicts of gentrification, sustainability and rehabilitation.

“We’re excited to have this wonderful study to confirm that along with the economic impacts that result from historic preservation, the quality of life is indeed improved as well,” said Caroline Tharpe Weiss, executive director of the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, which provided key support for the study.

Sprinkled throughout the report are examples of model communities and projects that have succeeded in using the tools to enhance quality of life. DeFuniak Springs and Fernandina Beach are described as communities whose historic roots lure tourists and improve the economies of their regions. The St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum; the Fort Christmas Historical Park in Central Florida; and the Riley House museum near Tallahassee are provided as case studies of how history museums can be important community resources.

Also described in the report are conservation districts in Tampa, Sarasota and Zephyrhills that offer ways for local governments to balance historic preservation through protection, rehabilitation and revitalization, all contributing to a neighborhood’s culture. Other incentive programs, including tax credits and exemptions and grants have been key to preserving and improving Florida communities.

The 18-month study was funded with historic preservation grant assistance provided by the Bureau of Historic Preservation, Division of Historical Resources, Florida Department of State, assisted by the Florida Historical Commission. The study was a collaborative effort involving multiple UF partners: the Center for Governmental Responsibility; the Department of Urban and Regional Planning; the Center for Building Better Communities; the Graduate Program in Museum Studies; and the Center for Tourism Research and Development.

The Quality of Life study complements an earlier study on the Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation in Florida released in 2002. The full Quality of Life report is available at: www.law.ufl.edu/cgr, or copies may be obtained from the Division of Historical Resources, Florida Department of State 850-245-6333.

Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed said they considered high-rises to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks, but an even larger number, 60 percent, reported feeling safe in these buildings, the UF study found. The findings were from interviews with 384 people walking into one of the seven tallest structures in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 14, a month before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“People may still believe skyscrapers are terrorist (targets) but so are subways, stadiums and airplanes and that doesn’t stop people from riding to work, going to football games or flying across the country to see their family,” said Brandon Moore, who did the research for his master’s thesis in building construction at UF.

If anything, the skyscraper has become even more popular since Sept. 11, with the number under construction nearly doubling, Moore said. Between 2002 and 2006, 1,334 skyscrapers in the United States were built or scheduled to be completed, compared with 593 from 1996 to 2000, he said.

“Skyscrapers are the biggest man-made achievement we see on a day-to-day basis,” Moore said. “They have too much symbolic value to be toppled by terrorists.”

The stature of these buildings in America’s cultural and physical landscape was recognized by survey respondents. Sixty-five percent said they were proud of the nation’s skyscrapers, and 56 percent said they could identify cities by their skylines.

Moore said the findings could apply elsewhere because Tampa is a typical mid- to large-sized American city, which, like other parts of the South and West, is booming. Tampa has 57 skyscrapers, the tallest being the 579-foot AmSouth Building. Sixteen high-rises are under construction.

Although Tampa may not be considered a major terrorist target like Manhattan, a highly publicized incident involving a small private plane crashing into the 42-story Bank of America building occurred on Jan. 5, he said.

Besides symbolic value, economics and conservation may also explain the skyscraper’s growing popularity; it allows the maximum amount of people in the smallest amount of space, Moore said.

“Suburbia is losing its appeal with strip mall after strip mall, subdivision after subdivision and the hassle of having to drive everywhere with the cost of fuel,” he said. “People are starting to want to live in the city, where they can walk to work or walk to the gym.”

Building vertically instead of horizontally makes sense because a building that takes up the space of one city block can house an entire community, with medical offices, pharmacies, grocery stores and apartments that house hundreds of residents, Moore said.

“With the world’s growing population and diminishing supply of land, the skyscraper is the building of the future, even though it’s been around for more than a century,” he said.

The skyscraper was invented after the Great Chicago Fire destroyed most of the downtown’s wooden-framed, low-level buildings, Moore said. Steel was used to rebuild downtown because it was more fire resistant, and one of its unforeseen physical properties was that it allowed buildings to be taller, he said.

The world’s first skyscraper was Chicago’s 10-story Home Insurance Building built in 1885, but once New York approved skeleton steel construction in its building code at the turn of the century it quickly became the nation’s skyscraper capital. It was not until 1974 that Chicago regained distinction with construction of the Sears Tower, the world’s tallest building at 1,451 feet until the 1,483-foot twin Petronas Towers were built in Malaysia in 1998.

Today the skyscraper is something of an “Asian Tiger” because of its stronghold in China, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan, Moore said. Eight of the world’s 10 highest buildings are in Asia, including the tallest, the 1,671-foot Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan. The other two on the list are the Sears Tower, fourth, and the Empire State Building in New York City, ninth.

“With scarce land, booming populations and thriving economies, it is no wonder that many Asian nations are taking the lead in skyscraper construction,” Moore said. “As pagodas and shrines disappear, the skyscraper is taking their place.”

