NIST Technical Note 1795

Developing Guidelines and Standards for 

Disaster Resilience of the Built

Environment: A Research Needs 

Assessment

Therese McAllister

http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1795
NIST Technical Note 1795

Developing Guidelines and Standards for Disaster 

Resilience of the Built Environment: 

A Research Needs Assessment

Therese McAllister 

Engineering Laboratory 

Materials and Structural Systems

http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1795

March 2013

U.S. Department of Commerce

Rebecca Blank, Acting Secretary

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Patrick D. Gallagher, Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Director
Certain commercial entities, equipment, or materials may be identified in this 

document in order to describe an experimental procedure or concept adequately. 

Such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or endorsement by the 

National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor is it intended to imply that the 

entities, materials, or equipment are necessarily the best available for the purpose.

National Institute of Standards and Technology Technical Note 1795

Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. Tech. Note 1795, 142 pages (March 2013)

http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1795

CODEN: NTNOEF
Executive Summary

The term ‘resilience’ has a number of definitions. With regards to hazard events, it has 

been defined as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more 

successfully adapt to adverse events”. The term resilience is applied to a range of topics 

that include physical security against terrorism, security screening of people at public 

venues, continuity in business operations, emergency planning and response for essential 

services, hazard mitigation, and the capability of the built environment (e.g., facilities, 

transportation, utilities) to physically resist and rapidly recover from disruptive events. 

This report addresses the role of the built environment in community resilience. The basic 

premise is that critical facilities and infrastructure systems (e.g., hospitals, emergency 

response, power, and transportation) need to be operational and functional during and 

after a hazard event to support other aspects of community resilience. Additionally, the 

remaining buildings and infrastructure systems need to be restored within a specified 

period of time, if damage does occur, to minimize disruption to the community, 

expenditures for repair and rebuilding, and economic impacts. Resilience of the built 

environment depends upon the capacity of each facility and infrastructure system, when 

considered in the context of the community, to maintain acceptable levels of functionality 

during and after disruptive events and to recover full functionality within a specified 

period of time.

Despite progress in science and technology towards improved performance of the built 

environment during disasters, natural and man-made hazards in the United States are 

responsible for significant losses and damage. To improve the resilience of the built 

environment to hazard events, each community or region needs a comprehensive plan 

that specifies performance levels and timeframes for recovery from damage that are 

consistent across building and infrastructure systems. Community resilience objectives 

and policies should be developed for local and regional hazards and resilience needs, and 

should include goals and performance criteria, based on the role of each facility or 

infrastructure system in the community. However, guidance for developing resilience in 

the built environment, including quantitative metrics and tools for assessing component 

and community resilience, is not available.

The NIST Engineering Laboratory conducts research on resilience of the built 

environment, structural robustness, and structural performance during hazard events. 

NIST research aims to develop metrics and tools for assessing the resilience of building 

and infrastructure systems, such as predicting structural performance up to failure, 

assessing and evaluating the ability of existing structures to withstand seismic, fire, and 

other extreme loads, and predicting disaster resilience at the community scale.

To assist with identifying critical gaps and needs in tools and metrics for assessing the 

resilience of the built environment, two national workshops were convened by NIST in

2011, which were sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and 

supported by the American National Standards Institute’s Homeland Security Standards 

Panel (ANSI-HSSP). The Resilience Roundtable convened invited leaders from 

engineering practice and research communities and the standards development 

community to identify gaps in current practice, standards, and codes and the assessment
and design of resilient buildings and infrastructure systems. The Standards for Disaster 

Resilience Workshop further developed technical input and guidance from participants 

for identifying critical gaps and needs in tools and metrics for resilient communities. The 

Standards for Disaster Resilience Workshop was open to all interested participants. Panel 

sessions addressed the following topics: need for resilience in buildings and 

infrastructure systems, community planning for resilience, insurance perspective on 

building and infrastructure resilience, and standards for building, electric power, 

transportation, and water and wastewater systems.

This report provides an assessment of technical gaps and research needs for developing 

guidelines and standards supporting community resilience based on the workshops and 

NIST research. The gaps and needs are grouped as short term (less than 3 to 5 years) and 

long term (greater than 3 to 5 years) activities, based on funding and staffing levels. The 

short term activities address resilience planning at the community level, where the role of 

facilities or systems in a community’s physical resilience is defined. The long term 

activities address identification and development of tools and metrics that determine the 

expected level of performance during and after a hazard event, and include recovery of 

functional performance.

Short term activities

• Identify technical gaps and research needs from reviews of past disaster events and 

existing model codes and standards

• Define resilience terminology for the built environment to help communicate new 

concepts

• Develop guidance for community resilience planning

Long term activities

• Develop risk-based performance goals for resilient communities

• Develop tools and metrics to support quantitative technical assessment, policy 

development, and decision making

• Develop guidelines on risk-based performance goals and criteria for inclusion in 

standards for voluntary reference.
Acknowledgements

This report has benefitted from a number of individuals and sources. Two workshops 

were held by NIST in 2011 to discuss research needs for developing more resilient 

buildings and infrastructure systems, which provided a valuable source of data and ideas. 

Chris Poland and Steve Cauffman, Co-Chairs of both workshops, provided invaluable 

assistance in organizing the topics, scope, and technical experts. The American National 

Standards Institute’s Homeland Security Standards Panel (ANSI-HSSP) coordinated the 

arrangements for the two events and provided valuable support. The following 

individuals provided insightful views on the state of resilience at the workshops:

Don Ballantyne, Degenkolb Engineers

Steve Ernst, Federal Highway Administration 

Ron Hamburger, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger 

Jim Harris, JR Harris Company

Dan Howell, FM Global

Chris Poland, Degenkolb Engineers

Woody Savage, University of Nevada Las Vegas

Alex Tang, L&T Consultants

Participants at the 2011 workshops included professionals knowledgeable about many 

aspects of the built environment, and their input greatly assisted in identifying technical 

gaps and research needs in the present codes, standards, and practices. They are grouped 

by organization to illustrate the breadth of the participants.

Government Agencies

Bonneville Power Administration - Leon Kempner

Department of Code Administration at City of Alexandria - John Catlett

Federal Agency for Technical Relief, Germany - Heiko Werner

Federal Emergency Management Agency - Everett Sedgwick, Randy Wagoner

Federal Highway Administration - Ian Friedland

National Institute of Standards and Technology - William Billotte, Bob Chapman, 

Gordon Gillerman, Jack Hayes, Marc Levitan, H.S. Lew, Jennifer Marshall, Jon 

Martin, Nancy McNabb, Fahim Sadek, Kevin Wong

Office of Science and Technology Policy - Tamara Dickinson

U.S. Department of Homeland Security - Katie Appenrodt, Jasper Cooke, Bert 

Coursey, Sandra Gogol, Pamela Greenlaw, Doug Ham, Mike Kangior, Alison 

Littlepage, Evette Maynard-Noel, Kalpesh Patel, Nancy Pomerleau, Peter Shebell, 

Douglas Smith, Erin Walsh

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - David Goldbloom-Helzner

Non-Profit and Trade Organizations

American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials - Tasha

Johnson, Lacy Love
American National Standards Institute - Jessica Carl, Michelle Deane, Fran

Schrotter,

American Society of Civil Engineers - James Rossberg, Jennifer Goupil

ASTM International - Richard Lake

Institute for Business & Home Safety - Tim Reinhold

International Code Council - David Karmol

National Fire Protection Association - Christian Dubay, Robert Vondrasek, Robert

Solomon

Portland Cement Association - Steve Skalko

Society of Fire Protection Engineers - Morgan Hurley

The Infrastructure Security Partnership - William Anderson 

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority - William Taylor 

Universities and Institutes

Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute - Jefferson Welch

Disaster Management Institute - Joseph Booth Stephenson

Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute - Marcus Williams, Robert

Zimmerman

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - Robert Stenner

Rice University - Leonardo Duenas-Osorio

The National Graduate School of Quality Management - John Bridges

University at Buffalo - Michael Bruneau 

University of Florida - David Prevatt 

University of Waterloo - Elizabeth English

Private Firms

Applied Technology Council - Bill Coulbourne

Catalyst Partners - David McWhorter

CIP Consulting - Paul Domich

Environmental Security International - Jami Blackmon 

FLIR Systems - Wayne Bryden, Kristin Korte 

Magnusson Klemencic Associates - John Hooper

PCS Structural Solutions - Don Scott

Siemens USA - John Kulick

URS Corporation - Dennis Schroder

Weidlinger Associates - Irmak Renda-Tanali, Kaan Tanali

William H. Gordon Associates, Inc. - Will Peart

This report also benefitted from the thoughtful review comments and technical expertise 

of the following individuals:

Chris Poland of Degenkolb Engineers, San Francisco, CA

Ron Hamburger of Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, San Francisco, CA
Jack Hayes, Director of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program

(NEHRP), NIST, MD

Eric Letvin, Director of Disaster and Failure Studies, NIST, MD

Steve Cauffman, Program Manager of Disaster Resilient Structures and

Communities Research, NIST, MD

Anthony Hamins, Program Manager of Fire, NIST, MD

Fahim Sadek, Program Manager of Structural Performance Under Multi-Hazards

Research, NIST, MD

Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and 

suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did 

they see the final draft of the report before its release.
Contents

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1

2. Recent Disaster Events................................................................................................ 3

3. Historical Basis of Resilience Concepts...................................................................... 7

3.1. 1992 Hurricane Andrew....................................................................................... 7

3.1.1. Event ............................................................................................................. 7

3.1.2. Federal Government Activities..................................................................... 8

3.2. 2001 WTC and Pentagon Terrorist Attacks......................................................... 8

3.2.1. Event ............................................................................................................. 8

3.2.2. Federal Government Activities..................................................................... 9

3.3. 2005 Hurricane Katrina........................................................................................ 9

3.3.1. Event ............................................................................................................. 9

3.3.2. Federal Government Activities................................................................... 10

3.4. 2012 Hurricane Sandy........................................................................................ 11

3.4.1. Event ........................................................................................................... 11

3.4.2. Federal Government Activities................................................................... 12

3.5. Private Sector Activities..................................................................................... 13

3.6. NIST Research Activities................................................................................... 15

3.7. Looking Forward................................................................................................ 16

4. Codes and Standards.................................................................................................. 16

4.1. Resilience in the Built Environment .................................................................. 18

4.2. Technical Gaps and Research Needs for Resilience in the Built Environment . 19

4.2.1. Consistent performance goals across codes and standards......................... 19

4.2.2. Comprehensive community resilience plans and guidance ........................ 20

4.2.3. Performance goals including recovery........................................................ 21

4.2.4. Multiple resilience levels with risk-based performance criteria and a given 

hazard .........................................................................................21

4.2.5. Existing building and infrastructure systems.............................................. 22

5. Resilience Roundtable on Standards for Disaster Resilience for Buildings and

Physical Infrastructure Systems........................................................................................ 22

5.1. Terminology and Metrics................................................................................... 23
5.2. Multiple Resilience Levels................................................................................. 24

5.3. Performance Goals and Metrics......................................................................... 24

5.4. Codes and Standards .......................................................................................... 25

6. Standards for Disaster Resilient Buildings and Infrastructure Systems.................... 26

6.1. Community Resilience ....................................................................................... 26

6.2. Performance of the Built Environment for Disaster Events............................... 27

6.3. Building Systems ............................................................................................... 27

6.4. Transportation Systems...................................................................................... 27

6.5. Water and Wastewater Systems......................................................................... 28

6.6. Electric Power Systems...................................................................................... 29

6.7. Communication Systems.................................................................................... 30

6.8. Codes and Standards .......................................................................................... 30

Buildings.................................................................................................................... 31

Water, power, communication................................................................................... 32

Resilience of the built environment ........................................................................... 32

7. Research Needs Assessment for Developing Resilience Standards.......................... 32

7.1. Short Term Activities - Community Resilience Planning.................................. 32

7.1.1. Determine technical gaps and research needs from reviews of past disaster 

events and existing model codes and standards......................................................... 32

7.1.2. Define terminology for resilience objectives in the built environment. ..... 33

7.1.3. Develop guidance for community resilience planning ............................... 33

7.2. Long Term Activities - Metrics and Standards.................................................. 34

7.2.1. Develop multiple resilience levels to support risk-based performance goals

.........................................................................................34

7.2.2. Develop consistent performance goals and metrics for building and 

infrastructure systems................................................................................................ 34

7.2.3. Develop metrics for community and component resilience ....................... 34

7.2.4. Develop guidelines and standards for achieving resilient communities with 

adoption of codes and standards................................................................................ 35

8. Summary.................................................................................................................... 35
Appendices

Appendix A: Resilience Roundtable Participants....................................... 42

Appendix B: White Papers ................................................................ 44

1. Resilience of the Built Environment............................................. 45

2. SPUR Resilient City Goals........................................................ 58

3. Provisions in Present U.S. Building Codes and Standards for

Resilience............................................................................ 69

4. Lifeline Resilience Standards – Approach to Instill Consistent Post Disaster

Performance......................................................................... 78

Appendix C: Roundtable Breakout Discussion by Participants....................... 82

Appendix D: Standards for Disaster Resilience Workshop Participants............. 90

Appendix E: Presentations for Standards for Disaster Resilience Workshop........ 92

Panel 1 – Introduction to Resilience of the Built Environment

Introduction to Resilience for Buildings and Infrastructure

Systems....................................................................................... 93

Community Planning for Resilience – SPUR........................................... 98

Panel 2 – Focus on Building Systems

Standards for Building Systems........................................................... 107

Insurance Perspective on Building and Infrastructure

Resilience..................................................................................... 111

Panel 3 – Focus on Lifelines

Standards for Electric Power Systems................................................... 122

Standards for Transportation Systems.................................................... 127

Standards for Water and Wastewater Systems.......................................... 132

Appendix F: Resilience Standards Workshop Discussion............................. 138
1

1. Introduction

Hazards

1

pose continuing and significant threats to U.S. buildings and infrastructure 

systems. Hazard types and intensities vary by location, making resilience of the built 

environment a community or regional issue. Buildings

2

and infrastructure systems

3

, also 

referred to as the built environment, play critical roles in community 

resilience. Resilience of the built environment depends upon the capacity of each facility 

and infrastructure system to maintain acceptable levels of functionality during and after a 

disruptive event and to recover full functionality within a specified period of time. 

Despite substantial progress in science and technology towards improved performance of 

the built environment during disasters, natural and man-made hazards in the United

States are responsible for loss of life, disruption of commerce and financial networks, 

damaged property, and loss of business continuity and essential services.

The term ‘resilience’ has a number of definitions. With regards to hazard events, and 

responding to hazard events, it has been defined as “the ability to prepare and plan for, 

absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events” (NAC 2012) or, 

similarly, “the ability to prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand and 

recover rapidly from disruptions” (PPD-21 2013). Resilience includes the ability to 

withstand and recover from deliberate attacks, accidents, or naturally occurring threats or 

incidents. The term resilience is applied to a range of topics that include physical security 

against terrorism, security screening of people at public venues, continuity in business 

operations and employment, emergency planning and response for essential services, 

hazard mitigation, and the capability of the built environment (e.g., facilities, 

transportation, utilities) to physically resist and rapidly recover from disruptive events. 

This report addresses the role of the built environment in community resilience. The basic 

premise is that critical facilities and infrastructure systems (e.g., power, emergency 

response, hospitals, and transportation) need to be operational and functional during and 

after a hazard event to support other aspects of community resilience. Additionally, the 

remaining buildings and infrastructure systems need to be restored within a specified 

period of time, if damage does occur, to minimize disruption to the community. 

Resilience of the built environment depends upon the capacity of each facility and 

infrastructure system, when considered in the context of the community, to maintain 

acceptable levels of functionality during and after disruptive events and to recover full 

functionality within a specified period of time.

This document addresses resilience issues related to the performance of the built 

environment during and after hazards and disruptive events. In particular, the technical

1 Hazards include earthquakes, wind-related hazards (hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms), fire-related 

hazards (community-scale fires in the wildland-urban interface, building fires), water-related hazards 

(storm surge, flood, tsunami) and human-made hazards (accidental, criminal, or terrorist in nature). 2 The term building includes all the systems necessary for its functional operation, including architectural, 

structural, life safety, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, security, communication and IT systems. 3 The terms infrastructure and lifelines are used interchangeably in this paper, and include the physical 

plants, transmission, and distribution networks for transportation facilities (e.g., roads, bridges, airports,

tunnels, ports, rail) and utilities (e.g., electric power, water and wastewater, fuels, and communication).
2

gaps for achieving resilience in the built environment are identified and research needs 

are identified. The other aspects of a resilient community—security, protection, 

emergency response, business continuity, and social issues related to human health, 

safety, and general welfare—are not addressed. However, these broader issues drive 

requirements for the performance of the built environment. The objective of this effort is 

to establish the needs for improving the performance of the built environment.

The built environment needs improved performance during and after a disruptive hazard 

event. For example, critical facilities, such as emergency response stations and hospitals, 

and their supporting power, communication, and transportation systems, should be 

designed to the same performance levels for a design hazard event. Presently, this is not 

occurring in many communities for several reasons. A number of communities have not 

adopted current building codes and standards, or have exempted critical sections such as 

seismic requirements, or do not enforce compliance with adopted codes. Many state 

transportation codes lag the current national transportation codes and standards. Electric 

power, communication, and water systems rely on industry standards, but these standards 

often focus on reliability of service rather than system performance during or after hazard 

events. Additionally, the built environment in each community has buildings and 

infrastructure systems that may range from historic to modern, and were constructed 

under codes and standards of the time. Many facilities do not meet current design 

standards, or may have degraded performance due to aging effects or inadequate 

maintenance.

However, resilience is more than adopting and enforcing the current codes and standards. 

In communities that adopt and enforce the latest codes, there is still uncertainty about the 

expected performance of the built environment when subjected to hazard events. This is 

because codes, standards, and current practices for the built environment emphasize life 

safety issues and reliable service but not issues associated with community resilience, 

such as expected performance during a design-level hazard event or rapid repair and 

recovery afterwards. Hazard events across the country and around the world repeatedly 

demonstrate that buildings and infrastructure systems do not perform in a manner that 

supports community resilience.

Recent disaster events are first reviewed to illustrate the types and extent of damage that 

occur across the nation. Then, a short history of the evolution of resilience concepts in the 

framework of national disaster events is provided. Parallel with the disaster events, the 

resilience activities of the federal government are described, including key documents 

such as the Grand Challenges for Disaster Reduction (OSTP 2008), the National 

Infrastructure Protection Plan (DHS 2009) which was developed in response to 

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7 (HSPD-7 2003), and the National 

Preparedness Goal (DHS 2011) which was developed in response to Presidential Policy 

Directive 8 (PPD-8 2011). Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 21, Critical Infrastructure 

Security and Resilience, was released in February 2013 with the goal of advancing 

national unity of effort to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient 

critical infrastructure for all hazards (PPD-21 2013). Private sector resilience activities 

are also summarized. These summaries set the background for recommendations for 

research needs, which are based on the collected data and the workshops described 

below.
3

Two national workshops were held with experts from the building and infrastructure 

communities to discuss the needs and gaps for achieving resilience in the built 

environment. Introductory and background information are presented first to provide 

context for the concept of resilience in the built environment and to review activities 

related to community resilience by government and private sectors. Then, a summary of 

the recommendations from each workshop are presented, based on the detailed comments 

provided in the Appendices. Last, a consolidated set of short and long term research 

needs are also presented, based on input from the workshops and NIST research, for 

developing tools and standards for resilient communities.

