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Rob Avis

Rob Avis is a petroleum engineer turned permaculture teacher, designer and public speaker. He graduated from the University of Alberta and also have international training and certifications in renewable energy and regenerative design. He and his wife Michelle have been running Verge Permaculture in Calgary for the past 5 years.

The Antifragile Property Series Podcast: Part 1

By Rob Avis, Diego Footer, Verge Permaculture

“There’s a lot to worry about out there in the world right now – climate change, GMOs, the financial system, debt, terrorism, disease, water insecurity, a fragile food system. What if you could insure yourself against some of these worries?

  • April 10, 2017

Land as Insurance, Part 3: The Role of Farms

By Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture

Imagine if there was a corporation or co-operative that you could own shares in. The purpose of this corporation would be to hedge against certain classes of black swans.

  • March 23, 2017

Land as Insurance Part 2: The Black Swan Theory

By Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture

When a system contains extreme outliers that are hundreds, thousands, or millions of times further from the mean than expected, they can cause massive amounts of destruction and change the course of history.

  • March 10, 2017

Land as Insurance: Part 1, A Primer

By Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture

This is a three-part series based on an idea I recently had around the subjects of farming, black swans, and creating a product that can help insure against risk.

  • February 23, 2017

A Conversation with Diego Footer

By Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture

Recently I had a chance to chat with Diego Footer from Creative Destruction, formally known as Permaculture Voices, on a podcast series featuring “honest, hard conversations about farming, business, and life with those trying to make a living doing something that they love and dealing with life in the process.”

  • January 30, 2017

Storing Heat Underground in a Geosolar System

By Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture

As an engineer and permaculture designer living in a cold-climate, I am particularly fascinated with the interplay between thermodynamics and design and with capturing “waste” energy and finding novel, inexpensive and efficient ways to store and/or recapture and re-use it. One of these such systems, is geothermal storage.

  • June 30, 2016

Urban Swales Part 3: On Levels and Transits

By Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture

In this third video on urban swales, I explain why the level is a key tool in permaculture design and demonstrate its use to ensure that our swales work as intended...

  • June 14, 2016
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