The study explored the implications of the single-family room design when compared with open-bay, double-occupancy and combination configurations at 11 hospitals nationwide. The single-family room design has separate rooms for each infant, while the open-bay unit has one large room with all the infant stations side-by-side.

Typically, staff working in an open-bay unit believe their jobs will be more difficult and they will spend less time with patients if their unit is redesigned as a single-family room unit, said Debra Harris, UF interior design assistant professor who was principal investigator for the study. This is because the open-bay unit allows the staff to see all patients and to have ongoing contact with other staff in the unit.

“However, once the unit switched to the single-family room, we found the opposite to be true. Staff noticed the obvious benefits of the private rooms for the patient and family,” Harris said. “At the same time, the staff were able to rely on technology to assist them in keeping abreast of their patients’ health. Staff reported lower stress and higher satisfaction in the single-family room units.”

The study revealed many benefits to the single-family room design, but surprisingly, found a relatively low increase in the cost to construct a new unit at an existing or new hospital.

“There was a mere 3 percent increase in the first construction costs for the single-family room design. We thought it would be greater,” Harris said.

The study looked at Level III NICUs, which care for the most acute babies needing the most specialized care. Researchers employed five methods to compare the units, including space allocations, construction costs, staff preferences and perceptions and occupant behaviors. The study was published in the October issue of the Journal of Perinatology.

Other researchers involved include Mardelle Shepley of Texas A&M University, Robert White of Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Ind., Kathleen Kolberg of the University of Notre Dame and James Harrell of the Harrell Group in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Previous research on single-family room units is limited. Harris views this study as a preliminary, comprehensive effort to generate future in-depth research.

Researchers were unable to obtain sufficient data to compare the impact of room design on the health of the infants, but a future study will include data on weight, days on ventilation, head circumference, hospital-acquired infections, length of stay, etc.

“This study presents an agenda for further research. In addition, it can be used as a tool for hospitals to determine if their NICUs should or can be designed as single-family units,” Harris said. “For those renovating existing space, this may prove challenging. But for new units, it is an option that should be considered.”

Making stores attractive and alluring to shoppers has long been the aim of retail designers rather than preventing theft, but a store’s interior layout often influences shoplifters in whether to steal there, said Caroline Cardone, who did the research for her master’s thesis in UF’s interior design department.

“Shoplifters enter a store, scan the space and quickly judge whether it’s unprotected, understaffed or offers a quick escape,” she said. “Once they recognize a store’s vulnerability, they’ll take advantage of it again and again.”

Some common patterns emerged in Cardone’s analysis of data collected by the Loss Prevention Research Council, a multidisciplinary team of UF researchers, which included interviews with 20 apprehended shoplifters in Orlando, Dania, Fla., and Chicago.

The criminals often sought stores with chaotic, overpacked aisles or crowded, cramped spaces because they offered good camouflage, she said.

Wide, clear aisles, a clean, well-maintained interior and a logically planned store make it less likely for thieves to escape detection, Cardone said. Aisles should be visible from the checkout lane, and the cashier’s view of the store should not be blocked by high shelves overstuffed with merchandise, she said.

“Such design tactics will help contribute to the perception of the store being orderly and well-monitored, which seems to make shoplifters feel more vulnerable,” said Cardone, who will present her findings Tuesday at a two-day retail design workshop at UF.

Thieves reported seeking “blind spots” hidden from the view of employees and closed-circuit television cameras where they would take products they had picked up in other parts of the store and stuff them into a sock or pocket, Cardone said. Often these were easily concealable items such as batteries, film and tooth-whitening products that could easily be resold on the street, sometimes to support a drug habit, she said.

Some stores place these sought-after goods behind counters or in locked cases, frustrating legitimate customers who must go out of their way to ask for them, which hurts sales, Cardone said. A less threatening approach might be to station employees in the aisles in direct sight of these coveted items, perhaps at a “customer service station” by the cosmetics counter or pharmacy, where they can answer questions from customers while watching for suspicious activity, she said.

“One CVS pharmacy had a regular employee camped out in the aisle with a folding table and her job was to market cosmetics to people,” she said. “It makes a lot of sense to have an employee in cosmetics talk about the benefits of the products. By the same token, you don’t dare steal anything with this person standing 2 feet in front of you.”

Stationing a store “greeter” near the exit and lengthening the amount of space between the cashier and front entrance also increases the odds that shoplifters will be caught, she said.

Alternate exits create stealing opportunities, as many large mass-merchant chains find with attached garden areas that sell plants and garden accessories, Cardone said.

“The offender simply brings the stolen goods to the garden area, tosses them over the fence and leaves the store,” she said. “Either the thief retrieves the merchandise later or an accomplice is waiting on the other side to catch it.”