2. Recent Disaster Events

The risk across the Nation for substantial damage due to hazard events continues to 

increase, due to the combined effects of urban development and population growth 

(NOAA 2005, NRC 2006). Much of the Nation’s physical infrastructure is susceptible to 

natural hazards (e.g., along coastlines, in the wildland-urban interface, in tornado alley, 

and in earthquake-prone regions). Additionally, much of the Nation’s infrastructure is 

vulnerable due to aging effects resulting in a diminishing capacity to resist hazards.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has issued report cards for America’s 

Infrastructure since 1998. The 2009 report (ASCE 2009) evaluated aviation, bridges, 

dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, public parks 

and recreation, rail, roads, schools, solid waste, transit, and wastewater systems at a 

national level. The highest grade was a C+ for solid waste and 5 systems received the 

lowest grade of D-. More recent reports have evaluated the infrastructure status by state. 

ASCE released ‘A Failure to Act’ (2013) which evaluates the economic consequences of 

continued underinvestment in the national infrastructure. The report addresses the 

economic opportunity associated with infrastructure investment and the cost of failing to 

fill the investment gap.

Risk is commonly thought of as a product of a threat or hazard, the vulnerability of a 

community or facility to a threat or hazard, and the resulting consequences that may 

impact the community or facility (DHS 2012). As an indicator of the risk of the existing 

built environment experiencing damage from hazard events, Figure 1 shows Presidential 

disaster declarations for the period from January 2000 to January 2011. Between 45 and

81 declarations were made every year for floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fire 

events, and severe storms. The 2001 World Trade Center (WTC) terrorist attack, a manmade disaster, also was declared as a Presidential disaster. The Robert T. Stafford 

Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act authorizes the President to issue a major 

disaster declaration for federal aid to states determined to be overwhelmed by natural 

hazards or other catastrophes. The Stafford Act authorizes temporary housing, grants for 

immediate needs of families and individuals, and the repair of public infrastructure and 

emergency communication systems. For instance, Congress appropriated over $10 billion 

to the Disaster Relief Fund in FY2005, largely in response to the four hurricanes that 

struck Florida in the fall of 2004. However, many disaster declarations are based on 

economic recovery costs, and the hazard intensity experienced during the events fall 

below current design thresholds.
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The International Standards Organization (ISO) defines a catastrophe as an event that 

causes $25 million or more in insured property losses and affects a substantial number of 

property/casualty policyholders. The ten most costly catastrophes in the United States, 

normalized by insured property losses in 2010 dollars, are shown in Table 1 (Insurance 

Information Institute, 2012). These catastrophes affected large regions or multiple states, 

damaging buildings and infrastructure systems to an extent that full recovery took years. 

The role of the top three catastrophes in defining resilience of the built environment is 

discussed in the next section.

Total losses can exceed $100 billion in large disaster events. The wind and storm surge 

during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused extensive damage across several states (NIST

2006). Beyond the storm surge, the winds damaged industrial facilities, oil storage tanks, 

and the power distribution system. Insured losses for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were $44 

billion, and total economic (non-insured) damages were thought to exceed $200 billion 

(King 2005, 2008). More recently, Japan had a triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and 

nuclear power plant crises. The World Bank estimated that the reconstruction costs for 

this disaster will range between $122 and $235 billion (Nakamura 2011).

Table 1. Ten most costly catastrophes in the United States.

(1)

Rank Date Peril Insured property loss

in 2010 dollars (2)

($ millions)

1 2005 Hurricane Katrina $45 481

2 2001 World Trade Center and

Pentagon terrorist attacks

$22 924

3 1992 Hurricane Andrew $11 412

4 1994 Northridge, CA Earthquake $17 318

5 2008 Hurricane Ike $12 735

6 2005 Hurricane Wilma $11 398

7 2004 Hurricane Charley $8 548

8 2004 Hurricane Ivan $8 130

9 1989 Hurricane Hugo $6 678

10 2005 Hurricane Rita $6 227

(1) Property coverage only. Does not include flood damage covered by the federally administered National

Flood Insurance Program.

(2) Adjusted for inflation through 2010 by ISO using the gross domestic product (GDP) implicit price 

deflator.

Model codes and standards for building and infrastructure systems tend to be developed 

independently through different public or private processes. Their independent 

development can lead to varying hazard and performance criteria for buildings, 

transportation systems, utilities, and other infrastructure systems within a community. 

The codes and standards are developed to ensure life safety of buildings and reliability of
6

service for utilities, but do not address resilience issues. The uneven level of damage that 

occurs across building and infrastructure systems during hazard events indicates that the 

present codes, standards, and practices are not compatible in their scope or requirements 

for performance. Additionally, many of the existing building and infrastructure systems 

were built to earlier codes and standards. The following examples from 2011 hazard 

events in the U.S. demonstrate how the built environment is often excessively damaged 

in hazard events.

Hurricane Irene was a Category I hurricane when it made first landfall on the Outer 

Banks, North Carolina on 27 August 2011. It made a second landfall at Little Egg, New 

Jersey, and a third landfall at Brooklyn, NY, after which it was downgraded to a tropical 

storm. Hurricane Irene primarily caused extensive flood damage. Over 40 million people 

were affected by the storm, and over 6 million homes and businesses lost power from 

downed power lines and flooded or damaged substations. Many roads and bridges in New 

Jersey and Vermont were impassable, isolating communities. Hurricane Irene caused 

insured losses of $2 billion to $4.5 billion, according to Risk Management Solutions Inc. 

The worst of the damage resulted from flooding, a hazard which is not covered under 

standard homeowners' policies and is largely excluded from the RMS estimate (Holm

2011). If flood damage losses were included, the total loss estimate increased to between

$7 billion and $10 billion (Cooper 2011).

On May 22nd, 2011, a tornado occurred in Joplin, MO. While portions of the 22 mile 

damage swath were rated as EF3 to EF5, much of the tornado damage was rated between 

EF0 and EF2 (National Weather Service 2011a). Approximately 7500 houses, 18000 

cars, and 450 businesses were damaged or destroyed. Communication and power were 

lost in many areas of the city. It is likely to be the costliest tornado in U.S. history, 

reaching $3 billion (EQECAT 2011). St. John’s Regional Medical Center is an example 

an engineered structure’s response to direct impact by tornadic winds and debris. Nearly 

all the low-rise buildings surrounding St. John’s were destroyed. In the main hospital 

structure, there was extensive damage to the glazing, interior walls, and furnishings, and 

sections of the roof were missing, but there was no observed damage to main wind force 

resisting system of the 1965 reinforced concrete frame or the 1983 steel frame (Phan

2011). However, ancillary buildings for the generator and chiller plants were 

substantially damaged or collapsed. Due to mold and other contaminants (Bollin 2011) 

which were too costly to remediate, the St. John’s medical facility was demolished and is 

being rebuilt at a new location4

. The damage to St John’s Regional Medical Center 

demonstrates the need to consider the functionality of a facility after a hazard event, in 

addition to structural integrity.

On 11 July, 2011, a severe thunderstorm struck central eastern Iowa. The National

Weather Service (NWS) storm survey teams estimated wind speeds in the 110 to 130 

mph range based on observed damage. The NWS stated that this was the largest and most 

damaging wind event since 1998. No tornadoes were detected; the straight line winds 

were due to a derecho5. However, the strongest winds were similar to those found in an

4 Personal communication, St John’s Medical Research Center and NIST personnel 5 The National Weather Service defines derechos as windstorms that are able to last for several hours with 

gust fronts that produce high levels of damage. In order for these storms to last so long, they need both

instability and wind shear.
7

EF1 tornado (National Weather Service 2011b). Damage included widespread power 

outages and downed power lines, partial or total removal of many roofs, and collapsed 

walls of some buildings.

There was an increased rate of water pipe failures across the U.S. during the 2011 

drought in the Midwest and South. Older pipes are more susceptible to bursting. 

Beginning in August 2011, Oklahoma City had 685 water main breaks over a six-week 

period, four times the normal rate. On August 23, 2011, Houston had 847 water leaks, 

more than three times the normal rate. The American Water Works Association 

(AWWA) report, “Dawn of the Replacement Era, Reinvesting in Drinking Water 

Infrastructure” (May 2001) points out that many of the water systems are 80 to 100 years 

old and approaching the end of their useful lives.

Deteriorating infrastructure increases the severity and rate of failure during hazard events 

or extreme conditions. The ASCE (2009) report card rate the national infrastructure 

between a C+ and D-. The United States has fallen sharply in the World Economic 

Forum's ranking of national infrastructure systems. In the 2007-2008 report, American 

infrastructure was ranked No.6 in the world. In the 2009-2010 report, the U.S. was 

ranked at No.14. The U.S. spends roughly 2 percent of its gross domestic product on 

infrastructure systems, about half of that spent 50 years ago. Europe spends around 5 

percent, and China 9 percent. Deteriorating infrastructure impacts business continuity and 

increases costs to taxpayers and businesses.

As projected losses from hazard events continue to rise, there is increasing recognition 

that minimizing the need for emergency response and post-event rebuilding and recovery 

depends on proactive measures to identify and mitigate risks posed by hazards and to 

plan for rapid recovery for all infrastructure systems in the built environment.

3. Historical Basis of Resilience Concepts

Three disaster events significantly influenced the development of resilience concepts in 

the United States: Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the World Trade Center (WTC) and 

Pentagon terrorist attacks in 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

3.1. 1992 Hurricane Andrew

3.1.1. Event

Andrew stuck Dade County on August 24th as a Category 5 hurricane, with the center 

first reaching the coast at the northern tip of Elliott Key. The storm devastated Dade 

County where it caused an estimated $25 billion in damage, especially over the 

Homestead area. The number of homes destroyed was approximately 49 000, with an 

additional estimated 108000 damaged (National Weather Service 2012).

The widespread structural damage from Hurricane Andrew in 1992 resulted in improved 

building codes and practices in South Florida (Florida Building Commission 2004). Some
8

of the important changes included adopting wind provisions from a national standard6, 

developing requirements for impact resistant glazing through testing, and requiring 

positive ties at all connections to resist uplift forces (Tsikoudakis 2012).

3.1.2. Federal Government Activities

After Hurricane Andrew, FEMA was reorganized with an emphasis on preparedness and 

mitigation for natural hazards. Response and recovery efforts primarily focused on 

providing financial and housing aid to communities immediately after a disaster. Today, 

FEMA public assistance ranges from training to flood insurance to personal and 

community disaster relief. Their activities have improved community planning for 

shelters and communication during hazard events and provided assistance when damage 

exceeded local and state resources. FEMA reports on building performance during 

disasters and support of seismic design practices have resulted in changes to building 

practices (e.g., continuous load paths for wind resistance, elevation above flood levels, 

and improved seismic design guidelines, including performance based design). Most 

recently, FEMA issued Comprehensive Preparedness Guidance (CPG) 201 (DHS 2012) 

to help communities conduct a threat and hazard identification and risk assessment 

process. The process has the user identify hazards, vulnerabilities, and consequences to 

provide a basis for examining existing plans and capabilities for preparedness, mitigation, 

response, and recovery. The findings are used to identify needed capabilities and set new 

targets for performance during a hazard. The process supports informed decision making 

by communities for managing risk and developing capabilities.

3.2. 2001 WTC and Pentagon Terrorist Attacks

3.2.1. Event

On September 11, 2001, large aircraft were flown into the World Trade Center 

(WTC) 1 and 2 buildings and the Pentagon by terrorists. The fires following the aircraft 

impact caused WTC 1 and WTC 2 to collapse within approximately 1 to 1.5 h. When the 

towers collapsed, fire spread to the WTC 7 building, which also collapsed due to 

uncontrolled fires. The Pentagon damage was limited to the area of aircraft impact, 

largely due to the redundant framing designed for large floor loads and reinforcement 

continuity at supports (Mlakar et. al. 2003). Buildings for use by the general population 

are not designed in this manner, so they will not withstand attacks of such severity. The 

collapse of the WTC buildings led to major damage to surrounding buildings and loss of 

power, communication, and water in lower Manhattan, as well as interruption to financial 

markets. The loss of life by occupants and emergency responders, and the damage to the 

surrounding buildings and infrastructure systems in lower Manhattan, raised issues about 

how building collapse can affect the entire built community (NIST 2005, NIST 2008).

The NIST (2005, 2008) reports made recommendations to improve safety for tall 

buildings and their occupants and for emergency responders. The recommendations

6 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Standard 7, Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and 

Other Structures, provides minimum load requirements for the design of buildings and other structures that 

are subject to building code requirements. Loads and appropriate load combinations, which have been 

developed to be used together, are set forth for strength design and allowable stress design.
9

addressed structural integrity, fire resistance of structures, building evacuation, 

emergency response, and improved procedures and practices for design and construction. 

Many of these recommendations have been adopted by codes and standards (WTC 

Disaster Study 2008).

3.2.2. Federal Government Activities

Following the WTC and Pentagon disasters in 2001, efforts focused on enhancing 

security against terrorism for critical infrastructure. National policy for deterrence of 

terrorist attacks was addressed in The USA Patriot Act (2001), which defined critical 

infrastructure as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United 

States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a 

debilitating impact” on national economic security, public health, or safety. The 

Homeland Security Presidential Directive-7 (HSPD-7 2003), Critical Infrastructure 

Identification, Prioritization, and Protection, established a national policy for federal

agencies to identify and prioritize critical

7 infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) and to 

protect them from terrorist attacks. Table 2 lists the Critical Infrastructure Sectors, which 

were originally identified by DHS (2009). The performance of the built environment is 

not explicitly addressed in the critical infrastructure sectors, but each sector relies on the 

built environment and the interrelation of the sectors is critical to resilience.

Table 2. Eighteen Critical Infrastructure Sectors Identified by DHS (2009).

Food & Agriculture Banking and Finance Chemical

Commercial Facilities Communications Critical Manufacturing

Dams Defense Industrial Base Emergency Services

Energy Government Facilities Information Technology

Healthcare & Public

Health

National Monuments & 

Icons

Nuclear Reactors, 

Materials & Waste

Postal & Shipping Transportation Systems Water

3.3. 2005 Hurricane Katrina

3.3.1. Event

Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast region as a Category 3 hurricane on the SaffirSimpson hurricane scale. The accompanying storm surge was observed to be as high as

7 The terms critical and essential are often used interchangeably to indicate facilities and infrastructure that 

are necessary for public safety, health, and welfare and are intended to remain operational during and after 

hazard events.
10

8.5 m (28 ft) at some locations along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Hurricane Katrina 

reached Category 5 intensity while in the Gulf of Mexico, with maximum sustained 

winds of 78 m/s (175 mph). The storm began weakening about 18 hours before making 

landfall as a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 56 m/s (125 mph) 

(NIST 2006).

At the time of the hurricanes, there was no statewide building code in Louisiana, 

Mississippi, or Alabama, although some local jurisdictions had adopted model building 

codes. The City of New Orleans had adopted the 2000 edition of the model building and 

residential codes issued by the International Code Council in January 2004 (NIST 2006).

In coastal areas and in New Orleans, storm surge was the dominant cause of damage. 

Storm surge heights, in general, exceeded the levels defined by existing flood hazard 

maps as well as historical records. Storm surge and associated wave action led to 

breaches in the flood protection system in New Orleans, resulting in substantial structural 

damage to residences in the immediate vicinity of breaches and flooding in 

approximately 75 percent of the city. Bridges in the coastal areas were damaged due to 

the uplift and lateral loads imparted by storm surge and associated wave action. Industrial 

facilities, such as seaports, petrochemical facilities, and utilities also sustained damage 

due to storm surge and flooding (NIST 2006).

Away from the immediate coastal areas, wind and wind-borne debris were the dominant 

causes of damage to structures. Substantial damage occurred in many instances where the 

winds were lower than those levels cited in codes and standards—suggesting that the 

structures did not perform as expected. Buildings suffered wind-induced damage to 

glazing (window glass) as a result of debris impact from aggregate surface roofs on 

adjacent buildings, debris from damaged equipment screens on top of buildings, and 

debris from the damaged façade or structure of adjacent buildings. Wind damaged 

roofing and rooftop equipment, providing paths for water ingress into buildings. Winddriven rain through walls and around intact windows also was responsible for water 

damage to the interiors of buildings. As many as one million timber electric power 

distribution poles were lost in the two hurricanes, as well as a number of high voltage 

transmission towers (NIST 2006).

The extensive, multi-state damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reminded the U.S. that 

natural disasters continue to be a significant threat to our communities. The 

unprecedented level of destruction by storm surge in Mississippi and Louisiana brought 

renewed focus on the need to address natural disasters, in addition to protection from 

manmade hazards.

3.3.2. Federal Government Activities

A broadened definition of disaster resilience was reflected in the Grand Challenges for 

Disaster Reduction and the National Infrastructure Protection Plan developed by The 

President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2005, and updated 2008 (OSTP

2008). The Grand Challenges identify technical problems due to lack of adequate 

scientific understanding of natural hazards and availability of information, predictive 

technologies, and mitigation strategies to improve the performance of buildings and
11

infrastructure, and standard methods to predict and assess the disaster resilience of 

buildings and infrastructure.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a National Infrastructure 

Protection Plan (DHS 2009) in response to HSPD-7. Eighteen CIKR sectors were 

identified (see Table 2), as well as high priority technology needs, including analytical 

tools to quantify interdependencies and cascading consequences across critical 

infrastructure sectors; effective and affordable blast analysis and protection for critical 

infrastructure; decision support systems to prevent disruption, mitigate results, and build 

resiliency; rapid mitigation and recovery technologies; and critical utility components 

that are affordable and highly transportable.

The DHS Science and Technology Directorate sponsored a 2010 workshop that focused 

on the resilience of buildings and related infrastructure, and discerning possible strategies 

for the Federal departments and agencies to pursue. The resilience of U.S. buildings and 

infrastructure systems for hazard events was considered for four design-related 

approaches: high performance, codes and standards, continuity of operations, and 

integrated design. The Summit was attended by 82 experts from the building industry, 

federal agencies, state and local governments, universities, and professional and trade 

organizations. The workshop was documented in a report, “Designing for a Resilient 

America” (DHS 2010), in which recommendations were made for increasing resiliency in 

six areas: role of government, public/private partnerships, codes and standards, research 

and development, design practice and performance outcomes, and education and 

outreach.

Presidential Policy Directive 8 (PPD-8 2011) called for strengthening the security and 

resilience of the United States through an integrated, capabilities-based approach to 

national preparedness and resiliency and directed DHS to develop a national 

preparedness goal and plan. DHS issued a report, National Preparedness Goal (DHS

2011), describing how the nation would strive to develop “a secure and resilient Nation 

with the capabilities required across the whole community to prevent, protect against, 

mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk”. 

The goal addresses natural disasters, disease pandemics, chemical spills and other 

manmade hazards, terrorist attacks and cyber system attacks. The approach includes 

development of 31 core capabilities and the mission areas of prevention, protection, 

mitigation, response and recovery. The 31 core capabilities are intended to encompass 

possible requirements for any given community, allowing flexibility in planning and 

responding to risks.

3.4. 2012 Hurricane Sandy

3.4.1. Event

Hurricane Sandy was a Category 2 storm at its peak intensity. While off the coast of the 

northeastern United States, the winds spanned approximately 1100 miles (1800 km) and 

the storm become the largest tropical system on record. Prior to landfall, Hurricane Sandy 

was downgraded to a post-tropical storm. The storm system came ashore near Atlantic 

City, New Jersey, at 8 p.m. on October 29, 2012. A wind gust of 79 mph was reported at
12

John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and 90 mph was reported at Islip, 

New York (Sullivan and Doan 2012).

The path and width of Sandy created a storm surge that flooded coastal areas from North 

Carolina to Massachusetts. The total water level rise during Hurricane Sandy was caused 

by a combination of astronomical tides, storm surge, and a full moon which increased the 

high tide level. The large area affected by onshore winds north of Sandy's center near 

Atlantic City caused the highest storm surge levels to occur in New Jersey and New 

York. The peak water level rise of 13.9 ft (4.2 m) occurred in the Battery Park area of 

Manhattan shortly after 9:00 p.m., with 9.2 ft (2.9 m) of storm surge and a 4.7 ft (1.4 m) 

tide (Cox 2012).

