Knowledge Infrastructure for Coastal Infrastructure: The Y02A Patent Initiative and Site-Based Climate Adaption Strategies | The Plan Journal

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Policy 
Subscribers only
Type 
Article
Authors 
Richard L. Hindle
Section 
LANDSCAPE URBANISM
ABSTRACT -

Innovation in climate adaptation and resilience practices is among the most critical issues in architecture, design, and planning. This essay explores how coastal adaptation and resilience planning processes may be informed by the Y02A patent classification scheme to design advanced forms of site-specific coastal infrastructure. The Y02A scheme covers the “technologies for adaptation to climate change,” organizing coastal, riverine, and urban climate adaptation innovations into distinct sub-classes, with the aim of building technical capacity and coordinating discovery in related sectors. The mechanisms and processes through which these novel technologies are invented, tested, translated, and implemented within environmental design and planning praxis remain largely unknown, creating opportunities for new methods of knowledge exchange to be developed. To address the unique, and potentially transformative relationship, important aspects of the Y02A classification scheme are introduced in conjunction with a case study analysis from 2017/18 Resilience by Design Bay Area Challenge in California, during which the Common Ground Team utilized patent innovation studies to conceptualize site-based adaptation and resilience strategies for the San Pablo Baylands.

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