Electronics store Best Buy’s practice of placing cameras, iPods and other electronic products on counters with flexible cords allows customers to touch and test the products without walking away with them, Cardone said. ‘”The best displays are able to both protect and market the product,” she said.

Few studies examine how a store interior design affects shoplifting despite the crime’s high toll, which in 2004 totaled an estimated $10 billion in losses, Cardone said. “Retailers have tried everything to minimize shoplifting – stringent apprehension policies, high-tech protection devices and increased security measures – but none have solved the problem,” she said.

Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research in Nottingham, England, praised Cardone’s research. “This kind of thorough research into the ways retailers can cut losses by thinking carefully about their stores’ layout and design is exactly the type of study corporations need to help combat the menace of shop crime,” he said.

The Program for Resource Efficient Communities, sponsored by UF’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, encourages sustainable development practices by working with builders, architects and other professionals involved in all phases of residential community development.

“Many new developments are master-planned communities with thousands of homes consuming large amounts of energy and raw materials,” said Pierce Jones, a professor in UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and director of the program. “These communities represent a major change in land use from agricultural and natural areas to urban or suburban. Developers buy large tracts of land, and their decisions can affect important ecological systems.”

The program matches the knowledge of UF faculty with the needs of developers. Participating faculty have expertise in many disciplines, including environmental engineering, energy, water, wildlife, forestry, landscape architecture and building construction.

Stephen Mulkey, director of research and outreach for the natural resources and environment school, said the school helps the program gain access to UF county extension offices to address the issue of growth in the state. “The program has shown that we can meet the needs of development and do it in a sustainable way,” he said.

The Program for Resource Efficient Communities recently worked with developers of the Harmony community in Central Florida. All 7,200 homes in Harmony will be built to meet or exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star standards.

“This means lower electric bills for each homeowner,” Jones said. “The overall result is a reduction in the demand for power generation and the need to burn fossil fuels.”

More than 7,000 of Harmony’s 11,000 acres are devoted to woods, wetlands, lakes, parks and recreation areas available to residents, he said. The golf course, which wraps around existing wetlands, was designed to preserve the area’s diverse plant and animal life.

“Developers are beginning to realize that they can offer open space as an amenity and add other features such as golf courses to enhance the natural environment rather than degrade it,” Jones said.

Some cities in Florida are providing additional incentives for builders to use “green” building methods, he said. The City of Gainesville recently implemented a green building program to promote the voluntary use of sustainable and environmentally friendly practices in design and construction. The city uses standards developed by the Florida Green Building Coalition and the U.S. Green Building Council.

“The Program for Resource Efficient Communities evaluates these certification standards for best design and management practices,” Jones said. “Builders who follow the standards receive fast-track permitting and a 50 percent reduction in permitting fees.”

He said UF faculty also participated in the design and development of Madera, an 88-home community developed by GreenTrust, LLC, on a wooded 44-acre site adjacent to the UF campus.

“The first home built in the Madera community took advantage of the Gainesville Green Building Program and saved the builder $650 in permit fees after accounting for the fast- tracking and 50 percent discount,” Jones said.

Those who buy Madera homes can choose from a range of construction and appliance packages that reduce electricity and water usage as compared to a typical home, Jones said. Durable and recyclable construction materials reduce the amount of waste going into landfills. Landscaping with native and drought-tolerant plants further reduces water consumption and the amount of turf, pesticides and fertilizers needed.

The Program for Resource Efficient Communities evaluates and promotes several other green certification programs and standards, including Audubon International’s Signature Programs, a series of nonprofit education and assistance programs to help landowners, managers and developers follow sustainable practices.

In addition to reviewing certification standards, the program creates and teaches continuing education courses that satisfy Florida licensing and professional association requirements.

Some of the course topics include construction techniques to improve indoor air quality, deter termites and limit building moisture problems such as mold and mildew. Other areas focus on windstorm-resistant housing, durable materials and renewable and recyclable resources for building construction.

Jones said the program also develops environmental education for homeowners, supports applied research and provides case studies. The program screens research at UF to identify projects of interest to developers and leverages collaborative efforts in the private sector to determine new areas of potential research for UF faculty.

“We want to show everyone from developers and homeowners to realtors and mortgage bankers that energy efficiency adds value to a home while helping conserve our natural resources,” Jones said. “We want to make people aware that alternative methods of design and construction are available. In the face of Florida’s rapid growth, green building methods can help to preserve and even enhance our quality of life.”

UF will be among the first universities in the nation to fuse efforts to make campus practices environmentally friendly with an interdisciplinary academic emphasis on sustainability.

“We focus on three aspects of sustainability: ecology, economy and equity, or social justice,” said Kim Tanzer, chairwoman for the 150-member UF Faculty Senate that has initiated the Office of Sustainability, along with the Office of the President.