Sandy damaged or destroyed 305 000 housing units and disrupted more than 265 000 

businesses in New York. In New Jersey, 346 000 housing units were destroyed or 

damaged, and 190000 businesses affected (AP 2013). Engineered structures suffered little 

if any structural damage, as pile foundations to bedrock were not affected by the flood 

event. There was significant damage to infrastructure systems in the communities, 

including power, transportation, communication, waste water treatment, and gasoline 

stations. Many of the flooded engineered structures were built prior to the establishment 

of flood zones by FEMA in the early 1970s and used basement levels to house building 

electric power, heating and ventilation, communication, and fire safety systems as well as 

fuel tanks and pumps for emergency power. A number of critical facilities, including 

hospitals and emergency service centers, lost all of these systems during the storm surge

flooding8.

In Jan 2013, insurance company Munich Re Ag estimated insured losses at $25 billion 

and total losses at $50 billion. In December, state governments reported a total of $62 

billion in damage and other losses (AP 2013).

3.4.2. Federal Government Activities

Congress passed a $50.5 billion emergency package of relief and recovery aid and $9.7 

billion for the National Flood Insurance Program (AP 2013). On January 29, 2013, the 

Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 was signed into law, which provided $10.9 

billion in funding for an Emergency Relief Program by the Federal Transit 

Administration to support repairs to seriously damaged transit systems and facilities in 

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and elsewhere (US DOT 2013).

Prior to the occurrence of Hurricane Sandy, an update to PPD-7 was being prepared 

for release in early 2013. Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 21, Critical Infrastructure 

Security and Resilience, was released in February 2013 with the goal of advancing 

national unity of effort to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient 

critical infrastructure for all hazards (PPD-21 2013). PPD-21 updated the list of Critical 

Infrastructure Sectors, as shown in Table 3, and addresses the resilience of the built 

environment by focusing on the following issues:

• Identify and prioritize critical infrastructure, considering physical and cyber threats,

8 Based on personal inspections of damage to critical buildings and infrastructure systems in the New

Jersey and New York areas.
13

vulnerabilities, and consequences.

• Provide analysis, expertise, and other technical assistance to critical infrastructure 

owners and operators and facilitate access to and exchange of information and 

intelligence necessary to strengthen the security and resilience of critical 

infrastructure.

• Conduct comprehensive assessments of the vulnerabilities of the Nation's critical 

infrastructure.

Table 3. Sixteen National Critical Infrastructure Sectors (PPD-21 2013).

Chemical Commercial

Facilities Communications

Critical

Manufacturing

Dams

Defense Industrial

Base

Emergency

Services

Energy

Financial Services

Food and

Agriculture

Government

Facilities

Healthcare and

Public Health

Information

Technology

Nuclear Reactors, 

Materials, and 

Waste

Transportation

Systems

Water and 

Wastewater 

Systems

3.5. Private Sector Activities

Private sector organizations also responded to disaster events, and the technical needs 

outlined in the Grand Challenges and by governmental agencies. The following activities 

provide examples how the private sector has addressed resilience issues for the built 

environment.

ASCE formed the Technical Council for Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (TCLEE), 

which has held international conferences approximately every four years since 1977. The

2009 conference addressed regional disruptions that often have had national impacts that 

were strongly dependent on the performance of lifelines. ASCE (2009) released 

“Guiding Principles for the Nation’s Critical Infrastructure,” which promoted four 

guiding principles:

• Make risk analysis, management, and communication the standard basis on which 

infrastructure projects are developed and implemented,

• Properly maintain, operate, and modify systems to perform effectively under 

changing conditions,

• Provide technical oversight, coordination with related projects, appropriate control 

and change management, and effective communication with project stakeholders, and

• Adapt critical infrastructure in response to dynamic conditions and practice 

throughout their life cycle.
14

In 2001, The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) was formed as a non-profit 

partnership of private and federal organizations to advance infrastructure security and 

resiliency. A White Paper on Infrastructure Resilience and Interdependencies (TISP

2010) made three recommendations for improving the resilience of the built environment: 

develop a unified national resilience goal, develop consistent methods identifying core 

functions and interdependencies for risk and resilience management, and adopt consistent 

methods for prioritizing infrastructure investments. TISP also publishes a Regional 

Disaster Resilience Guide (TISP 2011), which has a step-by-step process for 

communities and organizations to develop a strategy and action plan to improve their 

capabilities and resilience to deal with major incidents or disasters. The document 

addresses many aspects of community resiliency in developing an action plan, such as 

characterizing all hazards, infrastructure dependencies and interdependencies, risk 

assessment and management, business and operations continuity, communication during

hazards, recovery, and training and exercises.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Innovative Technologies 

Institute (ITI) and the American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) developed a 

consensus-based standard to support utilities in becoming more resilient through risk 

management (Morley 2010). The standard, ANSI/ASME-ITI/AWWA (2010) J-100-10: 

Risk Analysis and Management for Critical Asset Protection (RAMCAP) Standard for 

Risk and Resilience Management of Water and Wastewater Systems, provides a process 

for evaluating threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences to improve risk management of 

water and wastewater utility systems. The standard outlines a general process that 

requires use of hydraulic models to evaluate scenarios of a particular water system. Risk 

can be evaluated either qualitatively (high, medium, low) or quantitatively for economic 

risks (monetary damage) or safety (fatalities) risks. AWWA (2009) also released the “All 

Hazards Consequence Management Plan” to help drinking water and wastewater utilities 

incorporate all-hazard consequence management concepts into their existing emergency 

preparedness, response, and recovery planning.

The risk assessment process developed for RAMCAP, was incorporated into a model that 

evaluates a ‘system of systems’ for a community or region. The dependencies and 

interdependencies among the systems within a regional system are simulated to identify 

how potential failures in one infrastructure system may cause failures in other systems. 

ASME-ITI (2011), A Regional Resilience/Security Analysis Process (RR/SAP) for the 

Nation’s Critical Infrastructure Systems, documents the modeling concept.

The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) released “Guidelines for 

Performance Based Seismic Design of Tall Buildings” (PEER 2010). The guidelines 

present a recommended alternative to the prescriptive procedures for seismic design of 

buildings contained in standards such as ASCE 7 and the International Building Code 

(IBC). They are intended primarily for use by structural engineers and building officials 

engaged in the seismic design and review of individual tall buildings.

The National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP) commissioned the 

National Research Council (NRC) to develop a roadmap for earthquake hazard and risk 

reduction in the United States based on goals and objectives for achieving national 

earthquake resilience as described in the NEHRP Strategic Plan (2008). The NRC 

committee was directed to assess the activities and costs that would be required for the
15

Nation to achieve earthquake resilience in 20 years, and published its findings in

“National Earthquake Resilience: Research, Implementation, and Outreach” (NRC 2011).

The National Academies published “Disaster Resilience, a National Imperative” (NAS

2012) was asked to examine ways to increase disaster resilience in the United States by 

eight federal agencies and a community resilience group that were concerned about the 

nation’s increasing vulnerability to disasters. The report reviews the many challenges for 

achieving disaster resilience and a plan of action for the nation. Recommendations 

included: community coalitions that address infrastructure resilience, land-use planning, 

and adoption and enforcement of building codes and standards; a risk management 

strategy that includes complementary structural and nonstructural risk-reduction 

measures developed and adopted by the public and private sectors; and a national 

resource of disaster-related data that documents injuries, loss of life, property loss, and 

impacts on economic activity.

3.6. NIST Research Activities

The Engineering Laboratory (EL) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology 

(NIST) conducts research on resilience of the built environment, structural robustness, 

and structural performance during hazard events. Metrics and tools are being developed 

to predict structural performance under multi-hazard conditions, measure disaster 

resilience of the built environment, assess the ability of existing structures to withstand 

extreme loads, design buildings using performance-based methods, and derive lessons 

learned from disasters and failures involving structures.

NIST has a long history of conducting research on the performance of the built 

environment during hazard events. NIST9 has a number of statutory responsibilities 

related to natural and manmade hazards on the built environment, including:

• Basic and applied research that enables protection of life and property from fire under 

the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974.

• Structural failure investigations through the National Construction Safety Team Act 

of 2002.

• Lead Agency for the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) to 

promote earthquake hazard reduction measures for buildings and lifelines, support the 

development of performance-based seismic engineering tools, and promote the 

commercial application of those tools under the NEHRP Reauthorization of 2004.

• Wind research and development to improve building codes and standards and 

practices for design and construction of buildings, structures, and lifelines under the 

National Windstorm Impact Reduction Act of 2004.

9 NIST is a non-regulatory agency of the Department of Commerce. NIST’s Engineering Laboratory (EL) 

supports U.S. industry and public safety by providing critical tools –metrics, models, and knowledge – and 

the technical basis for standards, codes, and practices.
16

3.7. Looking Forward

By 2012, a national need for the protection of critical infrastructure had been identified in 

PPD-21 and PPD-8, and a National Infrastructure Protection Plan for Critical 

Infrastructure and Key Resources (CIKR) and a National Preparedness Goal had been 

developed by DHS. Most of the research to date on critical infrastructure has focused on 

anti-terrorism security measures for facilities and emergency response efforts. The Grand 

Challenges report (OSTP 2008) broadened the definition of disaster resiliency for 

building and infrastructure systems to include natural and manmade hazard events, 

system interdependencies, and rapid recovery.

Standards and codes for resilient communities, based on meaningful metrics, are needed 

for communities to progress to a more resilient state. Two workshops were sponsored to 

support the development of resilience standards by NIST, DHS, and the American 

National Standards Institute’s Homeland Security Standards Panel (ANSI-HSSP). The 

first, Resilience Roundtable on Standards for Disaster Resilience for Buildings and 

Physical Infrastructure Systems, was an invitational workshop held September 26, 2011 

in Arlington, Virginia. The second, Standards for Disaster Resilience for Buildings and 

Physical Infrastructure Systems, was an open workshop held November 10, 2011 in 

Arlington, Virginia.

An assessment of gaps and needs for developing standards for resilience of the built 

environment, based on the two national workshops and NIST research, is presented in the 

next section.

4. Codes and Standards

When essential building or infrastructure systems are damaged, a ripple effect spreads 

through the community and disrupts its ability to function. Essential facilities and 

systems may include hospitals, emergency response centers, chemical or processing 

plants, roads and bridges, electric power, fuel systems, communications, water and 

wastewater, airports, rail systems, ports and harbors. Damage in the built environment 

leads to loss of essential services, such as the critical infrastructure sectors listed in Table

2, and impedes response and recovery. Damage to other buildings and infrastructure 

systems (not deemed essential, including residential buildings) also affects community 

functionality and rate of recovery. When a hazard event damages multiple infrastructure 

systems, a community may experience significant loss of functionality and business 

interruption; in severe cases, it can lead to permanent relocation of businesses and 

residents.

The performance of the built environment depends on the codes and standards that are 

adopted and enforced. Codes and standards adopted by cities, counties, or states often lag 

the current model codes and standards. However, even if a community adopts and 

enforces all current codes and standards, there will be inconsistencies between the codes 

and standards for the same hazard event. Model codes and standards tend to be

‘stovepiped’ for building and infrastructure systems, as they are independently developed 

through different public or private processes and are based on varying performance 

criteria. The codes and standards used in the built environment can be broadly 

categorized as follows:
17

• Codes and standards for buildings and other structures provide minimum performance 

criteria for design-level hazard events, with some variation in performance criteria 

between hazards. For wind (non-tornadic) and snow events, buildings are not 

expected to experience structural damage during a design hazard event. During 

seismic or fire events, some structural damage may occur during a design hazard 

event (requiring major repair or replacement), but structural stability must be 

maintained to meet minimum life safety requirements and allow safe evacuation of 

occupants. Building or facility functionality is only explicitly addressed for essential 

facilities designed for seismic hazards, with anchorage and support requirements for 

stability of specified equipment, such mechanical, electrical, and fire pump 

equipment. However, their continued operation is not assured if components within 

the anchored housing fail under seismic accelerations.

• Codes and standards for roads and bridges provide minimum life safety performance 

criteria for design-level hazard events, similar to that for buildings and other 

structures, but must also account for degradation and aging effects (such as steel 

fatigue and corrosion and concrete cracking) for exposed facilities.

• Electric power, water, wastewater, and communication systems have standards that 

emphasize reliability (no interruptions to customer service) and single point failures 

for normal service conditions, but generally do not consider hazard events and 

potential multi-point failures.

Many codes and standards are based on prescriptive requirements, where satisfactory 

performance is assumed if the requirements are met, also referred to as ‘deemed to 

comply’ requirements. These prescriptive requirements generally focus on life safety 

goals and do not address functionality of building and infrastructure systems.

There are several provisions for performance goals and criteria in current building codes 

and standards (see Appendix B). The building codes recognize the relative importance of 

buildings and facilities in a community through Occupancy Categories, and more 

recently, Risk Categories. The most recent version of the ASCE 7-10 Minimum Design 

Loads Standard (ASCE 2010) defines Risk Categories as an alternative to the Occupancy 

Categories in the building codes. The Occupancy Categories are based on construction 

and occupancy types, whereas Risk Categories are based on the number of persons at risk 

in a facility. Buildings are assigned to one of four Risk Categories, based on construction 

features and occupancy, with tiered performance expectations for each category. Design 

loads are modified with importance factors to reflect the change in the expected 

probability of failure between Risk Categories. This approach to risk categorization 

recognizes that not all facilities with common function are equally important. The 

primary reasons for assigning Risk Categories is to reduce the “lives at risk” due to 

structural failure and to enhance the probability that important and essential facilities 

remain fit for use.

Another approach is performance-based design where the desired performance is directly 

addressed through a process that explicitly considers performance goals and risk in the 

design process. Such methods are included in codes as an acceptable alternative means 

provisions for design. Resilient communities can be achieved with facilities and systems 

that are designed to common, specific performance targets. Performance-based design
18

permits owners to specify performance goals that are more stringent than the minimum 

standards required in model codes and standards.

4.1. Resilience in the Built Environment

Community and national resilience depends upon the capacity of the built environment to 

maintain acceptable levels of functionality during and after disruptive events and to 

recover full functionality within a specified period of time. Figure 2 illustrates the 

concept of resilience for the built environment. There is uncertainty in the condition of 

the built system prior to the event, the degree of lost functionality after the event, and the 

time to full recovery. If proactive modifications are made that improve the performance 

of the built environment prior to disruptive events, the time to full recovery of 

functionality can be shortened considerably. Repairs after a disruptive event have a larger 

uncertainty, depending on the degree of interdependency among building and 

infrastructure systems. However, at present, communities do not plan for recovery of 

their physical infrastructure following disruptive events, and both the time to full 

recovery and the accompanying costs, are highly uncertain.

Figure 2. Resilience concept of functionality versus recovery time for the 

performance of the built environment during a disruptive event.

A plan for developing resilience in the built environment should be based on performance 

goals, such as:

• Identify systems by resilience performance categories, such as critical or essential 

facilities that should not experience significant damage, facilities critical to recovery, 

or systems with a specified recovery time.

• Establish performance goals for design, functionality, and recovery of building and 

infrastructure systems.

• Identify resilience levels (e.g., routine, expected, and extreme) for performance goals 

and appropriate hazard intensities.
19

• Establish metrics for resilience at the community and system levels.

San Francisco is conducting such a performance-based community planning process 

through the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) Association (see 

Appendix B). Performance goals are established for the physical infrastructure for 

various earthquake intensities, which are assigned categories of routine (likely to occur 

routinely), expected (reasonably expected to occur once during the system lifetime), and 

extreme (reasonably expected to occur near a seismic fault). Performance measures are 

defined to help determine if the performance goals are attained. While SPUR activities 

provide an example of resilience planning, more general guidelines and criteria need to 

be developed for use by all communities, because different communities will have 

different needs.

If resilience concepts in terms of performance of the built environment are adopted, then 

communities, owners, and stakeholders can prioritize which systems should function 

during and after a disruptive event (e.g., hospitals, emergency response, primary 

infrastructure systems), and which systems should sustain only minor damage (e.g., 

businesses, schools, secondary infrastructure systems) so that they can operate while 

minor repairs are made. Improved resilience will reduce vulnerabilities in today’s 

constructed systems, lower economic losses, and improve community stability and 

productivity. However, before such improvements can be incorporated, methods to 

determine compliance or estimate expected performance are needed. Quantitative metrics 

and validated tools for evaluating performance of the built environment at component and 

system levels need to be developed.

4.2. Technical Gaps and Research Needs for Resilience in the Built

Environment

Based on the review of historical events, the performance of the built environment, and 

the codes and standards used to design and construct the built environment, the following 

guidance and metrics are needed to promote the development of a resilient built 

environment.

4.2.1. Consistent performance goals across codes and standards

Consistent performance goals for all buildings and infrastructure system across the codes 

and standards that govern their design are a key component for achieving a resilient 

community. More specifically, consistent reliability-based criteria for system or 

component performance are needed as part of the performance goals, including 

definitions of hazards and failure modes.

Model codes and standards for building and infrastructure systems tend to be stovepiped, 

or developed independently. Codes and standards for seismic performance of structural 

systems are being pushed toward performance-based methods with consideration of 

nonstructural building systems. Codes and standards for building envelope systems and 

building utilities (e.g., fuel lines, water lines, and power and communication systems) 

tend to be more prescriptive. Electric power, water, wastewater, and communication 

systems have standards that emphasize reliability (no interruptions to customer service) 

and single point failures, but generally do not consider hazard events and potential multi-
20

point failures. Most transportation systems are designed and maintained by cities or 

states, which may not adopt current model codes and standards, or may exempt 

significant requirements. While parallel development may still be the most productive 

and efficient method of code and standard development, a consistent set of hazard 

definitions and performance goals would minimize such inconsistencies.

Codes and standards are likely to continue to provide criteria for minimum life safety 

performance, but a consistent set of reliability-based performance criteria would improve 

the overall performance and expectations of performance across a community. However, 

to achieve resilience in the built environment, communities will need to develop 

additional performance criteria to achieve the desired level of performance.

4.2.2. Comprehensive community resilience plans and guidance

Comprehensive plans and guidance for community resilience that can be tailored to 

individual community performance goals for its built environment are needed to help 

communities plan for hazard-specific performance, as well as restoring building and 

infrastructure systems in a cost effective and timely manner. Such planning needs to 

consider infrastructure dependencies and interdependencies, priorities for constrained 

resources in planning, mitigation, and recovery modes, and performance goals and 

measures for critical/essential systems, while accounting for uncertainties.

Resilience planning will improve risk management and decision making by the 

community and its businesses. Additionally, a resilient community will attract businesses 

looking to locate within a resilient environment. Such planning also better prepares and 

protects communities against unexpected extreme events (sometimes referred to as black 

swan events), though such events are not easily addressed in planning stages due to their 

unexpected nature. An example of a black swan event includes the 2012 Japanese disaster 

with earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant or the 2001 WTC disaster.

The following standards and guidance for developing community resilience plans provide 

an initial basis for evaluating community resilience of the built environment:

• The SPUR community planning process establishes performance goals and measures 

for the built environment for a range of hazard intensities.

• The RAMCAP standard (ANSI/ASME-ITT/AWWA 2010) provides a risk-based 

process for evaluating threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences, with either 

qualitative or quantitative measures.

• The RR/SAP (ASME-ITI 2011) process uses a ‘system of systems’ approach, based 

on RAMCAP, to evaluate infrastructure dependencies and interdependencies within a 

regional system.

• The Regional Disaster Resilience Guide (TISP 2011) helps develop an action plan to 

improve community or organizational capabilities and resilience for hazard events.

• FEMA CPG 201 (DHS 2012) supports risk-informed decision making with a process 

where hazards, vulnerabilities, and consequences provide a basis for evaluating and 

improving existing plans and capabilities.
21

The risk-based procedures outlined in these documents contribute toward the 

development of community resilience, but significant gaps remain in reliable, quantitative 

assessment of damage and risk, based on the available tools, metrics, and standards.

4.2.3. Performance goals including recovery

Performance goals for building and infrastructure systems should consider a system’s 

role in the community (e.g., essential facilities, facilities of a major employer, etc.), the 

performance that is required (alternatively, the level of damage that is acceptable) during 

and after a hazard event, as well as system recovery. Performance issues may include 

identifying hazards and risk-based performance criteria for essential systems to 

continuously operate during hazard events, systems that need to meet other levels of 

performance based on their role in the community or on owner needs, and specified 

recovery times.

4.2.4. Multiple resilience levels with risk-based performance criteria and a given 

hazard

The development of multiple resilience levels with associated risk-based performance 

criteria for a given hazard would allow communities to develop resilience in stages, 

depending on their resources. As an example, SPUR is considering three hazard 

intensities for earthquake, which is the primary hazard for the San Francisco area. The 

community resilience planning (see Appendix B) identified an “expected” earthquake, an 

extreme earthquake, and routine seismic event. The expected earthquake may occur 

during the useful life of the structure or system and is the basis for design and evaluation 

of facility resilience. The extreme earthquake is the largest earthquake that could 

reasonably be expected to occur on a nearby fault and is used for emergency response 

planning. The routine earthquake will likely occur during the life of a facility and is 

intended to verify service-level performance of a facility, where minimal damage or 

interruption is expected. Such hazard levels should be tied to risk-based performance 

criteria, as described below.

For hazards not addressed by codes and standards, design criteria need to be developed 

with a rational technical basis. Loading events considered by ASCE 7-10 include the 

structure’s own weight, live loads associated with the structure’s occupancy, rain loads, 

atmospheric ice loads, earthquake, flooding, snow, and winds. ASCE 7-10 does not 

address either tsunami flooding or tornadic winds. For all loads in ASCE 7-10 except 

earthquake, consistent failure rates are sought for typical construction addressed by 

material standards (on the order of 10-4

/yr for ductile, local failures to 10-7/yr for sudden, 

widespread damage). However, failure rates are lower for earthquake events than other

events (on the order of 10-3/yr to 10-4/yr partial or total collapse), primarily because it is

perceived that for the severity of earthquake loading, it is not economically practical to 

obtain failure rates consistent with other loads. Annualized failure rates in ASCE 7-10 are 

based on concurrent consideration of the target reliability, hazard load factors, and 

structural resistance factors listed in material standards (e.g., steel, concrete, wood, etc.). 

Adjustments to the target reliability, load factors, or resistance factors without 

corresponding adjustments to the other factors will lead to an unpredictable change in 

structural performance and reliability. ASCE 7 does not address loss of functionality in
22

buildings or other structures due to load effects, with the exception of seismic design 

requirements.

4.2.5. Existing building and infrastructure systems

Community resilience planning must consider existing buildings and infrastructure 

systems as well as new construction. Depending on when existing facilities were 

constructed, they may lack design features that would be required in a new building or 

infrastructure system, and may vary considerably in expected performance from new 

construction.

Construction standards do not require existing building to meet current codes and 

standards, only the codes and standards that were adopted when they were built. In many 

cases, existing buildings cannot be sufficiently modified to meet all of the requirements 

of newer codes and standards. While there are a handful of mandatory retrofit programs 

for existing buildings in communities, most work is done on a voluntary basis when there 

is a change of occupancy.

Beginning in the early 1980s, FEMA funded an extensive program to develop 

performance based techniques for evaluating and retrofitting existing buildings to achieve 

designated performance levels for seismic hazards. The performance levels provide 

owners and operators a metric for determining a suitable level of performance. 

Historically, hazard and/or performance levels have been modified to account for the fact 

that existing facilities either cannot fully meet criteria for new facilities or to minimize 

the need to strengthen facilities that would otherwise only have modest deficiencies 

(Pekelnicky and Poland 2012). For instance, ASCE Standard 31-03, Seismic Evaluation 

of Existing Buildings, and ASCE Standard 41-06, Seismic Rehabilitation of Existing 

Buildings, focused on standardizing the seismic performance criteria for existing 

buildings.

5. Resilience Roundtable on Standards for Disaster Resilience for Buildings and

Physical Infrastructure Systems

The Resilience Roundtable convened leaders from engineering practice and research 

communities for buildings and infrastructure systems, and leaders of the standards 

development community. The purpose of the Roundtable was to identify gaps in current 

practice, standards, and codes for the assessment and design of resilient buildings and 

infrastructure systems.

Roundtable participants (see Appendix A) were selected for their technical knowledge of 

building and infrastructure systems, codes and standards, resilience, and performancebased design methods. Attendees included potential adopters of resilience standards, such 

as standards developing organizations (SDOs) and model building codes, and end users 

of resilient codes and standards, including designers, insurers, and owners.

Presentations based on invited white papers (see Appendix B) addressed resilience of the 

built environment, community resilience planning and performance goals, provisions in 

U.S. building codes and standards that support resilience, and resilience in lifeline 

standards. The white papers were intended to succinctly present the state-of-the-art and
23

to foster discussion on the required scope of community resilience guidance, codes, and 

standards.

Following the presentations, Roundtable participants responded to the following 

questions in breakout sessions:

1. How should hazard definitions be modified for multiple performance levels?

2. What performance objectives, in addition to life safety and usability, are needed 

to promote community resilience?

3. What metrics and vocabulary are needed to describe building and infrastructure 

performance in terms of response and recovery?

4. Building Systems

a. What can be done in the short-term (3 yrs) to improve codes and standards 

for buildings to implement concepts of resilience?

b. What long term improvements are needed?

c. What technical basis is required to support long-term improvements?

5. Infrastructure Systems

a. What can be done in the short-term to improve codes and standards for 

infrastructure systems to implement concepts of resilience?

b. What long term improvements are needed?

c. What technical basis is required to support long-term improvements?

Each breakout session recorded the key points of the discussions following the 

presentations, which are provided in Appendix C. The following sections summarize the 

technical gaps and research needs identified for resilience in the built environment during 

breakout sessions.

5.1. Terminology and Metrics

Define terminology for resilience objectives.

New terminology and/or metrics may need to be defined, such as functionality and 

recovery definitions, levels to support risk-based performance goals, or levels of adoption 

and enforcement of codes and standards. Clear communication between technical and 

nontechnical participants, stakeholders, policy makers, and code and standard bodies will 

be enhanced if resilience objectives are understood.

Develop resilience metrics.

Resilience metrics for buildings and infrastructure systems are needed that:

• Support policy development, decision making, and quantitative technical assessment.

Objective, quantitative metrics of community resilience could be used by 

communities to encourage business development, and could eventually become a 

required aspect of business planning.
24

• Measure functionality and the time and cost of recovery before and after hazard 

events for building and infrastructure systems. Individual system (component) 

measures would provide input to community and regional (composite) resilience 

measures.

• Estimate design and recovery costs that include varying levels of functionality and 

costs. Such metrics would allow comparisons between proposed methods or designs 

to ensure that any incremental improvement for resilience is consistent with the 

incremental cost.

5.2. Multiple Resilience Levels

Identify multiple resilience levels to support risk-based performance goals.

Communities may benefit from examining multiple resilience levels with associated riskbased performance criteria for hazards of interest. Resilience levels need associated riskbased performance goals and reliability-based hazard and failure criteria. For instance, 

performance criteria could be developed for routine, expected, and extreme resilience 

levels. Each resilience level would need distinct performance and acceptance criteria. 

Risk-based performance criteria and hazard definitions for resilience levels need to be 

developed by experts for use by communities.

Develop methods to characterize hazard levels for undefined hazards.

ASCE 7 defines minimum design load requirements for natural hazards through 

reliability targets that account for both structural resistance and design loads. Building 

codes reference ASCE 7 for building design loads, or adopt the load criteria from ASCE

7. Hazards that do not have defined design load requirements, such as fire (building fire, 

wildfires, fire following earthquakes), storm surge, tsunamis, tornadoes, and blast and 

impact events, need to be developed.

5.3. Performance Goals and Metrics

Establish performance goals and metrics.

Performance goals and metrics are needed that:

• Compare options for mitigation and recovery planning, such as strengthening 

structural systems or relocating infrastructure systems versus post-event system repair 

or replacement.

• Measure the effect of system redundancy on system resilience, such as multiple load 

paths within a structure, multiple transportation options, or multiple communication 

networks. The concept of ‘system redundancy’ has different implications depending 

on the context.

• Determine the relative contribution by all subsystems to system functionality (e.g., if 

the structure survives and the envelope fails – the building is nonfunctional).

• Address hazard-specific performance objectives, such as burnout without collapse for
25

fire hazards.

• Specify recovery goals and metrics for systems (e.g., utilities develop objectives for 

system performance during hazard events to minimize multipoint or system-wide 

failures).

• Establish performance goals and metrics for different functions within a community 

system (e.g., essential facilities and infrastructure systems vs commercial facilities).

Establish performance goals and metrics for existing building and infrastructure systems.

Community resilience levels and associated performance goals and metrics for existing 

systems should account for deterioration and aging effects on infrastructure resilience and 

the increased likelihood of disruption to community functionality. However, whether or 

not existing buildings and infrastructure systems should have different performance 

criteria than that of recently constructed systems should be carefully considered in terms 

of the expected and desired performance of a given facility or system within the 

community.

Additionally, the role and relative importance of facilities and infrastructure systems to 

community resilience, system interdependence and co-location impacts on community 

resilience (e.g., a bridge carrying utility lines), and urban versus rural issues need to be 

considered. For instance, urban areas may need to address building adjacency issues so 

that damage does not spread beyond an individual building and a rural issue may address 

the importance of a major employer that is critical to community resilience.

Establish performance goals and metrics for regional infrastructure systems.

Regional performance may need to be considered to adequately address the resilience of 

power, communication, and transportation systems. For example, the transfer of risk from 

one community to another may occur when changes are made to the built environment 

(e.g., levee systems may affect floor hazards of adjacent communities).

5.4. Codes and Standards

Develop guidance that supports adoption of model codes and standards

Communities need guidance on adopting model codes and standards to achieve life safety 

and on identifying situations when the minimum codes and standards requirements 

should be exceed to promote resilience. Many states and communities do not adopt 

current model codes and standards, or may exempt important requirements, further 

increasing their lack of resilience in the built environment. Adoption of current model 

building codes and standards is necessary but may not be sufficient for achieving 

resilience. Resilience may require exceeding the minimum level of construction required 

by codes and standards. The SPUR activities by San Francisco illustrate the gap between 

implementation of the codes and standards and achieving resilience. San Francisco 

actively adopts and enforces current building codes, but recognized that the community 

was not prepared for a design-level earthquake event, and initiated planning for resilience 

of their community.
26

6. Standards for Disaster Resilient Buildings and Infrastructure

Systems

The Disaster Resilience Workshop (see Appendix D) included participants from a range 

of communities, including buildings, transportation, power, water, research, insurance, 

codes and standards, and state and federal agencies interested in disaster resilience.

Three panel sessions were conducted with invited presentations to summarize present 

practice and to support discussion on resilience issues (Appendix E), followed by 

discussion with the workshop participants. The first panel session addressed resilience 

concepts for buildings and infrastructure systems and for community resilience planning, 

with the San Francisco Urban Renewal (SPUR) project as an example. The second panel 

session focused on standards for building systems and included an insurance perspective 

on building and infrastructure resilience. The third panel session addressed standards for 

electric power systems, transportation systems, and water and wastewater systems.

Following the panel sessions, participants were requested to identify technical gaps that 

inhibited the development of resilience standards for: community resilience, water and 

wastewater, transportation, electric power, and building systems (see Appendix F). The 

following sections summarize the technical gaps and research needs identified. Technical 

gaps and research needs similar to those identified during the Roundtable in Section 5.0 

were not repeated here.

6.1. Community Resilience

Develop guidance for community resilience planning

Guidance documents for communities that want to develop resilience in their built 

environment beyond that provided by adopting current codes and standards is needed. 

Example cases should be provided, such as San Francisco seismic resilience planning and 

South Florida hurricane resistance efforts. Performance goals should include mitigation, 

robustness, functionality, and recovery criteria, particularly for essential facilities and 

infrastructure systems.

The impact on resilience of infrastructure systems that extend beyond a community, such 

as transportation, communication, or power systems, may need to be considered 

separately, depending on their regulatory environment. For instance, utility performance 

may be enhanced by requirements to stockpile supplies and components for recovery 

after a disaster event, or agreements for mutual aid and borrowed components between 

power companies at different locations. Infrastructure interdependence also needs to be 

considered, where failure of one system will impact recovery of other building and 

infrastructure systems.

The guidance should help communities understand the long-term benefits of adopting and 

enforcing current codes and standards as a minimum, with particular consideration given 

for small to large communities and available resources. Community guidance needs to 

address methods to ensure the quality of the built environment, and motivators such as 

incentives and cost savings. For a community to achieve a desired resilience level, it will
27

likely need to establish performance goals beyond those that can be achieved with current 

building codes.

Develop metrics for changes in resilience

Resilience metrics should include the ability to measure changes in resilience due to 

system additions, aging, damage and repairs. Qualitative metrics, such as high, medium, 

and low, will not be useful for such comparisons. For instance, the impact of adding a 

new bridge, or the failure one of two existing bridges, on community resilience for an 

island or river bound area can be better managed with quantifiable measures that include 

interdependencies.

6.2. Performance of the Built Environment for Disaster Events

Conduct case studies of selected disaster events

Case studies of selected disaster events should be conducted to identify issues for 

community resilience, including performance goals and criteria, functionality, and 

recovery. Documented disaster events should be selected to cover a broad range of hazard 

and performance issues, such as the Northridge earthquake (1994), Hurricanes Andrew 

(1992) and Katrina (2005), Oklahoma City (1999) and Joplin (2011) tornadoes, Northeast 

flood event of 2011, the Northeast blackout of 2003, and the WTC disaster (2001). The 

studies should document damage to the built environment and with a standardized format 

to support future use and accessibility. The case studies should identify low-cost, highimpact solutions that have worked in the past, such as hurricane shutters or structural 

bracing. The studies should identify combinations of component or system failures that 

led to substantial failures or disasters in a community.

6.3. Building Systems

Develop performance goals and resilience metrics for all building systems

To fulfill its role in a resilient community, a building needs all of its systems to achieve 

the same level of performance. Building systems include architectural, structural, life 

safety, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, security, communication, and information 

technology systems. Most buildings are privately owned and developed according to 

adopted local or state-wide codes and standards. All building systems need to be 

reviewed to determine gaps in performance, particularly between performance criteria for 

structural and nonstructural systems. Performance goals and criteria necessary for 

resilient performance should be identified, which may exceed that presently in the codes 

and standards.

6.4. Transportation Systems

Transportation systems include roads, bridges, tunnels, ports, and rail systems. They may 

be owned and/or funded by federal, state, or local governments. Financial and/or 

technical assistance for transportation facilities is provided by:

• Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and state Department of Transportation

(DOTs) for highways, bridges and tunnels.
28

• Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for transit (subway and rail) systems

• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for aviation facilities

Design guidance and standards are provided by:

• American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) for 

highways, air, rail, water, and public transportation systems.

• Department of Defense (DOD) Military Handbooks (previously NAVFAC design 

manuals) for piers, wharves, seawalls, bulkheads, ferry terminals, berthing facilities, 

and waterfront construction.

In 2012, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) was signed 

into law (FHWA 2012). FHWA administers the program that funds surface transportation 

programs and provides a programmatic framework for investments in the transportation 

infrastructure. MAP-21 is a performance-based program that addresses challenges that 

include improvements in safety, infrastructure condition, and efficiency of freight 

movement. Performance measures and targets are identified by the system operators for 

evaluation of short and long term progress, but many of the criteria are qualitative in 

nature.

Develop metrics to evaluate the impact of damage or failure on the resilience of 

transportation systems and the community.

Codes and standards for transportation systems need to be reviewed to determine gaps in 

performance, particularly between risk-based performance criteria for all transportation 

systems. Additionally, metrics to support risk management decisions and to evaluate the 

impact of damage on the resilience of transportation systems and the community are 

needed. Intermodal transportation dependencies, such as ship to rail or ship to truck 

transport of goods, also need to be considered.

6.5. Water and Wastewater Systems

Water and wastewater systems are comprised of a series of facilities and distribution 

systems, including treatment facilities (filtration, disinfection, aeration, sedimentation), 

transmission systems (pump stations and pipelines), storage tanks, and administrative 

buildings.

There are thousands of water and wastewater systems across the nation and most water 

and wastewater systems are owned and operated by local governments or municipalities. 

The design of water and wastewater systems is governed by the American Water Works 

Association (AWWA) standards, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 

standards, and the International Building Code (IBC).

As noted previously, the RAMCAP Standard for Risk and Resilience Management of 

Water and Wastewater Systems (ANSI/ASME-ITI/AWWA 2010) provides a process for 

evaluating threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences. Risk can be evaluated either 

qualitatively (high, medium, low) or quantitatively for economic risks (monetary 

damage) or safety (fatalities) risks. AWWA (2009) also released the “All Hazards 

Consequence Management Plan” to help incorporate all-hazard consequence
29

management concepts into existing emergency preparedness, response, and recovery 

plans.

Develop water and wastewater system performance goals and metrics

Codes and standards for water and wastewater systems need to be reviewed to determine 

gaps in performance, particularly for risk-based performance criteria for natural hazards. 

Additionally, quantitative metrics to support risk management decisions and to evaluate 

the impact of damage on the resilience of water and wastewater systems and the 

community are needed.

Community resilience performance goals that consider interdependencies with other 

utilities are needed. Performance goals could consider a “smart grid” for the water sector 

or a planned replacement program for aging water systems that considers integrating 

other utilities with newly buried pipelines. Performance goals for water systems should 

consider requirements by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Develop seismic standards for pipelines and sewer systems

Seismic standards for pipelines and sewer systems are needed in the U.S. Practices for 

pipelines and sewer systems in other countries, such as Japan and Australia, should be 

reviewed for improvements to U.S. design and recovery practices.

6.6. Electric Power Systems

Electric power systems include generation, transmission, and distribution systems, which 

may be part of an integrated system within a single company or owned by separate 

entities. Power systems may be managed by major utilities, electric cooperatives, or 

municipal utilities. In addition, electric power systems are subject to regulations by the 

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric 

Reliability Corporation (NERC) on reliability of service, as well as cost structures 

imposed by state and local regulatory bodies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

(NRC) oversees commercial nuclear power reactors. The varying types of ownership and 

regulation significantly impact the flexibility of electric utilities to address system 

maintenance and improvements for hazards, and makes coordinated management and 

upgrade efforts among utilities difficult to implement.

Distribution systems experience the most frequent outages with only local effects. 

Transmission systems and substations have less frequent failures, which are often 

addressed by redistribution of power; occasionally, hazard events cause failures that 

result in loss of power (NRC 2012). Utilities plan for events such as tree falls, vehicle 

impacts, and lightning strikes, as well as hazard events, such wind and ice on distribution 

and transmission lines or seismic events on generation facilities and transmission towers. 