“It’s important to ‘green’ the campus, but it’s also important that we’re applying our research expertise to the campus, so the fact that we’ll have an academic officer and a director in the same office will allow us to use the campus as a living laboratory,” Tanzer said. “We’d like to draw together all the good efforts being done on campus already and use the office to create a new synergy.”

Although the Office of Sustainability will not officially open until an executive director is hired in November, some sustainability efforts are already under way. They encompass every aspect of the university from living wages to the designs for new buildings.

In the past year, UF has assembled a roster of more than 100 faculty members whose teaching, research or service involves some aspect of sustainability.

In November 2000, the university announced a living wage program for entry-level employees. The current starting salary is $8.67 per hour.

Currently the university recycles seven categories of recycled solid waste: paper, cans, glass, scrap metal, masonry, yard waste, and sludge. More than 30 percent of all solid waste generated by the university is recovered on campus and recycled through various local or regional brokers and processing firms.

The university’s purchasing policy supports the purchasing of products that will minimize any negative environmental impacts of our work.

Fred H. Cantrell, associate vice president for finance and administration, said the new office is expected to establish UF as a global leader in sustainability, reduce operational costs through sustainable practices, and improve the quality of campus and community life.

UF also is designing new buildings that meet the standards for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Tanzer said. Current buildings with this design include additions to the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Levin College of Law, along with the new Rinker Hall. The LEED standards reward innovative design, site selection, materials and technological features that save money and the environment.

“Among academic projects, the butterfly pavilion at the Florida Museum of Natural History demonstrates sustainability in a number of ways,” Tanzer said. “The [McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity] is a LEED-certified building, and the internationally prominent research program promotes sustainability.”

Butterflies are sentinels of environmental problems, she said. If butterflies cannot survive in an environment, it is an indicator of high levels of pesticides or other non-sustaining factors.

Six primary areas of sustainability were identified in the 2002 Report of the Task Force on Sustainability: research, education, campus operations, community outreach and integration, campus community, and organizational policies and practices.

Professor P.K. Nair, a member of the sustainability committee, said efforts to provide for needs of the present should not compromise the ability of future generations to provide for themselves.

“This is a serious issue for leading academic institutions such as UF that are supposed to shape the ‘state of the future,’” Nair said. “An Office of Sustainability at UF will provide a focal point and stimulus for our efforts and ability in addressing these issues.”

Tanzer said UF’s sustainability efforts go beyond business practices.

“It is very important to include all aspects of sustainability in a university, because our students don’t just learn within the classroom, but from their whole environment,” she said.

Tanzer said many students at UF have become aware of campus sustainability efforts, and many have become involved. UF students complete about 150,000 hours of community outreach work each year.

The Office of Sustainability has a Web site, www.sustainability.ufl.edu, and has begun its search for an executive director.

In the first, a team of research engineers from UF and two other Florida universities deployed five mobile wind towers in Dennis’ projected path, then monitored and recorded the hurricane’s winds as it powered ashore. In the second project, UF Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences researchers followed the hurricane’s impact on UF’s “hurricane house” near Pensacola, built to withstand winds exceeding 140 mph.

The 3,000-square-foot house adjacent to the Escambia County extension office in Cantonment was all but undamaged. The top wind gust the engineers measured was about 120 mph, about the same as reported by meteorologists.

With both projects, data and experience from the storm’s strike will add to the growing body of knowledge about how to build homes to withstand hurricanes.

“Overall, the idea is to learn the most efficient way to make houses stronger without costing a lot more,” Kurt Gurley, a UF associate professor of civil engineering, said of the tower project.

Gurley’s team of 17 research engineers and students from UF, Florida International University and the Florida Institute of Technology left Gainesville on Friday and Saturday, towing the towers behind Ford F-250 trucks. The project is part of a larger hurricane research effort called the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program, sponsored by the Florida Department of Community Affairs.

Designed for quick setup and able to withstand 200-mph winds, the 5,500-pound structures stand more than 33 feet tall when erected. They house instruments measuring wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, humidity and rainfall.

The team put up the towers between Navarre, just east of Pensacola, and Panama City.
They also placed instrumentation designed to measure hurricane wind forces on four pre-selected homes in Navarre, Destin and Santa Rosa Beach. Dennis made landfall Sunday afternoon between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach.

Team members spent Saturday and Sunday nights safely ensconced in a hotel east of Pensacola in Mary Esther, but they were able to gauge the tower data in real time thanks to a cell phone connection to three of the towers’ onboard computers. The peak preliminary wind gust of 120 mph was recorded by the Navarre tower, probably located in or near the eye Hurricane Dennis, Gurley said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also tapped the tower data. NOAA uses the UF data, as well as data from other sources such as satellites and research aircraft, to produce detailed maps of hurricane wind forces used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other responders to hurricanes.