In general, earthquakes can damage all types of power system equipment. Hurricanes 

primarily affect transmission and distribution systems, and flooding can damage 

substations and generating equipment. Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms may affect 

transmission and distribution lines by wind-induced damage and downed trees (OTA

1990).
30

Develop performance goals and metrics for electric power systems

Triggers for potential cascading events that lead to loss of power, and its consequences, 

need be identified. Performance criteria that are consistent with community resilience 

goals need to be developed. Alternative energy and power sources, such as solar panels 

and wind farms, may be considered as possible sources for distributed backup power for 

community resilience. However, there may be disadvantages from a resilience 

perspective based on more complex systems and their interactions. Performance criteria 

could be used to prioritize investments and system improvements, which are often subject 

to regulatory approval.

Community recovery after significant hazard events is strongly dependent on the 

availability of power. Electric power systems could also be deemed as critical 

infrastructure and have design guidance developed consistent with Risk Category IV used 

in ASCE Standard 7 (2010).

6.7. Communication Systems

A communication system is a collection of networks, transmission systems, relay

stations, tributary stations, and data terminal equipment (DTE) that form an integrated 

system based on optical, radio, or electronic signals. Communication systems include 

fiber optic and copper cable systems, cellular radio towers, satellite systems, and 

microwave systems which are used for phone, television, internet, and radio 

communications.

Communication systems are largely privately held, constructed according to adopted 

building codes, and regulated by federal, state, and local regulations for reliability of 

service. With regards to community resilience and the built environment, the facilities 

and transmission systems are of interest.

Develop performance goals and metrics for communication systems

Triggers for potential cascading events due to hazards that lead to wide spread or long 

term loss of communication systems, and their consequences, need to be identified. Riskbased performance criteria for given hazards that are consistent with community 

resilience goals need to be developed.

6.8. Codes and Standards

Identify current hazard criteria and performance goals in U.S. codes and standards

To understand the present basis for the built environment, criteria for hazards and 

performance goals in U.S. codes and standards need to be identified, as well as technical 

gaps for resilient systems. Several perspectives need to be considered: government 

facilities that use a mix of federal guidance and public codes and standards; building, 

transportation, and water systems that are governed by public consensus codes and 

standards; and power and communication utilities that are governed by privately 

developed standards and regulatory bodies.

Technical gaps within a system could include differing risk or reliability bases for 

hazards and performance levels within the built environment. For instance, are design-
31

level wind criteria consistent for building structures and cladding systems, or for power 

generation, transmission, and distribution systems? Gaps in performance criteria between 

systems might include differences among building and infrastructure systems. For

example, for a hospital to remain functional, supporting transportation and utility systems 

essential to hospital functionality should be designed to the same performance criteria, 

which may need to exceed criteria provided by current codes and standards. Common and 

conflicting practices among systems should be identified.

To be successful, broad participation by all sectors and systems is needed. Existing codes 

and standards, public-private roles, agency and industry involvement, and available 

guidance documents for building and infrastructure systems must be considered.

Several mechanisms for developing standards offer possible models for developing 

resilience standards: the Smart Grid model for electric power systems, the Building 

Seismic Safety Council

10 model for seismic resistance of buildings and other structures, 

and the DOE Energy Star model for rating energy consumption of consumer products.

The following code and standard bodies are adopted or followed by communities and 

should be considered when establishing resilience goals, criteria, and metrics for the built 

environment. The listed codes and standards are not comprehensive, but are provided as a 

representative set for the built environment.

• American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) – state 

highways and transportation systems

• American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) – Architectural engineering; coasts, 

oceans, ports, and rivers; construction engineering; engineering mechanics; 

environmental and water resources; geotechnical engineering; structural engineering; 

and transportation

• American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers

(ASHRAE) – energy, HVAC

• American Water Works Association (AWWA) – water and wastewater

• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – fuels and power

• International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO) –

plumbing and mechanical

• International Code Council (ICC) - buildings, plumbing, mechanical, fire

• National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) – fire, electrical

• North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) – reliability of bulk power

The following documents provide an initial listing of available guidance for performance

goals, criteria, and metrics for the built environment.

Buildings

• Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), 360 Program, 

http://www.boma.org/getinvolved/boma360/

10 The Building Seismic Safety Council (BSSC) was established by the National Institute of Building

Sciences (NIBS) to develop and promote earthquake risk mitigation regulatory provisions for buildings.
32

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS), http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/2011-dhsaccomplishments-ensuring-resilience-to-disasters.shtm

• National Institute of Building Science (NIBS), 

http://www.nibs.org/index.php/newsevents/BuildingResilience

• Applied Technology Council (ATC), ATC 58, Development of Next Generation 

Performance-Based Seismic Design Procedures for New and Existing Buildings, 

https://www.atcouncil.org/Projects/atc-58-project.html

• American Society of Civil Engineers, ASCE 41-06, Seismic Rehabilitation of

Existing Buildings, http://www.asce.org/Product.aspx?id=2147485435

Water, power, communication

• American Lifelines Alliance (ALA), http://www.americanlifelinesalliance.com/

• ASCE Technical Committee for Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (TCLEE), 

http://content.asce.org/conferences/tclee2009/

Resilience of the built environment

• Grand Challenges in Earthquake Engineering Research 2011, 

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13167

• National Academies, Disaster Management and Homeland Security, 

http://dels.nas.edu/Disaster/Reports-Academies-Findings

• United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), 

http://www.unisdr.org

7. Research Needs Assessment for Developing Resilience Standards

The technical gaps and research needs identified in Sections 5 and 6 are summarized in 

this section and grouped as short term (less than 3 to 5 years) and long term (greater than

3 to 5 years) activities, depending on funding and participation levels across sectors for 

the built environment. Short term activities address resilience planning at the community 

level, where the role of facilities or systems in a community’s physical resilience is 

defined. Long term activities address identification and development of tools and metrics

that determine the expected level of performance during and after a hazard event, and 

include recovery of functional performance.

7.1. Short Term Activities - Community Resilience Planning

7.1.1. Determine technical gaps and research needs from reviews of past disaster 

events and existing model codes and standards

• Develop collaborative mechanism, such as a resilience council with representatives 

for building and infrastructure systems, to identify performance goals and hazard 

definitions for use by all codes and standards for the built environment. Such a body 

would be an umbrella organization outside stovepiped codes and standards that would 

allow dissemination of information, methodologies, and consistent metrics between
33

standard bodies.

• Identify successes and failures in case studies of selected disaster events. Identify 

technical gaps and research needs for performance goals, hazards, and system 

functionality and recovery for new and existing buildings and infrastructure systems. 

Include interdependencies among infrastructure systems for hazard events that 

affected community functionality and recovery.

• Review and compare U.S. and international model codes and standards to identify 

performance goals, hazards, and recovery requirements for new and existing 

buildings and infrastructure systems. Identify technical gaps and research needs for 

construction materials (e.g., steel, concrete, wood, etc.), and system type (e.g., 

building types, bridge types, power systems, etc.), as needed.

• Review and identify U.S. and international best practices for ensuring business 

continuity and community resilience. Best practices may vary according to business 

size and geographic distribution.

7.1.2. Define terminology for resilience objectives in the built environment.

• Define terminology for resilience concepts, such as hazard, functionality, and 

recovery definitions or levels to support risk-based performance goals, or levels of 

adoption and enforcement of codes and standards.

7.1.3. Develop guidance for community resilience planning

• Develop risk-based performance goals for resilient communities. The performance 

goals should include the role of individual building and infrastructure systems in the 

community functionality and recovery, system interdependencies, and new and 

existing construction. Infrastructure systems may need to consider influences on a 

regional or national scale that are outside of the community sphere of control, 

particularly for power and communication systems.

• Develop guidelines and case studies to assist community resilience planning and 

development of performance goals and acceptance criteria. The guidelines should 

develop guidance tailored for small/rural and large/urban communities and identify 

the types of expertise needed for resilience planning. The case studies should provide 

examples of community performance goals, the development process and sequence of 

events, and the benefit and value of adopting model codes and standards, conducting 

inspections, and code enforcement as well as situations that require exceeding the 

minimum requirements of the model codes and standards.

• Develop guidance on how to develop community resilience performance goals and

criteria for inclusion in standards for voluntary reference. Such materials would be 

developed in a consensus process with experts in the appropriate fields and 

representation for owners, users, and codes and standards.
34

7.2. Long Term Activities - Metrics and Standards

7.2.1. Develop multiple resilience levels to support risk-based performance goals

• Develop guidance for identifying multiple resilience levels with associated risk-based 

performance criteria. For example, three resilience levels could be defined, such as a 

routine level for serviceability, an expected level for design, and an extreme level for 

emergency response planning. Each resilience level needs distinct performance and 

acceptance criteria.

• Develop methods to define hazard criteria where there is a current lack of data or 

hazard definition, such as tornado, storm surge, tsunami, and fire hazard events.

7.2.2. Develop consistent performance goals and metrics for building and 

infrastructure systems

• Develop performance goals for building and infrastructure systems, consistent with 

community performance goals. Performance goals should account for risk categories, 

system functionality and recovery, and new and existing systems. Existing systems 

may also require consideration of degradation effects, repairs, and/or rehabilitation. 

Infrastructure systems may require performance goals for consistent performance 

across segmented industries (e.g., electric power generation, transmission, 

distribution). Hazards without a probabilistic basis, such as tornadoes, storm surge, 

tsunami, or fire events, may require additional performance goals and scenario-based 

criteria for conditional hazard probabilities.

• Develop a technical basis to support risk-based performance assessment, including 

interaction of building and infrastructure systems, during and after hazard events. 

Technical capabilities that would support improved performance assessment include 

simplified methods of analysis that include failure mechanisms, tools that evaluate the 

impact of damage to distributed infrastructure systems across a community or region, 

and a risk assessment tool (e.g., water pipelines and sewer systems performance 

during seismic events).

7.2.3. Develop metrics for community and component resilience

• Develop metrics for measuring the resilience of communities and of their components 

(building and infrastructure systems) to support risk management, technical 

assessment, policy development, and decision making:

o An overall resilience level for a community or system.

o The effect of system interdependencies and damage to such systems on 

community or system resilience.

o Changes in resilience due to system additions, damage and repairs, and 

changes in functionality before and after hazard events.

• Develop economic measures, such as cost-benefit valuations of design or recovery 

options on community resilience that support risk assessment and decision making. 

Economic metrics and tools should compare design, maintenance, and recovery costs
35

in a rational approach.

7.2.4. Develop guidelines and standards for achieving resilient communities 

with adoption of codes and standards

• Develop guidance for communities on adopting model codes and standards to achieve 

life safety and on identifying situations when the minimum codes and standards 

requirements should be exceed to promote resilience.

• Develop or modify standards on design loads that address risk-based hazards for 

multiple resilience levels.

• Develop or modify standards to address risk-based building and infrastructure system 

performance.

• Develop or modify standards for risk-based total building performance that address 

structural and non-structural building systems.

• Develop or modify standards for risk-based infrastructure system performance, 

including multi-point failures, interdependencies of infrastructure systems, and 

consistent performance goals for segmented systems (e.g., power generation, 

distribution, and transmission).

8. Summary

The resilience of the built environment strongly depends on the building standards, codes, 

and practices used when they were built. As construction and rebuilding costs continue to 

rise, there is increasing recognition of the need for communities to develop consistent 

performance goals across the built environment for the hazards that pose the greatest 

threats to its operations and functionality. A resilient built environment considers the role 

of buildings and infrastructure systems on the community, desired levels of functionality 

before, during, and after disruptive hazard events, and prioritization of steps needed to 

achieve such performance.

Resilience standards for the built environment, and supporting metrics, tools, and 

guidelines, will provide a unified and rational basis for transforming the current set of 

stovepiped standards for the built environment to a coordinated, holistic approach to 

achieving community resilience. Research needs for a resilient built environment include 

the following activities:

Short term activities

• Identify technical gaps and research needs from reviews of past disaster events and 

existing model codes and standards

• Define resilience terminology for the built environment to help communicate new 

concepts

• Develop guidance for community resilience planning

Long term activities

• Develop risk-based performance goals for resilient communities
36

• Develop tools and metrics to support quantitative technical assessment, policy 

development, and decision making

• Develop guidelines on risk-based performance goals and criteria for inclusion in 

standards for voluntary reference.

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41

APPENDICES
42

A. Resilience Roundtable Participants

Co-Chairs

Steve Cauffman National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Chris Poland Degenkolb Engineers

Participants

William Anderson The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) 

Katie Appenrodt U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Don Ballantyne Degenkolb Engineers

Michael Bruneau University at Buffalo

Bob Chapman National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Jasper Cooke U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Bill Coulbourne Applied Technology Council (ATC)

Bert Coursey U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Michelle Deane American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 

Paul Domich CIP Consulting

Christian Dubay National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 

Leonardo Duenas-Osorio Rice University

Elizabeth English University of Waterloo, Architecture

Ian Friedland Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Office of

Bridge Technology

Jennifer Goupil Structural Engineering Institute (SEI), ASCE 

Doug Ham U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Ron Hamburger Simpson, Gumpertz, & Heger (SGH)

Jack Hayes National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

John Hooper Magnusson Klemencic Associates

Dan Howell FM Global Insurance

Morgan Hurley Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) 

Mike Kangior U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

David Karmol International Code Council (ICC)

Leon Kempner Bonneville Power Administration

Marc Levitan National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Lacy Love American Association of State Highway and Transportation

Officials (AASHTO)

Therese McAllister National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

David Prevatt University of Florida

Tim Reinhold Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS)

James Rossberg American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

Fahim Sadek National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
43

Dennis Schroder URS Corporation

Fran Schrotter American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 

Don Scott PCS Structural Solutions

Peter Shebell U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Steve Skalko Portland Cement Association

Douglas Smith U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Robert Solomon National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 

Alex Tang L&T Consultants
44

B. White Papers .

1. Resilience of the Built Environment, Therese McAllister, Ph.D., PE., Research

Structural Engineer, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

2. SPUR Resilient City Goals, Chris D. Poland, Chairman & Senior Principal, 

Degenkolb Engineers

3. Provisions in Present U.S. Building Codes and Standards for Resilience, Ron

Hamburger, Senior Principal and Head of Structural Engineering, Simpson Gumpertz

& Heger

4. Lifeline Resilience Standards – Approach to Instill Consistent Post Disaster

Performance, Alex Tang, President, L&T Consultants
45

Resilience of the Built Environment

Therese McAllister

1

, P.E., Ph.D.

Introduction

A resilient built environment—the collection of building

2

and infrastructure systems

3 

within a defined boundary—should perform in a predictable manner during and after a 

hazard event or disaster. Presently, this is not occurring in many communities for several 

reasons. Many communities are not performing well during hazard events as they either 

have not adopted current building codes and standards, have adopted the current building 

code but exempted critical sections such as seismic requirements, or do not enforce 

compliance with adopted codes. Additionally, states adopt codes and standards for 

transportation systems, but many state transportation codes lag the current national 

transportation codes and standards. Electric power, communication, and water systems 

rely on industry standards, but these standards often focus on reliability of service rather 

than system performance during hazard events. However, resilience is more than

adopting and enforcing the current codes and standards. In communities that adopt and 

enforce the latest codes, there is still uncertainty about the expected performance of the 

built environment when subjected to a hazard event. Recent events across the country and 

around the world have repeatedly demonstrated that the building and infrastructure 

systems in our communities are not resilient to hazard events.

The concept of a resilient community is one that is prepared to respond and recover 

following a hazard event. Community resilience requires an understanding of the various 

hazards likely to impact the community and the performance that is required 

(alternatively, the level of damage that is acceptable) during a hazard event. The required 

level of performance will vary depending on the function of a building or infrastructure 

system and its importance to the recovery of the community following a hazard event or 

disaster.

The current minimum performance level of life safety in building codes and standards 

does not guarantee functional buildings after a hazard event. Similarly, current standards 

for infrastructure systems do not necessarily ensure functionality or rapid recovery 

following a hazard event. Resilient codes and standards need a risk-consistent, 

performance-based framework that can address desired performance levels for 

community hazard events. Resilience codes and standards should seek input from 

standards developing organizations (SDOs), model building codes, and communities as 

well as from the end users of resilience standards—practicing engineers for building 

structures and infrastructure systems.

1 Research Structural Engineer, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 2 The term building includes all the systems necessary for its functional operation – architectural, structural, life safety, 

mechanical, electrical, plumbing, security, communication and IT systems. 3 The terms infrastructure and lifelines are considered interchangeable in this paper, and include the physical plants,

transmission, and distribution networks for transportation facilities (e.g., roads, bridges, tunnels, ports, rail) and utilities

(e.g., electric power, water and wastewater, fuels, and communication).
46

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Institute of Standards and 

Technology (NIST), and American National Standards Institute’s Homeland Security 

Standards Panel (ANSI-HSSP) are supporting the development of resilience standards. In 

particular, DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s Office of Standards and NIST are 

supporting the development of measurement science and tools to assess the disaster 

resilience of engineered buildings and other structures, both individually and at a 

community level, through the use of risk-based assessment and performance-based 

methods for design and retrofit. ANSI-HSSP facilitates the development and

enhancement of homeland security design standards for all man-made and natural 

hazards by supporting private/public sector partnerships for standards issues and 

facilitating dialogue and networking on key issues for homeland security standards 

developers and stakeholders.

This paper, addresses the following topics: examples of recent hazard events and the 

corresponding performance of the built environment, resilience concepts for the built 

environment, a brief history of public and private sector resilience efforts, and some 

thoughts on gaps and needs for codes and standards.

Recent Events and the Performance of the Built Environment

Hazards

4

are a continuing and economically significant threat to U.S. buildings, 

infrastructure, and lifelines in communities or over a region. A single event such as a 

major earthquake or hurricane could potentially cause $80 billion to $200 billion in total 

economic losses. For instance, Hurricane Katrina’s (2005) insured losses were $44 

billion, and total economic (non-insured) damages are expected to exceed $200 billion5. 

The storm surge and waves damaged homes, buildings, industrial facilities, and bridges 

in the coastal area

6

. Beyond the storm surge region, the winds damaged industrial 

facilities, oil storage tanks, and the power distribution system. More recently, Japan has 

had a triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant crises. The World

Bank estimated that the reconstruction costs for this disaster will range between $122 and

$235 billion7.

The risk across large, disaster-prone regions of the Nation is substantially greater now

than ever before, due to the combined effects of urban development and population 

growth.8, 9 Additionally, much of the Nation’s physical infrastructure is located in parts of 

the country that are susceptible to natural hazards (e.g., along coastlines, in the wildland4 Hazards include earthquakes, wind-related hazards (hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms), fire-related hazards 

(community-scale fires in the wildland-urban interface, structural fires), water-related hazards (storm surge, flood, 

tsunami) and human-made hazards (accidental, criminal, or terrorist in nature). 5 CRS Report for Congress, Hurricane Katrina: Insurance Losses and National Capacities for Financing Disaster Risks,

Updated January 31, 2008, Order Code RL33086 6 NIST Technical Note 1476, Performance of Physical Structures in Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita: A 

Reconnaissance Report, Gaithersburg, MD, 20899, June 2006. 7 http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEAPHALFYEARLYUPDATE/Resources/550192-

1300567391916/EAP_Update_March2011_japan.pdf 8 Improved Seismic Monitoring – Improved Decision Making: Assessing the Value of Reduced Uncertainty, National

Academies Press, 2006. 9 Economic Statistics for NOAA – May 2005 – Fourth Edition.
47

urban interface, and in earthquake-prone regions), and much of the infrastructure is 

vulnerable due to diminishing capacity to resist hazards associated with an aging 

infrastructure.

In the 10-year period from January 2000 to January 2011, between 45 and 81 Presidential 

disaster declarations have been made every year for floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, 

earthquakes, fire events, and severe storms (e.g., high winds). The 2001 World Trade 

Center (WTC) terrorist attack, a man-made hazard, also has been declared as a 

Presidential disaster. Figure 1 shows the distribution of disaster declarations across the 10

FEMA regions of the United States. The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and 

Emergency Assistance Act (hereinafter called the Stafford Act) authorizes the President 

to issue a major disaster declaration for federal aid to states determined to be 

overwhelmed by natural hazards or other catastrophes. The Stafford Act authorizes 

temporary housing, grants for immediate needs of families and individuals, the repair of 

public infrastructure, and emergency communication systems. Congress appropriated 

over $10 billion to the Disaster Relief Fund in FY2005, largely in response to the four 

hurricanes that struck Florida in the fall of 2004.

Hurricane Irene was a Category I hurricane when it made first landfall at the Outer 

Banks, North Carolina on 27 August 2011. It made a second landfall at Little Egg, New 

Jersey, and a third landfall at Brooklyn, NY, after which it was downgraded to a tropical 

storm. Hurricane Irene caused some wind damage but primarily caused extensive flood 

damage. Over 40 million people were affected by the storm, and over 6 million homes 

and businesses lost power from downed power lines and flooded or damaged substations. 

The flooding was most severe in New Jersey and Vermont. Many New Jersey roads were 

impassable, and most of the state train lines were shut down. In Vermont over 260 roads 

and bridges were damaged, isolating communities. Hurricane Irene caused insured losses 

of $2 billion to $4.5 billion, according to Risk Management Solutions Inc. (RMS). The

worst of the damage resulted from flooding, a hazard which is not covered under standard 

homeowners' policies and is largely excluded from the RMS estimate

10. If flood damage 

losses were included, the total loss estimate would be between $7 billion and $10

billion

11.

On May 22nd, 2011, an EF5 tornado occurred in Joplin, MO. The tornado was about 0.75 

to 1 mile (1.2 to 1.6 km) wide when it first touched down on the west side of the city and 

tracked eastward across the city into rural areas. While portions of the tornado damage 

were rated as EF3 to EF5, other tornado damage was rated between EF0 and EF212. 

Approximately 8000 houses, 18000 cars, and 450 businesses were damaged or destroyed.

Communication and power were lost in many areas of the city. It is likely to be the 

costliest tornado in U.S. history, reaching $3 billion13. As an example of damage to 

engineered structures, St. John's Regional Medical Center windows and exterior walls 

(cladding) were damaged, but there was no significant structural damage. However,

10 Wall Street Journal, 12 Sep 2011, Hurricane Irene Caused Up to $5.5B in Insured Losses 11 New York Times, 31 Aug 2011, Hurricane Cost Seen as Ranking Among Top Ten 12 http://www.crh.noaa.gov/sgf/?n=event_2011may22_survey 13 ProgramBusiness.com, Insurance News, 24 May 2011, EQECAT: Joplin Tornado Losses Could Reach $3 Billion
EMA

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nearly all buildings surrounding St. John’s were destroyed. Due to significant water 

intrusion that led to mold and other contaminants which were too costly to remediate, the 

St. John’s medical facility will be demolished and rebuilt at a new location

14. The damage 

to St John’s Regional Medical Center, and other engineered structures, shows that a 

building must be designed and constructed holistically to take into account both its

structural and non-structural performance.

On 11 July, 2011, a severe thunderstorm struck central eastern Iowa. The National

Weather Service (NWS) storm survey teams estimated wind speeds in the 110 to 130

mph range based on observed damage. The NWS stated that this was the largest and most 

damaging wind event since 1998. No tornadoes were detected; the straight line winds 

were due to a derecho15. However, the strongest winds were similar to those found in an 

EF1 tornado16. Damage included widespread power outages and downed power lines, 

partial or total removal of many roofs, and collapsed walls of some buildings. Severe 

storm events and the resulting damage occur repeatedly across the country every year.

Deteriorating infrastructure increases the severity and rate of failure during hazard events 

or extreme conditions. The United States has fallen sharply in the World Economic 

Forum's ranking of its national infrastructure systems. In the 2007-2008 report, American 

infrastructure was ranked No.6 in the world. In the 2009-2010 report, the U.S. was

ranked at No.14. The U.S. spends roughly 2 percent of its gross domestic product on 

infrastructure, about half of what it did 50 years ago. Europe spends around 5 percent, 

and China 9 percent. Deteriorating infrastructure impacts business continuity and 

increases costs to taxpayers and businesses.

One example is the increased rate of water pipe failures across the U.S. during the 2011 

drought in the Midwest and South. Older pipes are more susceptible to bursting, due to 

combined effects of high temperatures and dry soils that shrink away from buried pipes. 

Increased water usage then raises internal water pressure, which can cause failures in 

unsupported deteriorated pipes17. Thousands of water pipes have burst across the Nation.

On August 14, 2011, Oklahoma City had 685 water main breaks over a six-week period, 

four times the normal rate. On August 23, 2011, Houston had 847 water leaks, more than 

three times the normal rate. The American Water Works Association (AWWA) report, 

“Dawn of the Replacement Era, Reinvesting in Drinking Water Infrastructure” (May

2001) points out that many of the water systems are 80 to 100 years old and approaching 

the end of their useful lives.

When the level of damage that occurs every year to our buildings and infrastructure by 

hazards and disruptive events is considered with just a few recent examples, it becomes 

apparent that the present codes, standards, and practices used to build and maintain our

14 Personal communication, St John’s Medical Research Center and NIST personnel 15 The National Weather Service defines derechos as windstorms that are able to last for several hours with gust fronts 

that produce high levels of damage. In order for these storms to last so long, they need both instability and wind shear.

Instability refers to the storm's ability to tap into the warm moist air near the surface as it develops. 16 National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office, Des Moines, IA, 

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dmx/?n=july2011derecho 17 CNN, Building Up America, Heat pops pipes nationwide; brace for higher bills, August 14, 2011
50

communities are not sufficiently comprehensive in their scope or requirements, even 

when one accounts for communities that do not adopt or enforce building codes and 

standards. These few examples demonstrate that even though our codes and standards 

have criteria for hazard events the built environment is not resilient during or after hazard 

events that occur on an annual or multi-year basis.

Referring again to Figure 1, should society depend on private and public insurance (state 

and federal disaster aid) to such a large degree for reoccurring events? A resilient 

community can offer a better way forward, where the present level of annual damage is 

reduced, and local and national resources can be put to more productive use.

Resilience of the Built Environment

Resilience of the built environment is both a local and a national issue. Just as the 

damage effects of hazard events can cascade from localized damage to impact a 

community, they also can cascade across entire regions, and even the Nation. example is 

the loss of power during Hurricane Katrina. Mississippi Power Company had 402 

damaged transmission towers due to falling trees, wind, and, in some cases, cascading 

tower collapses due to unbalanced line tension. A major problem in restarting one of the 

generating plants was the lack of electric power needed to start the auxiliary equipment –

the entire regional power systems was down (NIST 2006). As projected losses from 

hazard events continue to rise, there is increasing recognition that minimizing the need 

for response and recovery depends on proactively identifying hazards that pose threats

and acting to mitigate their potential impact. Preventing hazards from becoming disasters 

depends upon the resilience of our buildings and infrastructure.

Buildings are typically constructed under present codes, standards, and design practice

for minimum life safety performance criteria for design events. Life safety allows for safe 

evacuation of occupants during or after a design event, even though constructed systems 

may be damaged significantly. If resilience concepts are added to codes and standards, 

then owners and stakeholders can prioritize which systems should function during and 

after a disruptive event (e.g., hospitals, emergency response, primary infrastructure

systems), and which systems should sustain only minor damage (e.g., businesses,

schools, secondary infrastructure systems). Inclusion of resilience will reduce or eliminate 

significant vulnerabilities present in today’s constructed systems, as well as lower 

economic losses, and will improve community stability and productivity. However, 

before such changes can be made, performance goals, metrics, and validated tools to 

evaluate the performance of built systems and associated risks need to be developed. 

Nevertheless, risk-consistent, performance-based design tools, while necessary, are not 

sufficient to develop tools for resilience of the built environment.

Resilience depends upon the capacity of the built environment to maintain acceptable 

levels of functionality during and after disruptive events and to recover full functionality 

within a specified period of time. Figure 2 illustrates resilience for the built environment. 

Both the degree of lost functionality after the event and the time to full recovery are 

random variables. If proactive modifications are made that improve the performance of
51

the built environment prior to disruptive events, the time to full recovery of functionality 

can be shortened significantly. However, at present, communities do not plan for 

recovery of their physical infrastructure following disruptive events, and the time to full 

recovery is uncertain.

Figure 2. Resilience concept of functionality versus recovery time for the 

performance of the built environment during a disruptive event.

Community resilience is distinct from FEMA disaster activities. FEMA promotes four 

activities to reduce the impact of disasters with a focus on community readiness, 

mitigating damage, and emergency management of public safety and health and property 

damage:

• Plan - community and individual readiness for events

• Prepare and mitigate - avoiding or minimizing damage and loss of life

• Respond - emergency management of public safety and health and property 

damage

• Recover and rebuild - federal aid to recover and rebuild

FEMA’s public assistance ranges from training to flood insurance to personal and 

community disaster relief. Their activities have improved community planning for 

shelters and communication during events and provided assistance when damage 

exceeded local and state resources. Their reports on building performance during 

disasters and support of seismic design practices have resulted in changes to building 

practices (e.g., continuous load paths for wind resistance, elevation above flood levels, 

and improved seismic design guidelines, including performance based design). FEMA’s 

disaster reduction activities are important for community resilience, but there remain 

significant gaps in codes and standards for resilient buildings and infrastructure systems.
52

Formative Events and Government Responses for Community Resilience

Three events have had significant influence on the development of resilience concepts: 

Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the WTC and Pentagon terrorist attacks in 2001, and 

Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The federal aid response to Hurricane Andrew was widely 

criticized as inadequate, insurance claims led to the closure of insurance companies, and 

the widespread structural damage led to efforts to improve building codes and practices 

in South Florida. After Hurricane Andrew, FEMA was reorganized with an emphasis on

preparedness and mitigation for natural hazards. Response and recovery efforts primarily 

focused on providing financial and housing aid to communities immediately after a 

disaster.

Following the WTC and Pentagon disasters in 2001, deterrence of terrorist attacks was 

addressed in The Patriot Act (2001) and efforts focused on security against terrorism for 

critical infrastructure. The Patriot Act defined critical infrastructure as “systems and 

assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or 

destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact” on national 

economic security, public health, or safety. The National Strategy for Physical Protection 

of Critical Infrastructure and Key Assets (2003) identified critical infrastructures and key 

assets (CIKR), and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-7 (HSPD-7, 2003) on 

Critical Infrastructure Identification, Prioritization, and Protection established a national 

policy for federal agencies to identify and prioritize critical infrastructure and key assets 

and to protect them from terrorist attacks.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reminded the US that natural disasters continue to be a 

significant threat to our communities. The unprecedented level of destruction by storm 

surge in Mississippi and Louisiana brought renewed focus to the need to address natural 

disasters. The broadened definition of disaster resiliency was reflected in the Grand 

Challenges for Disaster Reduction and the National Infrastructure Protection Plan 

developed by The President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2005 (updated

2008). The Grand Challenges identify technical problems due to a lack of adequate 

scientific understanding of natural hazards and availability of information, predictive 

technologies and mitigation strategies to improve the performance of buildings and 

infrastructure, and standard methods to predict and assess the disaster resilience of 

buildings and infrastructure.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a National Infrastructure 

Protection Plan (NIPP, 2009) in response to HSPD-7. Eighteen critical infrastructure and 

key resources (CIKR) sectors were identified, as well as high priority technology needs, 

including the following:

• Analytical tools to quantify interdependencies and cascading consequences as 

disruptions occur across critical infrastructure sectors;

• Effective and affordable blast analysis and protection for critical infrastructure 

and an improved understanding of blast-failure mechanisms and protection 

measures for the most vital CIKR;
53

• Advanced, automated, and affordable monitoring and surveillance technologies, 

specifically, decision support systems to prevent disruption, mitigate results, and 

build resiliency;

• Rapid mitigation and recovery technologies to quickly reduce the effects of 

natural and manmade disruptions and cascading effects; and

• Critical utility components that are affordable and highly transportable, and 

provide robust solutions during manmade and natural disruptions.

The DHS Directorate for National Protection and Programs addresses both physical and 

virtual threats. Under this directorate, the Office of Infrastructure Protection (IP) leads a 

national coordinated effort to reduce risk to the infrastructure posed by acts of terrorism 

through the NIPP and a set of programs and partnerships. An example of a product 

developed for the Commercial Facilities Sector is a Risk Self-Assessment Tool for 

Stadiums and Arenas that was designed to assist owners with the identification and 

management of security vulnerabilities.

The DHS Directorate for Science and Technology is the research and development arm 

of DHS. The Infrastructure Protection and Disaster Management Division has 

infrastructure (dams, bridges, tunnels) projects that include (1) tools for protective 

measures and design guidance to reduce blast effects and (2) protection, rapid mitigation, 

and recovery following an event.

In December 2010, DHS Science and Technology Directorate held a summit with public 

and private sector representatives to develop recommendations for resilient buildings and 

infrastructure. The primary issue under consideration was the lack of guidance available 

for architects and engineers to design buildings and infrastructure that is resilient and

high-performing. The summit confirmed the need to improve the performance of the built 

environment, emphasized the need to coordinate resiliency efforts, and promoted publicprivate partnerships.

By 2010, a national need for resilient buildings and infrastructure to natural and

manmade hazards had been identified by the President’s Office, and national sector plans 

had been developed by DHS. However, most of the efforts to date have focused primarily 

on security measures for facilities. Resilience of the built environment needs to be 

addressed with a similar focused national effort.

Private Sector Responses for Resilience

In response to the Presidential Directives and DHS activities, the private sector also 

responded to the need for resilience.

In 2001, eleven professional organizations, technical organizations, and federal agencies 

formed The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP), a non-profit partnership to 

facilitate dialogue on domestic infrastructure security and public policy related to the 

security of the nation's built environment. TISP works to advance infrastructure security 

and resiliency. TISP holds annual conferences to engage the public and private sector in
54

resilience topics, with an emphasis on management preparedness and business continuity. 

In 2010, TISP released the White Paper on Infrastructure Resilience and 

Interdependencies. Three recommendations were made for improving the resilience of

the built environment: (1) develop a unified national resilience goal, (2) develop 

consistent methods identifying core functions and interdependencies for risk and 

resilience management, and (3) adopt consistent methods for prioritizing infrastructure 

investments.

ASCE formed the Technical Council for Lifeline Earthquake Engineering in 1977. 

TCLEE has held international conferences approximately every four years since 1977. 

The 2009 conference addressed significant regional disruptions that often have had 

national impacts that were strongly dependent on the performance of lifelines. In 2009, 

ASCE released “Guiding Principles for the Nation’s Critical Infrastructure,” which 

promoted four guiding principles: (1) make risk analysis, management, and 

communication the standard basis on which infrastructure projects are developed and 

implemented, (2) properly maintain, operate, and modify systems to perform effectively 

under changing conditions, (3) provide technical oversight, coordination with related 

projects, appropriate control and change management, and effective communication with 

project stakeholders, and (4) adapt critical infrastructure in response to dynamic 

conditions and practice throughout their life cycle.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) published “Prioritizing Critical 

Infrastructure Security/Resilience” in 2009. It presents the Risk Analysis and 

Management for Critical Asset Protection (RAMCAP) method that directly compares 

risk, resilience, and risk management benefits so that decision-makers can better allocate

limited resources. Also in 2009, the American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) “All 

Hazards Consequence Management Plan” was released to help drinking water and 

wastewater utilities incorporate all-hazard consequence management concepts into their 

existing emergency preparedness, response, and recovery planning.

In 2010, the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) released 

“Guidelines for Performance Based Seismic Design of Tall Buildings.” The guidelines 

present a recommended alternative to the prescriptive procedures for seismic design of 

buildings contained in standards such as ASCE 7 and the International Building Code

(IBC). They are intended primarily for use by structural engineers and building officials 

engaged in the seismic design and review of individual tall buildings. These guidelines 

also can be used to achieve higher seismic performance objectives. Performance-based 

methods allow for performance goals to be directly addressed in the design process.

In 2011, the National Research Council (NRC) published “National Earthquake 

Resilience: Research, Implementation, and Outreach.” NEHRP commissioned NRC to 

develop a roadmap for earthquake hazard and risk reduction in the United States based on 

goals and objectives for achieving national earthquake resilience as described in the 2008

NEHRP Strategic Plan. The NRC committee was directed to assess the activities, and 

their costs, that would be required for the Nation to achieve earthquake resilience in 20 

years.
55

Standards Supporting Resilience of the Built Environment

The following standard has been developed explicitly to support optimization of 

resources for security measures for water and wastewater systems:

o ANSI/ASME-ITI/AWWA J100-2010, RAMCAP® Standard for Risk and

Resilience Management of Water and Wastewater Systems

The following standards implicitly support resilience of the built environment through 

risk-consistent, performance-based methodologies:

o ASCE 41-06, Seismic Rehabilitation of Existing Buildings, a performance-based 

seismic rehabilitation methodology

o ASTM E 2506-06, Standard Guide for Developing a Cost-Effective Risk

Mitigation Plan for New and Existing Constructed Facilities

o ASCE 7-10, Minimum Load Requirements for Buildings and Other Structures, 

performance-based procedures and risk consistency

However, as noted previously, risk-consistent, performance-based methodologies, while 

necessary components for resilience standards, are not sufficient. There is a significant 

amount of work that remains to develop comprehensive standards for resilience in the 

built environment.

What is Needed to Achieve Resilient Communities?

At present, our society is using prescriptive codes and standards for most of the built 

environment. Individual owners are often reluctant to make investments beyond the 

minimums required to satisfy codes and standards. However, as shown in the examples of 

recent hazard events, many buildings and infrastructure systems are failing in natural 

hazard events.

At the community level, emergency response activities, while good and necessary, often 

are seen as a sufficient plan for potential disasters. There appears to be an increasing 

reliance by communities on receiving federal disaster funding for recovery and repairs 

rather than planning and building for likely scenarios.

However, there is little in place that a forward looking community could use to develop a 

resilient built environment. The following steps are needed to support resilience in the 

built environment:

o Clear definitions and vocabulary for resilience concepts

o Performance goals for functionality and recovery

o Metrics to measure levels of resilience

o Tools and methodologies for evaluating and designing resilient buildings and

infrastructure
56

These steps will support development of standards and codes for resilient buildings and 

infrastructure, leading to reduced emergency response and recovery costs and increased 

investment return from resilient communities.

References

ASTM (2006), ASTM Standard E 2506-06, Standard Guide for Developing a CostEffective Risk Mitigation Plan for New and Existing Facilities, ASTM International, 100

Barr Harbor Drive, PO Box C 700, West Conshohocken, PA, 19428-2959

ASTM (2007), ASTM Standards on Building Economics, 6th Edition, ASTM 

International, 100 Barr Harbor Drive, PO Box C 700, West Conshohocken, PA, 19428-

2959

AWWA (2001), Dawn of the Replacement Era, Reinvesting in Drinking Water 

Infrastructure, American Water Works Association, 6666 W. Quincy Ave, Denver, CO, 

May

Bruneau, M. (2003), A Framework to Quantitatively Assess and Enhance the Seismic 

Resilience of Communities, Earthquake Spectra, Volume 19, No. 4, pages 733–752, 

November

Comfort, L. (1999), Shared Risk: Complex Systems in Seismic Response. Pergamon, New

York.