The tower data “is probably the most accurate wind measurement we can use in our analysis, so we’re very happy to have it,” said Mark Powell, a NOAA atmospheric scientist based in Miami.

The hurricane house, officially known as the Escambia Windstorm Damage Mitigation, Training and Demonstration Center, was undamaged with the exception of some wet carpet, said Lamar Christenberry, Escambia County extension director.

The house shows how existing homes can be made more hurricane-resistant. For example, its features include impact-resistant doors, a steel “safe room” and a garage door that will withstand winds of more than 150 mph.

“Our hurricane house demonstrates that it is possible to build a home that will come through hurricanes such as Dennis and Ivan with little or no damage” Christenberry said.

The house is one of three facilities located at UF/IFAS Extension Service offices around the state. Other hurricane houses are in Fort Pierce and St. Augustine, and a fourth house will be completed in August at the UF/IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center. The Florida Department of Financial Services provided $2.3 million for the houses, and UF’s Shimberg Center for Affordable Housing in the College of Design, Construction and Planning supervised their design and construction.

In the wake of four devastating hurricanes in 2004 and with the likelihood of another active hurricane season this year, the houses are becoming magnets for educating builders and residents about wind-loss mitigation, energy efficiency and environmentally sensitive construction, said Pierce Jones, director of the UF/IFAS Florida Energy Extension Service.

UF engineering researchers have completed one of the most extensive studies of how homes built before and after Florida’s latest building code held up against Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Ivan.

Their conclusion: Homes built under the Florida Building Code that became effective in 2002 sustained less damage on average than those built between 1994 and 2001 under the Standard Building Code. Homes completed before 1994, meanwhile, fared worse.

“The iterations and changes over the years to the codes Florida uses have made a measurable difference,” said Kurt Gurley, a UF associate professor of civil engineering and the lead investigator on the project.

The engineers, whose study of 200 homes was funded with a $90,000 grant from the Florida Building Commission through the Florida Department of Community Affairs, present their report today at the FBC’s meeting in St. Petersburg. A subcommittee will mull the study as well as other research and information to help steer recommendations for possible new code changes later this year.

The UF research is important because it demonstrates that quality codes are a key part of the prescription against hurricane damage, said Jeff Burton, building code manager at the Tampa-based Institute for Business & Home Safety, a building safety advocacy group whose engineering experts participated in the study. That’s especially true outside Florida, already considered the nation’s leader in wind protection codes, Burton said.

“Comparatively speaking, there are other states that have no codes that have a high probability of a hurricane making landfall,” he said. “In my line of work, I go to various states and try to educate them. Unless you have proof that they need codes, number one, and number two, that they actually work, it’s a hard sell.”

Gurley’s team, which also included engineers from Florida International University and Florida A&M University, compared homes in the path of the highest wind zones generated by the hurricanes.

The study did not formally include homes built before 1994, when the Standard Building Code’s high wind standard became widely used in coastal areas. However, the researchers got a good idea of damage to pre-1994 homes as a result of their visits to storm-damaged neighborhoods.

The engineers interviewed homeowners, examined photos and other records of damage and inspected homes for construction method — noting, for example, the size and spacing of nails used to affix roofing plywood to rafters. Besides Gurley, the UF team included civil engineering graduate student Rob Davis, Jimmy Jesteadt, Sean-Paul Ferrera, Ryan Chancey, and Luis Aponte, as well as undergraduate students.

Among the group’s findings: Shingle-roofed homes built under the 2002 code retained more asphalt shingles than homes built under the 1994 code. Retaining shingles is critical in hurricanes because loss of too many can compromise the roof, allowing rain to enter the attic and living space. The new code requires shingles rated to withstand higher winds than the previous code.

In Charlotte County, for example, nearly 30 percent of the surveyed homes built under the new code that faced Hurricane Charley’s highest recorded wind gusts – as high as 150 mph – had no shingle damage. But every surveyed home built under the previous code experienced at least some shingle loss. Among those homes that did lose shingles, meanwhile, very few surveyed new homes experienced a loss of more than 10 percent. But 10 percent was the minimum for older homes, with many losing far higher percentages. The benefits of the more rugged roof are clear in the study, but it can be tricky to determine the relative effects of code improvements from other issues such as aging, Gurley added.

The team also found that a recent requirement for reinforced garage doors proved very effective. Most of the homes surveyed were built with this requirement, and none had significant garage door damage. However, researchers saw many pre-1994 homes whose weaker garage doors were blown off their tracks, a failure that often allowed wind to enter the house, damage the contents and attack the integrity of the roof from inside.