DHS ( 2009), National Infrastructure Protection Plan, Partnering to enhance protection 

and resiliency, Department of Homeland Security, Washington D.C., 

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/NIPP_Plan.pdf

DHS (2010), DHS Risk Lexicon – 2010 Edition, Department of Homeland Security, Risk

Steering Committee, Sep 2010, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/dhs_risk_lexicon.pdf

GAO ( 2010), Report to Congressional Requestors, Critical Infrastructure Protection, 

DHS Efforts to Assess and Promote Resiliency are Evolving but Program Management 

Could Be Strengthened, Government Accountability Office GAO-10-772, September

2010, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10772.pdf

McDaniels, T., et. al. (2008), Fostering resilience to extreme events within infrastructure 

systems: Characterizing decision contexts for mitigation and adaptation, Global 

Environmental Change, Volume 18, Issue 2, pp. 310-318.

NIAC (2009), Critical Infrastructure Resilience, Final Report and Recommendations, 

National Infrastructure Advisory Council 

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/niac/niac_critical_infrastructure_resilience.pdf
57

NIST (2006), TN 1476, Performance of Physical Structures in Hurricane Katrina and

Hurricane Rita: A Reconnaissance Report, Gaithersburg, MD, 20899, June.

NRC (2010), Review of the Department of Homeland Security’s Approach to Risk 

Analysis, committee to Review the Department of Homeland Security’s Approach to 

Risk Analysis, National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington 

D.C., http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12972

OSTP (2008), Grand Challenges for Disaster Reduction, National Science and 

Technology Council, Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, A Report of the 

Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction, Jun 2005, Second Printing Jan 2008, Executive 

Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Washington D.C., 

http://www.sdr.gov/SDRGrandChallengesforDisasterReduction.pdf

The White House (2003) The National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical 

Infrastructure and Key Assets, Washington D.C., Feb 2003, 

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/Physical_Strategy.pdf
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Roundtable on Standards for Disaster Resilience for Buildings and Infrastructure

Systems

September 26, 2011

SPUR Resilient City Goals

Chris D. Poland, SE, FSEAOC, NAE18

Design and construction professionals have been working to understand and mitigate the 

effects of earthquakes for centuries. While the historical record is vague, there is 

evidence to suggest that local construction techniques changed with each major 

earthquake and it is reasonable to expect that the goal was always to protect life and 

property. In the United States, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire initiated an 

understanding in California that has never stopped evolving. The goal for seismic design 

has consistently focused on limiting damage in moderate earthquakes and preserving life 

in major events (Geschwind 2001).

Starting in the mid-20th century, building officials with the help of engineers started to 

codify the style and extent of seismic design that would be required for public safety and 

lifeline system owners generally followed suit. By the mid 1980s, most agree that the 

resulting guidelines, codes and standards defined what was needed for earthquake-safe 

buildings and systems. As new projects were built, the safety of communities began to 

improve, though they remained plagued by the vast majority of existing buildings, those 

built prior to the modern codes. While some of those buildings will actually resist 

earthquakes well, due to the wisdom of their design and construction professionals, most 

will not. A small subset will be outright dangerous, that is likely to collapse and capable 

of causing a large number of casualties.

The 1994 Northridge Earthquake brought to new light the consequence of earthquake 

damage. Engineers were delighted with the life safe performance of their buildings, 

especially the unreinforced masonry buildings that had recently undergone mandatory 

rehabilitation. The public, the government, and especially the insurance companies were 

all startled by the cost of the damage and the disruption to people and business, especially 

small local businesses. The call for better performance led to the formalization of 

performance based seismic engineering that has yielded new standards for evaluation, 

rehabilitation and new building design (SEAOC 1995).

Unfortunately, the traditional silos that separate designers and code writers were not 

immediately broken down and the resulting efforts for implementing performance based 

seismic engineering stalled. New buildings continued to be designed for prescriptive 

requirements without clear definition about was being accomplished (ASCE 1995). 

Existing buildings continued to be evaluated and rated for a wide variety of performance

18 Chairman and Senior Principal, Degenkolb Engineers, San Francisco, CA
59

goals with no direct relationship to those being used for new buildings (ASCE 2002,

2006). Lifeline systems, the very heartbeat of each community’s economy, continued to 

be designed and rehabilitated by their public and private providers often without a 

consistent understanding of their independencies and the consequences of their systems 

failure on the pace of the recovery.

Fortunately, the new century has brought a new perspective. Driven by the experiences in

9/11, the Katrina floods, and most recently the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, New Zealand 

and Japan, many earthquake professionals realize the goals for natural hazard reduction 

need to shift from safety to resilience. Communities need to be able to take the “punch” 

of an event and depend on their own preparedness and the impromptu response of those 

affected to recover. Their preparedness needs to focus on saving people, their 

neighborhoods, their cultural heritage, and the local economy. It requires a clear 

understanding of the social and physical impacts of the disasters that may occur and 

determining the best means to mitigate them to acceptable levels. Part of the plan needs 

to be a new set of performance goals for the built infrastructure and a new set of related 

design standards and construction guidelines. The built infrastructure needs to provide a 

place to govern after a disaster, and power, water, and communication networks must 

begin operating quickly. People need to be able to return almost immediately to their 

homes, travel to where they need to be, and resume a fairly normal living routine within a 

few weeks. Communities can then return to a “new” normal, which occurs within a few 

years after the event (ACEHR 2010).

SPUR STARTS FRESH WITH GOALS RELATED TO RECOVERY

Defining disaster resilience and setting resilience goals is a contemporary issue that has 

generated a wide range of definitions and expectations. Some define it qualitatively with 

goals for response and recovery. Others have developed an analytical measurement that 

scores abilities, declares when advancement is needed, and allows overall progress to be 

tracked. Some have suggested that large, modern urban cities are already sufficiently 

resilient because of their considerable assets, small impact ratios, and extensive and 

available government support. However, the City and County of San Francisco has not 

taken that position and in fact, has launched a comprehensive recovery planning 

initiative. Beginning with 75 different projects aimed at improving the City’s ability to 

recover, the San Francisco Citywide Post-Disaster Resilience and Recovery Initiative, 

called Resilient SF, is setting a new pace for achieving resilience (Chakos 2008).

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, working in collaboration 

with the City of San Francisco, is addressing this issue within its Disaster Planning 

Program. As a public policy think tank, SPUR recommends policies to the City and 

County of San Francisco on a wide range of topics. Their Disaster Planning Program is 

focused in three areas: mitigation, response, and recovery. This SPUR program started 

during the commemoration of the 100thanniversary of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. 

SPUR has published a policy paper defining a Resilient San Francisco in terms of
60

performance goals for the cities built environment and a series of recommendations 

related to the first steps that are needed. (SPUR 2009)

The SPUR goals for resilience are unique in that they are defined in the context of 

disaster planning by defining what the city needs, in the event of a major expected 

earthquake, from its buildings and lifelines to support the three phases of response; 

rescue, recovery and rebuilding. In the first phase, the weeklong response and rescue 

period, only the emergency response centers are needed. The second phase of recovery 

focuses on restoring the neighborhoods within 30 to 60 days so that the workforce can be 

reestablished as people return to a normal lifestyle and are able to get back to work. 

Special consideration is given to the needs of the economically and physically challenged 

populations. The third phase of recovery covers the repair and reconstruction of the 

affected area. Defining the size of the major earthquake that is the basis for resilience is 

one of the key aspects of the plan.

SPUR DEFINES EXPECTED AND EXTREME EARTHQUAKES

Earthquakes arrive in all sizes and shapes. The intensity of shaking at a particular 

location depends on the site conditions, the location of the epicenter, the magnitude, and 

the geologic setting. The earliest definitions of the largest earthquake that could affect a 

site were based on the strength of the buildings that adequately resisted the ground

motion during great earthquakes. In the early 1970s, the “maximum credible earthquake” 

was defined based on the frequency of occurrence of all sizes of events. In recent 

decades, that definition has given way to probabilistic estimates of earthquake of various 

sizes in terms of their probabilities of occurrence. For purposes of design today, ground 

motion with a 10% probability of exceedence in 50 years (the 10/50 ground motions) and 

ground motions with a 2% probability of exceedence in 50 years (the 2/50 ground 

motions) are the basis. These ground motions are also referred to as having a 500 year 

return period and a 2500 year return period, respectively. The 10/50 ground motions 

represent the traditional design level used in the western United States and the 2/50 

ground motions, referred to as the maximum considered earthquake (MCE), has become 

the basis for new design.

Setting resilience goals requires the combination of a defined level of shaking and a 

transparent performance goal. To be effective and understood, today’s probabilistic 

definitions need to be translated into equivalent scenario events. For that purpose, SPUR 

defined three scenario events for San Francisco that included an “expected” earthquake –

one that could reasonably be expected to occur during the useful life of the structure or 

system - along with extreme and routine events. The expected earthquake is defined for 

use in design and evaluation for resiliency. The extreme earthquake - the largest 

earthquake that could reasonably be expected to occur on a nearby fault - is intended to 

be used as the basis for response planning. The routine earthquake – the event that will 

likely occur routinely during the life of a building – is intended to verify the service level 

performance of buildings. That is the level of earthquake a building or system can endure 

without damage or interruption in its operational ability.
61

For buildings in San Francisco, SPUR has defined the following:

Routine Magnitude 5.5, 70% probability of exceedence in 50 years 

Expected Magnitude 7.2, 10% probability of exceedence in 50 years 

Extreme Magnitude 7.9, 2% probability of exceedence in 50 years

For lifeline systems such as major bridges, levees, or utility systems, the useful life of the 

systems is much longer. The expected earthquake for lifelines should represent a ground 

motion with a much lower probability than defined for buildings, perhaps even as low as 

for the extreme event.

SPUR DEFINES TRANSPARENT INFRASTRUCTURE GOALS

The current move from a safety focus to resilience needs to be supported by a complete 

set of transparent performance goals that declare what is needed from both lifeline 

systems and buildings to facilitate recovery. The intent is to identify what elements of the 

built environment are needed for effective response and rapid recovery. Buildings and 

systems need to be designed and constructed so they are available just when they are 

needed.

SPUR chose to define performance goals in terms of the City’s three response and 

recovery phases, using five performance categories for buildings, three performance 

categories for lifeline systems, and a matrix presentation format as the metric for defining 

and tracking the state of resilience:

Response and Recovery Phases

Phase Time Frame Condition of the built environment

1 1 to 7 days

Immediate:

Initial Response and staging for reconstruction

Mayor proclaims a local emergency and opens the

Emergency Operations Center. Hospitals, police stations,

fire stations, and City Department Operations Centers are 

operational.

Within 4 hours: People can leave or return to the city in order to get home.

Within 24 hours Emergency response workers are able to activate and their 

operations are fully mobilized. Hotels designated to house 

emergency response workers are safe and usable, and 

temporary shelters are open. All occupied households are 

inspected by their occupants and less than 5 percent of all 

dwelling units are found unsafe to be occupied. Residents
62

will shelter in place

1 in damaged buildings even if utility 

services are not functioning.

Within 72 hours Ninety percent of the utility systems (power, water. waste 

water, and communication systems) are operational and 

serving the facilities supporting emergency operations and 

neighborhoods. Ninety percent of the major transportation 

systems routes, including Bay crossings and airports, are 

open at least for emergency response. The focus of the

initial recovery and reconstruction efforts will be focused 

on repairing neighborhoods to a usable condition including 

providing the utilities they need. Essential City services are 

fully restored.

2. 30 to 60 days Housing restored – ongoing social needs met

Within 30 days All utility systems and transportation routes serving 

neighborhoods are restored to 95 percent of pre-event 

service levels, public transportation is running at 90 percent 

capacity, public schools are open and in session. Ninety 

percent of the neighborhood businesses are open.

Within 60 days Airports are open for general use, public transportation is 

running at 95 percent capacity, minor transportation routes 

are repaired and reopened.

3 Several Years Long Term Reconstruction

Within 4 months Temporary shelters are closed. All displaced households 

have returned home or have permanently relocated. 95 

percent of the community retail services are reopened. 50 

percent of the non-workforce support businesses are 

reopened.

Within 3 years All business operations, including all City services not 

related to emergency response or reconstruction, are 

restored to pre-earthquake levels.

Performance Categories for Buildings

SPUR recommends using the following terms in developing the new building design 

standards and mitigation programs needed to achieve resilience objectives

Category A: Safe and Operational. This describes the performance now 

expected of new essential facilities, such as hospitals and

1 Shelter in place is used by emergency response professionalsto mean the place in a building where people 

can seek safety during a life threatening incident. SPUR uses "shelter in place" to mean that a building is 

disaster resilient enough for people to safely remain in their home during both the earthquake itself and 

subsequent needed repairs, even though the public utility systems may not be working.
63

emergency operations centers. Buildings will experience only very 

minor damage and have energy, water, wastewater, and 

telecommunications systems to back-up any disruption to the 

normal utility services.

Category B: Safe and usable during repair. This describes the performance 

needed for buildings that will be used to shelter in place and for 

some emergency operations. Buildings will experience damage and 

disruption to their utility services, but no significant damage to the 

structural system. They may be occupied without restriction and 

are expected to receive a green tag19.

Category C: Safe and usable after repair. This describes the current expectation 

for new, non-essential buildings. Buildings may experience 

significant structural damage that will require repairs prior to 

resuming unrestricted occupancy and therefore are expected to 

receive a yellow tag20. Time required for repair will likely vary

from four months to three years or more.

Category D: Safe but not repairable. This level of performance represents the 

low end of acceptability for new, non-essential buildings, and is 

often used as a performance goal for existing buildings undergoing 

rehabilitation. Buildings may experience extensive structural 

damage and may be near collapse. Even if repair is technically 

feasible, it might not be financially justifiable. Many buildings 

performing at this level are expected to receive a red tag

21.

Category E: Unsafe: Partial or complete collapse. Damage that will likely lead 

to significant casualties in the event of an “expected” earthquake. 

These are the “killer” buildings that need to be addressed most 

urgently by new mitigation policies.

Performance Categories for Lifelines

SPUR defines the expected performance of all utility and transportation systems, or 

portions of systems, serving the City in terms of the days required to restore service to 90 

percent, 95 percent and 100 percent of the defined customer base.

Category I Resume 100 percent of service levels within four hours

Critical response facilities - including emergency housing centers – need to be 

supported by utility and transportation systems critical to their success. This level 

of performance assures that these systems will be available within four hours of 

the disaster. It requires a combination of well-built buildings and systems, 

provisions for making immediate repairs as needed, and redundancy within the

19 Building inspected and deemed safe for occupancy. 20 Building inspected and found to be damaged enough to warrant restricted access. 21 Building inspected and found to be unsafe to occupy.
64

networks that allows troubled spots to be isolated and repaired without system 

interruption.

Category II Resume 90 percent service within 72 hours, 95 percent within 30 

days, 100 percent within four months

Housing and residential neighborhoods require that utility and transportation 

systems are restored quickly so that these areas can return to livable conditions. 

There is time to make repairs to lightly damaged buildings and replace isolated 

portions of the networks or create alternate paths for bridging around the 

damage. There is time for parts and materials needed for repairs to be imported 

into damaged areas. These systems need to have a higher level of resilience and 

redundancy than the systems that support the rest of the City.

Category III Resume 90 percent of service within 72 hours, 95 percent within 30 

days, 100 percent within three years

The balance of the city needs to have its systems restored as buildings are 

returned to operation. There will be time to repair and replace older vulnerable 

systems with new. Temporary systems can be installed as needed. Most existing 

lifeline systems will qualify for Category III performance.

SPUR distilled these goals into the resilience matrix, shown in Figure 1, which indicates

both the goals and the estimated current condition of the city’s infrastructure.

ACHIEVING RESILIENCE

The concept of moving from safety to resilience is compelling. The reality of how to do it 

is complex. There is a need to settle on a set of consistent performance goals that are fully 

incorporated in the design standards and codes for new buildings and lifeline systems and 

tailored to the needs of each community that uses them. These standards and codes need 

to be adopted and enforced by knowledgeable building officials and inspectors. Design 

and construction professionals need to fully embrace the change, learn the new 

procedures that are needed to achieve the resilience goals and become accustomed to 

constructing projects to a revised set of standards.

Setting and achieving resilience goals is needed at the local level, but they will not be 

fully effective if they are not developed and implemented in a consistent manner 

nationally. A community’s ability to recover depends on regionally distributed lifelines 

and national resources. The federal government should take the lead in establishing the 

performance goals needed for recovery along with incentives for states, regions and 

communities to adopt and implement them. These goals need to be set for the full set of 

natural hazards that the nation faces, including seismic. Continuous research related to 

how to effectively achieve resilience needs to be funded at the federal level along with 

continuous funding for the development of national design standards and model building 

codes. Specific, first order attention needs to be given to the nation’s lifeline systems and 

their interdependencies.
65

The new generation of design standards and codes that are needed must incorporate 

transparent performance levels and consistent hazard levels to be effective. The public 

and their policy makers will make the necessary decisions to change from a safety focus 

to a resilience focus if given a clear and understandable vocabulary to discuss seismic 

safety, realistic goals and consistent standards. In the United States, ASCE 7, 31 and 41 

and the standards used for lifeline design need to be brought into consistency in terms of 

vocabulary and transparent performance goals. The SPUR goals are well suited for this 

purpose.

Finally, the culture of the design and construction industry must change and that is 

perhaps the toughest challenge. The significant strides that have been made over the past

100 years are evidence that it can be done. It appears that change most often comes after 

a major disaster when the codes are changed. Those who write standards and codes 

evaluate the disaster and determine what changes are needed. Those changes are 

incorporated into the standards and model codes, and when enforced, actually change the 

way buildings and systems are constructed. It is a slow process, perhaps the only process 

that effects uniform change.
66

-

-

-

Figure 1

TARGETSTATES OFRECOVERYFOR SANFRANCISCO'S BUILDING AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3

Tile "x's" in the chart to tile 

right indicate SPUR's best 

educated guesses about

INFRASTRUCTURE

CLUSTER FACILITIES

CRITICALRESPONSEFACILITIES

ANDSUPPORT SYSTEMS

Event

Occurs r .H_o_u_r_s,--- ---D_ays---r----M._o_n_th_s --

-

X

current standards for recovery 

times.The shaded areas 

represent the goals -targets 

based on clearly stated 

performance measures (see 

next page) -for recovery

times for the city's buildings 

and lifelines.Tile gaps 

between "x's" and shaded 

boxes represent how far we 

are from meeting resiliency 

targets.

TARGET STATES OF RECOVERY

Performance Description of usability

Measure after expected event

BUILDINGS LIFELINES 

Category A:

Safe and 

operational

Category B: 100% Safe and restored in

usable 4 hours

dunng

e after 4 months

X repairs

CategoryC: 100% Safe and restored in

usabl 

moderate 

repairs

Category D: 100%

Safe and restored in

usable 3 years 

after major

repairs

Expected 

current 

status
67

CONCLUSION

In many ways, the tools and procedures to create disaster resilient cities exist and are 

continually being refined. Achieving resiliency nationwide, however, will require a new 

process and uniform application. Modifications to the current building codes, alignment 

of the lifeline systems around common performance objectives, and strong community 

support for adopting and enforcing the new design standards are needed. Deficient 

buildings and systems need to be mitigated, and new buildings and systems need to be 

designed, to the minimum performance levels that are needed for community resilience.

Making such a shift to updated codes and generating community support for new policies 

is not possible without solid, unified support from all levels of government and the 

private sector. The federal government needs to set performance standards that can be 

embedded in the design codes and the SPUR Goals are a rational and complete set. 

Communities need to adopt and enforce these new resilience codes and develop 

mandatory programs that mitigate their built environment as needed to assure survival. 

The private sector is expected to respond and cooperate as the reality is defined in clear 

and compelling terms, and financial incentives are provided to support the community 

needs.