Despite the noticeable improvement in performance among new homes versus old homes, homes built under the newest code did not survive unscathed, Gurley said. Common failures among new homes include soffits, or vents located underneath roof overhangs to allow air to circulate through the attic. Wind sometimes damaged or blew out these soffits, allowing wind-driven rain to enter the attic, soaking insulation and even damaging ceilings and home contents in some cases, Gurley said.

Gurley said improving soffit performance is one area the Florida Building Commission will likely tackle in its next set of code revisions, among other issues. He said his research shows that although there will never be a perfect building code, Florida has a good track record of improving standards.

“This is a tribe that is very linked to their heritage and to their lands,” said Donna L. Cohen, who has taught at the University of New Mexico and has been teaching in UF’s School of Architecture since 1999. “This aviary will really become part of the landscape in New Mexico due to its cultural significance.”

Although the aviary, known as the Zuni Eagle Sanctuary, is the first of its kind in American Indian communities, the practice of caring for injured golden and bald eagles is intertwined with the history of the people, Cohen said.

Until the 1940s, it was common for each Zuni family to have its own eagle to care for outside their homes. But as eagle populations in the United States declined during the first half of the 20th century, the federal government curtailed unsupervised eagle care.

“The only way to get feathers then was to apply for them through a service in Colorado that was a repository for dead eagles,” said Steven Albert, the former director of the Zuni Fish and Wildlife Department in Zuni, N.M. “This led to a drastic cutoff in the supply of feathers.”

The Fish and Wildlife Department began working with the Zunis in the late 1990s to develop a way to easily collect feathers without having to apply for them.

“One option we came up with was to construct a facility for nonreleasable eagles,” Albert said. “This would be a place to care for eagles with broken wings or that have been (injured by electric shock) or that are just too old to survive in the wild.”

Albert said that while zoos would be ideal places to care for injured birds, the zoos prefer to keep birds that are not disfigured.
Enter the Zuni Eagle Sanctuary.

Although the birds in the Zuni aviary cannot be released, they are allowed to breed, parenting offspring that can be returned to the wild.

“The Zuni aviary keeps the eagles that are not capable of living on their own, and as they molt, the workers are allowed to collect their feathers for the tribal ceremonies,” he said.

Staff members collect the fallen feathers from these birds during their annual molt. The feathers are then shared among the religious leaders of the Zuni community for sacred ceremonial uses. In addition to continuing cultural traditions that have been in place for centuries, the aviary functions as a place to house and care for birds that otherwise would be euthanized.

Over the five years since its completion, the Sanctuary has grown to house 17 injured birds, and further expansion is being considered. The aviary currently is 100 feet long, 25 feet wide and 18 feet tall.

One important aspect of the project that Cohen stressed during the design phase was that the building be aesthetically appealing. Cohen and her husband, architect Claude Armstrong, who was her partner on the project, designed the aviary to be in harmony with its surroundings in northwestern New Mexico.

“The drawings we started with were all relatively simple because of the simplicity of the structure,” Cohen said. “We wanted it to reflect the natural area around it, and we made the decision that the materials would come as relatively local as possible.”

A reddish stone native to the area called Zuni sandstone was incorporated into the walls of the aviary, and lumber for the project was milled from local pine trees at the Zuni Community sawmill.

“The Zuni have a really beautiful way of building with the sandstone where they sort of lay it up so that the stone forms the walls of structures,” Cohen said. “It is a traditional practice that many of the Zuni today aren’t very familiar with, so while we were building the aviary, they started a program for the elders to teach how to lay up the sandstone.”

In addition, the aviary faces the Dowa Yalanne, the sacred Corn Mountain, a large mesa that dominates its Zuni surroundings. Cohen said the mesa has cultural significance to the Zuni, and the aviary was designed so the eagles could view the mesa from their cages.

Cohen’s work has not only given the Zuni a way to continue their heritage, it also has earned them international recognition and respect from other tribes.

“Because of the nature of the project, we were able to get grants from the federal government’s National Endowment for the Arts for the design fee,” Cohen said. “Grants from private sources funded the materials and labor.”

Models of the aviary are traveling the United States as part of an exhibit for the Premio Internazionale Dedalo Minosse award for architecture, an Italian award that celebrates the architect/client relationship. Photos of the aviary are included in the show, which tours internationally.

“This is not just about the Zuni Pueblo but about other tribes as well,” said Edward Wemytewa, a Zuni Pueblo tribal councilman. “Our eagle aviary shows other tribes with a heritage of eagle husbandry that they also have the flexibility of continuing their traditions as we are planning to do for future generations.”

Until now.

At the request of federal officials, University of Florida researchers recently presented a set of tools they developed that successfully integrates all modes of transportation - cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians - in order to form a more balanced transportation system. Backed by funding from the Florida Department of Transportation, UF urban planner Ruth Steiner and others have worked closely with local governments throughout the state to implement the standards - making it a national model in the effort - and are working diligently to put them into use on a nationwide basis.

“It is a constant battle between building cities for cars and building cities for people,” said Steiner, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at UF’s College of Design, Construction and Planning. “We have to build communities for all modes of transportation instead of focusing solely on the automobile. Otherwise, we will never relieve the traffic strain on our roads, and we will continue to build outward to deal with congestion.”

The computer modeling tools UF researchers developed allow planners to cooperatively control a host of elements that traditionally have been utilized independently - such as land use, roads, and mass and pedestrian transit - in order to understand how changes to any component will affect an area’s overall transportation system. By doing so, planners can begin to understand the tradeoffs that will occur with each option, allowing them to design plans based on those that maximize an area’s transportation efficiency, Steiner said.

As one of the largest and fastest growing states, Florida, with its 13 million vehicles, is a microcosm of the nation’s transportation problems. Likewise, its successes - though relatively few now - are a blueprint for changes that must be duplicated nationwide, she said.

After using the tools to successfully incorporate all modes of transportation in some Florida areas, including Deland, Key West and St. Lucie County, Steiner was asked to present her strategy last month to the national Transportation Research Board, an independent adviser to the federal government about transportation policy and practice.

“A more diverse mix of people, places and activities within neighborhoods will bring activities of daily life closer, reducing traffic and congestion,” she said. “A grid street network offers more route choices and more access points to all areas of the city, instead of relying on a few busy roads.”

Over time, these strategies could significantly lessen traffic impacts in cities nationwide and decrease transportation costs, she said. Americans travel 148 percent more miles today than they did just three decades ago, yet road capacity improvements have grown just 6 percent, according to the U.S. Department. of Transportation. The funding needed to build new roads and improve the capacity of existing ones falls short by about $75 million every year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

“These (recommended) characteristics have been shown to work in other communities, and it is now more important than ever to put them into practice because of the rapid growth rate and expanding transportation demands,“ Steiner said. “Communities sharing these characteristics make less automobile trips because there are other alternatives, and this significantly reduces the impact of development in that area.”

Steiner and other UF researchers, including Linda Crider, also conducted surveys of hundreds of pedestrians, bicyclists and mass transit users in order to create intersections and roadways that encourage people to use these forms of transportation. They found that users prefer well-marked intersections, roads with wide bike lanes and frequent transit stops with comfortable waiting areas. Crider, an associate scientist of urban and regional planning, is the program director for the FDOT’s Florida Traffic and Bicycle Education Program based at UF.

The team’s findings have been placed in a handbook and written into a software program for the FDOT to serve as guides for local government officials in developing balanced transportation districts in the state.

The ideas also can be implemented nationwide in communities experiencing similar problems, said Martin Guttenplan, a project manager with the department’s Systems Planning Office in Tallahassee.

“This work provides the planning tools to integrate land use and transportation together, which has been a severe problem in many states,” Guttenplan said. “This is an issue being faced on a national level, not just in Florida. Development increases the need for transportation, and the entire country can benefit from making communities more livable.”

“Nationally, less than 2 percent of all incoming goods are inspected, and new invasive pests are accidentally introduced every year,” said Marjorie Hoy, an entomologist with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences who participated in a federal study of agricultural bioterrorism. “Compared to nuclear weapons, biological weapons are relatively cheap and easy, and it’s likely someone who really wanted to use them could do it and we couldn’t prevent it.

“If this was a perfect world and we immediately detected, responded to and eradicated an attack, there would still be severe psychological and economic impacts - a ripple effect like we saw after Sept. 11 ,” she said. “It could cause people to be very concerned about their food supply, and it could cause a great deal of economic damage by affecting international trade as well as trade between the states.

With even a small attack likely to cause significant disruption, Hoy is calling for better communication among the many agencies that would be involved in dealing with an attack that threatens the nation’s food supply, and for farmers, home gardeners and other U.S. citizens to be alert and report unusual pests or diseases to proper authorities.

“Currently there are problems with communication between multiple local, state and federal agencies. We need secure communications between agencies and the ability to transmit a message coherently, clearly and effectively” in the event of biological attack against agriculture, she said.

Eradication of a biological attack agent might involve culling a herd of animals, or cutting and burning crops, she said. “There would be a call for quarantines to prevent the pests from moving into new areas. If people don’t help by complying, the pest can become permanently established, causing the loss of jobs and long-term economic damage to our society,” said Hoy, who was part of a National Academies’ National Research Council bioterrorism committee funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The committee’s report, “Countering Agricultural Bioterrorism,” became available in September.

Researchers have found that customer service is the most important factor in shaping satisfaction for homebuyers, but it is not the area builders place last on their list.

Homebuyers are getting increasingly more demanding, said Robert Stroh, director of the Shimberg Center for Affordable Housing at UF and faculty adviser for the study.

“They are more informed, more aware and more knowledgeable about what goes into the building process,” he said. “Builders need to start changing their priorities because customer priorities certainly are changing.”

And as the spring homebuying season gets under way, making customers happy becomes more crucial than ever, Stroh said.

“Service means business,” he said. “A builder who is well known for outstanding service before and after a project is finished will capture a larger share of the market than one who is not.”

The study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, surveyed 293 recent home- buyers from 16 Florida-based home- builders.

A questionnaire was developed to measure homebuyer satisfaction in three categories: house design, house quality and customer service.

Participants answered a total of 51 questions on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being most satisfied. Based on those responses, the researchers ranked five elements as most important to customers: builders’ courtesy, communication, responsiveness, reliability and willingness to help.

Researchers then ranked each category in order of importance to those customers. The results showed service as having the greatest impact on overall homebuyer satisfaction, followed by design and house quality.

However, the study showed builders to be most concerned with the home design.

The scores showed homebuyers were least satisfied with the service they received, giving it mean score of 4.86. Homebuyers were slightly more satisfied with house quality, giving it a score of 5.21, and most satisfied with house design with a score of 6.05.

An analysis of the data suggests a gap between the levels of importance the three categories hold in shaping overall homebuyer satisfaction and the importance homebuilders place on those categories. Stroh said builders’ and customers’ priorities should correspond better. “The ratings should be identical, but they’re not,” he said.

Zeljko Torbica, now an assistant professor of the department of construction management at Florida International University, worked on the study as a graduate student at UF.

“Not having enough qualified craftspeople is the biggest single problem facing the industry today,” said Brisbane Brown, a professor at UF’s M.E. Rinker Sr. School of Building Construction. “Housing, commercial and industrial construction are booming right now because of the robust economy,” further aggravating the labor shortage.

The Florida Academy of Construction Trades, one of the first such academies in the country, will offer its students a chance to learn the same classroom training in eight weeks that for decades has taken up to two years. The academy, which should open to students this fall, will use a curriculum developed by the National Center for Construction Education and Research, an organization affiliated with UF that has published standardized construction curricula for more than 20 crafts.

Training initially will be provided in carpentry, electrical work, plumbing and heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Training in other crafts will follow. The center’s curriculum, recognized in all 50 states and 14 foreign countries, differs from traditional construction curriculum in that it is performance-based. “Anybody can do it, and you can work at your own pace,” said Russell Smith, a former plumbing contractor and chairman of Citizens for Better Construction Education.

The academy eventually will produce almost 3,000 skilled craftsmen a year, with training to be aimed primarily at low-income or disadvantaged people. Students will be encouraged to return to the academy after working in their chosen fields for one or two years in order to complete their training.

“This is a very important project and an experiment that could potentially be used as a pattern all over the country,” said Dan Bennet, president of the National Center for Construction Educaiton and Research. “Basically what we’re trying to create is a boot camp for training, where we’ll take young students and let them concentrate on a career path in the construction industry.

“This should cut the time required drastically, and at the same time it should allow students to concentrate on the subject without nearly as much outside interference. The net result is that the construction industry, which has a shortfall of about 250,000 per year, should be able to get more people and better-trained people into the industry at an accelerated pace.”

Smith has met with industry representatives and elected officials to garner support and funding for the academy. He is working to secure federal, state and private grants to cover academy costs so that the program will be free to students. Contractors will serve as instructors, and unlike other programs, the academy will provide meals and housing for its students. “All they have to pay for is transportation there,” Brown said.

Most craftsmen learn trades through apprenticeships, which typically last about four years. Apprentices work full time during the day and attend classes at night each week.

But that method isn’t keeping up with demand.

“There’s lots of apprentice programs in the state, but they’re not producing the numbers of people needed to meet the needs of the industry,” Brown said.

Smith agrees current training is insufficient. “The construction industry has been extensively behind the eight ball,” he said. “The facilities aren’t in place to create trained craftspeople. The system needs to be responsive to the industry as well as the individual, and it isn’t. It’s based on time and not performance.”

Apprenticeships can be discouraging, especially to high school graduates. “Youth look at a four-year apprentice program and say forget it,” Brown said.

The time saved at the academy will depend on the craft. But in one week of academy classes, students will get the same amount of in-class instruction as they would have in two months in a class that met twice a week. The academy also will offer hands-on instruction.

To help minimize costs, UF researchers would like to take advantage of facilities made available by the closing of Florida military bases, such as the naval air station at Cecil Field in Jacksonville. Establishing the academy at Cecil Field would provide ample space for housing, dining facilities, classrooms and administration space.

Planning for the academy has been funded by the Building Construction Industry Advisory Committee, a research group funded by the Florida Department of Education; UF’s School of Building Construction; and the National Center for Construction Education and Research.