CONTRIBUTORS

The thinking behind the shift from safety to resilience has been in process for at least 40

years. Triggered by the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, the concept of building better has 

been developing in the minds of many researchers and practitioners like me. Most 

recently, my work with the Disaster Planning Program at SPUR and the National 

Earthquake Hazard Reduction Programs (NEHRP) Advisory Committee on Earthquake 

Hazard Reduction (ACEHR) has been stimulating, encouraging, and thought-provoking. I 

am grateful for the interactions I have had over the years with the following people:

SPUR

Laurie Johnson, George Williams, Laurence Kornfield, Hanson Tom, Debra Walker, 

Sarah Karlinsky, Laura Dwelley-Samant, Tom Tobin, Chris Barkley, David Bonowitz, 

Joe Maffei, Jack Moehle, Robert Pekelnicky, Michael Theriault, John Paxton, Ross 

Asselstine, Jessica Zenk, Jes Penderson, and Kent Ferre

NEHRP ACEHR

Walter Arabasz, James Beavers, Jonathan Bray, Richard Eisner, James Harris, John 

Hooper, Jack Hayes, Michael Lindell, Jack Moehle, Thomas O’Rourke, Paul Somerville, 

Shyam Sunder, Susan Tubbesing, Anne vonWeller, Yumei Wang, Sharon Wood, Brent 

Woodworth, and Mark Zoback
68

REFERENCES

Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazard Reduction (ACEHR), National Earthquake 

Hazard Reduction Program, February 2010. Achieving National Disaster Resilience 

through Local, Regional, and National Activities. www.nehrp.gov.

American Society of Civil Engineers, 2010. ASCE/SEI 7-05: Minimum Design Loads for

Buildings and Other Structures. www.ASCE.org, Reston, Virginia.

American Society of Civil Engineers, 2002. ASCE/SEI 31-03: Seismic Evaluation of

Existing Buildings.www.ASCE.org, Reston, Virginia.

American Society of Civil Engineers, 2007. ASCE/SEI 41-06: Seismic Rehabilitation of

Existing Buildings. www.ASCE.org, Reston, Virginia.

SPUR 0209 Urbanist, February 2009. The Resilient City, Part 1: Before the disaster.

www.spur.org, San Francisco.

Structural Engineers Association of California, Sacramento, April 1995. Performance 

Based Seismic Engineering of Buildings, Vision 2000 Report. www.seaoc.org. 

Sacramento, California.

Chakos, A, 2008. Seismic Risk Reduction Sparks Community Resilience, October 2008.

14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Beijing, China.

Geschwind, Carl-Henry, 2001. California Earthquakes: Science, Risk, and the Politics of

Hazard Mitigation. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland.
69

Provisions in Present U.S. Building Codes and Standards for Resilience

R.O. Hamburger

22, SE, SECB

Introduction

State and municipal governments in the United States have traditionally adopted building 

codes through the duty of government to protect the public safety and the powers granted 

by the governed that enable governments to adopt and enforce regulations to that effect. 

In granting government the power to act to protect the public safety, the individuals 

simultaneously surrender some portion of their right, absent such regulatory authority, to 

act in the manner deemed most appropriate by the individuals. By granting, recognizing 

and accepting this authority, the individuals, either knowingly or not, voluntarily or not, 

agree to sacrifice to some extent, an ability to act in what they may believe is their own 

best interest, to the betterment of the collective good. In the simplest statement of this 

compact, individual building developers and owners, by agreeing to abide by building 

regulation, accept that they will pay more to develop their property then they otherwise 

might have, and they might not be able to build some types of structures that they might

otherwise have, recognizing that in so doing, they are providing themselves and society at 

large, a building stock which will be both safer and more reliable. The building regulation 

process therefore inherently involves tradeoffs between the rights of the individual to

build in the manner that best suits them and the rights of society at large to have safe 

places to conduct commerce and reside. While it may be in the power of government to 

require design of buildings such that they would survive and remain functional following 

any likely environmental or human-induced event, it would not be practically economical 

to do so. Thus, building codes represent a compromise between acceptable safety and 

reliability and economic practicality.

But what constitutes acceptable safety and reliability? Society’s notion of this is a 

function of several things, including: its recent exposure to destructive events, including 

earthquakes, fires and hurricanes that have adversely affected it; the available technology 

and the ability this technology brings to control losses resulting from poor performance

of construction; society’s economic wealth and its ability to devote substantial resources 

to protect against future potential losses, as opposed to providing for basic survival; and, 

the existence of other societal demands for the use of these resources. At a given period 

in time, society will come to a determination, through some means, that either real or

perceived losses resulting from the possible or probable response of its built environment 

to stress, including that resulting from normal occupancy, environmental loading or even 

terrorist attacks, is unacceptable, that both the economic means and technical capability 

exist to reduce these possible/probable losses to acceptable levels; and, that the use of the 

money necessary to do this is the most desirable of several possible applications.

22 Senior Principal, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc., San Francisco, CA 94105
70

For this discussion, we define resilience as the measure of society’s level of acceptance 

of the potential for adverse consequences, resulting both from the hazard environment 

and the minimum acceptable design and construction criteria, as embodied in building 

practice. It can be defined in terms of several sub-measures including: the potential for

large numbers of lost lives owing to building failures of one type or another; the potential 

for individual life loss resulting from such failure; the need to have to expend additional 

resources to conduct repairs following a stress event; and the potential that entire 

communities in some cases, even large cities, will lose viability, due to a simultaneous 

collective failure of the built environment. Society’s tolerance for these poor outcomes of 

design and construction criteria selection is a function not only of time, and the

previously mentioned factors of technical capability, economic welfare and competing 

needs, but also the individual hazard. Society has apparently been willing to accept one 

level of risk for earthquake, another for snow, a third for hurricane, a fourth for flood, a

fifth for fire, etc. Society’s tolerance for lack of resilience to any of these hazards is in 

turn a function of belief the hazard can occur; fear of the consequences of the hazard; 

belief that one can practically affect the outcome; and though often not quantified or even 

stated, an explicit or implicit cost benefit evaluation. This paper explores the levels of 

resilience society has apparently been willing to accept through the basis for its building 

regulation as embodied in the building codes and their referenced standards adopted in

the United States today.

U.S. Building Regulation

Building regulation in the United States is generally conducted at the most local level of 

government available within a community, through adoption and enforcement of a 

building code. Within the incorporated boundaries of a City, building codes are adopted 

and enforced by City government. Outside the boundaries of incorporated cities, counties 

are generally responsible for building regulation. In some cases, state government will 

mandate the minimum acceptable criteria for local building codes, allowing individual 

county and city governments within the state to make amendment to these criteria on the 

basis of local conditions, or a desire for improved resilience. The U.S. Constitution, by 

omitting the assignment of this power to the federal government, prohibits the federal 

government from adopting and enforcing building codes except as pertains to federal 

property, e.g. government buildings, military reservations, federal territories, and the like; 

and within the boundaries of federal territories.

While the federal government is constitutionally prohibited from adopting and enforcing 

building codes at the local level, it nonetheless can have and has had substantial influence 

on this process. Major cities, principally in the eastern United States, were the first 

adopters of building codes, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. These cities 

principally adopted building codes in response to the large urban conflagrations that 

would periodically devastate large portions of these cities, which in that era incorporated

the unfortunate combination of dense development, substantial wood construction and the 

use of open flames for cooking, heating and lighting, as well as industrial processes. 

Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia all experienced large conflagrations that 

devastated entire neighborhoods and in some cases large portions of the cities. These 

conflagrations resulted in large life loss, substantial economic loss, migration of
71

populations, and also periodic urban renewal. For the most part, cities that experienced 

these fires, in each case, rebuilt and did so in a manner that was superior, though 

sometimes equally vulnerable, to the city that pre-existed the event. Urban fires were not 

new. They had plagued European cities for centuries. Yet by the late 1800s, major U.S. 

cities decided they had the technical means, the economic resources and the collective 

will to reduce this risk.

These first U.S. building codes were developed in an informal public and private 

partnership with the insurance industry, the design professions and City governments 

working hand in hand to develop the codes. Insurance industries, burdened with 

shouldering the economic loss associated with these conflagrations began to conduct 

research, largely through post-disaster investigation, into relative resistance of different 

construction types to fire spread and loss. The design professions, interested in bettering 

their practice and communities worked with the insurers to develop appropriate solutions 

and the Cities imposed the recommendations of these two groups on society at large by 

adopting the resulting recommendations. Initially, these early codes were intended only

to prevent the loss of large portions of communities through the spread of fire from one 

building to another, resulting in urban conflagrations. The codes imposed bans on 

exposed wood construction in dense urban neighborhoods, required the use of fireresistant materials on perimeter building walls in these regions and required parapets at 

roof lines, all identified as ways to avoid rapid spread of fire from one building to its

neighbors. Once these codes proved successful in reducing the risk of conflagration, code 

developers began to address the potential for large life loss in individual building fires, 

and started to regulate exiting and ventilation, to enable occupants to escape, as well as 

require standpipes to facilitate fire department capability to fight fires, once they

occurred. Later still, these codes began to address sanitation, structural stability under 

wind and snow, and a host of other hazards and risks, including in the Western United 

States, earthquakes.

The performance goals intended by these codes were not uniform for all hazards. By the

1930s, U.S. Building Codes sought not only to prevent urban conflagration but also to 

increase the probability that individual building fires could be brought under control 

without life loss, and possibly, with repairable damage to the structure. These same 

building codes, however, if they addressed earthquake performance at all, sought only to 

avoid mass loss of life by avoiding earthquake-induced collapse. Through the mid 1970’s 

this remained the primary goal of earthquake design provisions in the building codes. As 

noted in the SEAOC Blue Book (SEAOC, 1976), the primary goal of the earthquake 

design provisions was to protect life rather than the survival of individual structures. 

These codes did not address many hazards such as tsunami or tornado at all.

By the middle of the twentieth century, most major U.S. cities had adopted and enforced 

building codes, though many smaller communities and many states did not. Building 

code adoption was most prevalent in regions subject to extreme hazards of one type or 

another. Larger cities, as noted above, all faced a substantial fire risk, encouraging 

building code adoption. Communities along the Pacific coast, including those in Alaska, 

California, Oregon and Washington found themselves at unacceptable risk from 

earthquake and adopted building codes at the level of states, counties and even smaller
72

cities and townships. Similarly, communities in the hurricane belt of south Florida and 

the gulf coast, finding themselves at unacceptable risk of loss from hurricane also 

developed and adopted codes. Development of these codes remained the work of a 

partnership of the insurance industry, the design professions, and city officials, often 

acting in a voluntary capacity through professional organizations, with the substantial 

participation of the building trades, product suppliers and other industry groups.

In the mid twentieth century, three major partnerships formed and gained regional 

dominance over the building code development and adoption process. In the northeast, 

the Building Officials and Code Administrators International (BOCA) formed the nexus 

for this process while in the south east the Standard Building Code Congress 

International (SBCCI) dominated and in the Western U.S. the Pacific Coast Building 

Officials, later called the International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO) formed 

and sponsored the building code development process. Each of these three groups

sponsored the development and publication of a model building code, intended to be used 

by local communities as the basis for building regulation, often with local amendment.

As late as the early 1990s, many communities throughout the central and southern United 

States had not adopted building codes or had adopted building codes that addressed only 

some of the hazards these communities actually faced. Although the Federal government 

could not require adoption of appropriate building codes, it could encourage the adoption 

of such codes through the threat that disaster assistance funds would be withheld from 

communities that did not adopt reliable building codes, meeting federally adopted 

standards. This strategy became particularly effective when the three regional model 

building code development organizations, BOCA, ICBO, and SBCCI combined to from 

the International Code Council (ICC) and publish the first nationally applicable building 

code, the International Building Code (ICC, 2000). Today, nearly all U.S. communities 

adopt and enforce building regulation based on one of the International Building Code 

editions published on a three year cycle since 2000.

Building resilience is a function not only of the structure but also of the architectural, 

mechanical, electrical, plumbing and other systems that comprise buildings. The 

International Building Code primarily regulates the design of architectural and structural 

aspects of buildings and most structural requirements are adopted through reference to 

consensus standards published by the American Society of Civil Engineers and other 

industry organizations. Design of mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems are 

typically regulated through adoption of companion codes and standards including the 

International Mechanical Code (ICC, 2009a), International Plumbing Code (ICC 2009b), 

International Fire Code (ICC 2009c) and the National Electrical Code (NFPA, 2011) 

published by the National Fire Protection Association. The performance intended by

these various codes are rarely quantified and typically can be found only in commentary. 

In some cases, clues as to the intended performance can also be found in International 

Performance Code (ICC, 2009), a rarely-adopted performance-based design code 

intended to serve as a companion to the other code documents published by ICC. The 

balance of this paper cites the principal resiliency goals inherent in the present editions of 

these codes, primarily with regard to resilience to natural hazards and fire.
73

Occupancy and Risk Categories

Since publication of the 1976 edition of the Uniform Building Code (ICBO, 1976) U.S. 

building codes have recognized that some buildings and facilities are more important to a 

community’s resiliency than others, and therefore, should be designed and constructed to 

provide better performance under design events. The International Building Code and the 

primary standard referenced by that code for structural design, ASCE 7.05 (ASCE, 2005) 

categories buildings and other structures into four Occupancy Categories with tiered 

performance expectations for each category. Occupancy Category I comprises buildings 

that present a low risk to human life including barns, storage buildings and other 

structures that are not normally occupied by humans, do not support processes important 

to community welfare, and do not contain materials or substance that could present a 

hazard to the community if released. Occupancy Category II structures and facilities 

include most ordinary occupancy buildings including most residential, office, retail and 

industrial structures. These building may house hundreds of people but are regarded as 

replaceable without gross impact on the community, should individual structures

assigned to this category become uninhabitable or be damaged beyond use. Occupancy 

Category III structures include those that house large numbers of people in close 

proximity, such as auditoriums and public assembly halls; that house persons society 

perceives as important to protect, such as school children; that house people with 

impaired mobility, including prisons; that house modest quantities of potentially 

hazardous substances or materials, or that house functions important to the community 

such as water treatment and power generation facilities. Occupancy Category IV 

encompasses those structures deemed essential to community response to disasters and 

resilience including hospitals, police and fire stations, emergency communications 

facilities, and air traffic control facilities.

The most recent edition of the ASCE 7 (ASCE, 2010) Minimum Design Loads standard, 

suggest an alternative definition of Occupancy Category, actually termed Risk Category 

in the standard, that relates to the number of persons who would be placed at risk should 

the facility fail. Figure 1 below, reproduced in the commentary to ASCE 7.10 indicates 

that facilities the failure of which would place only a few persons at risk should be 

classified as Risk Category I. Risk Category II would encompass structures the failure of 

which would place up to several hundred people at risk; Risk Category III, several 

thousand and Risk Category IV, tens of thousands. This approach to risk categorization 

recognizes that not all facilities with common function are equally important. Thus, a fire 

station, in a City with many fire stations and significant redundancy in firefighting 

capability might be placed in a relatively low Risk Category, while one the failure of 

which could result in urban conflagration would be in the highest category. Similarly, 

small power generation stations, in power grids with significant redundancy would be 

assigned low Risk Category, while those that produce large portions of a region’s power 

would be in high Risk Categories.

Neither the Occupancy/Risk Category designations contained in ASCE 7.05 and the IBC, 

nor those in ASCE 7.10, however, address the effect of regional disasters, such as 

earthquakes or hurricanes, well. Rather, these categories tend to address the performance 

of individual buildings and structures rather than the entire community’s collection of
74

these structures. Thus, under both systems, individual residences are assigned to low 

protection categories because failure of a single residence will affect very few people. 

Neglected however, is the fact that destruction of large numbers of these residences in a 

single community by a single event, for example by a flood, hurricane or earthquake, 

could jeopardize the very viability of a community. This was graphically illustrated by 

the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, in 2005.

Figure 1 – Definition of Risk Category in ASCE 7.10

Resiliency Goals Inherent in Present Codes

Quantification of the structural resiliency goals for construction inherent in present U.S. 

building codes is best described in commentary to ASCE 7-10. Loading events

considered by this standard include the structure’s own weight; live loads associated with 

the structure’s occupancy; rain loads, atmospheric ice loads, earthquake; flooding, other 

than from tsunami; snow; and winds, other than from tornado. The standard does not 

presently require or address design either for tsunami flood or tornadic winds. For all of 

the loads addressed by the standard, except earthquake, ASCE 7-10 seeks to attain failure 

rates that exceed those shown in Table 1, below. As can be seen, for loads addressed by 

the code, other than earthquake, the intended reliability is very high, with the potential for 

load induced collapse ranging from one in several hundred thousand years to one in over

a million years. Even when factored by the very large number of buildings present in a 

major city, this indicates negligible likelihood of structural failure for these loads.

Table 1 – Target Annual Failure Rate for Load other than Earthquake

Risk Category I II III IV

Individual member 

or connection

1.25x10-4 3.0x10-5 1.25x10-5 5.0x10-6

Progressive failure 3.0x10-5 5.0x10-6 2.0x10-6 1.0x10-7
75

The standard does not seek this same reliability with regard to earthquake resistance 

primarily because it is perceived that given present day construction technology, and the 

severity of earthquake loading, it is not presently economically practical to do so. Table 2 

summarizes the reliabilities targeted by the standard for earthquake. The probabilities of 

failure indicated are conditioned on the building experiencing Maximum Considered 

Earthquake (MCE) effects, having a 2% chance of exceedance in 50 years in most

regions of the nation. In regions of very high earthquake activity, however, MCE shaking 

has exceedance probabilities closer to 5% in 50 years. Thus for ordinary (Category II) 

structures in most regions of the U.S., the target failure probability is 1% in 50 years, or 

an annual rate of 2.0x10-4, several orders of magnitude larger than is deemed acceptable 

for other load types. For communities located in regions of high earthquake risk, like 

portions of Los Angeles and San Francisco, this annual risk is substantially higher and 

approaches 1.0x10-4.

Table 2 – Conditional Probability of Failure, given MCE shaking

Risk Category I II III IV

Failure resulting in individual life 

loss

25% 25% 15% 10%

Structural Collapse 10% 10% 6% 3%

Not addressed in Tables 1 or 2 are failures that would not result in injury or fatality but 

which would result in loss of functionality. Such loss of functionality can have extreme 

impact on a community’s resiliency. For Occupancy Category I and II structures, if 10% 

of the structures affected by MCE shaking can be expected to experience collapse, a far 

greater number can be expected to experience damage short of collapse, but sufficiently 

severe that building officials would placard the structures prohibiting their further use 

until subject to further investigation or repair. Authoritative documentation as to the 

fraction of Occupancy Category structures that would be declared unsafe following MCE 

shaking does not exist. This author believes the fraction could be as high as 25%. Clearly 

the effect on a community’s resiliency of the loss of 25% of its residences and businesses 

would be significant.

A primary reason for the assignment of Occupancy Categories is not only to reduce the 

risk of structural collapse but also to enhance the probability that important and essential 

facilities would remain fit for occupancy and use following extreme events such as 

earthquakes. Commentary to the 2009 NEHRP Provisions (BSSC, 2009) suggests that 

Occupancy Category IV structures, including hospitals and emergency communication 

centers would be fit for occupancy if not use following Design shaking, having an 

intensity 2/3 that of Maximum Considered shaking, while they would be fit for actual use 

in the normal mode only following much less severe shaking. The performance 

expectation for other Occupancy Categories is less demanding, as illustrated in Figure 2, 

below, reproduced from FEMA P750. Although expressed in qualitative terms in the 

figure and in the FEMA P750 commentary, quantification of the probability of attaining
76

these performance goals, either on an event basis or annual basis has never been 

undertaken.

Figure 2 – Seismic performance expectations for buildings of various Occupancy

Categories (reproduced from FEMA P750).

References

American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2005, Minimum Design Loads for

Buildings and Other Structures, ASCE 7.05, ASCE, Reston, VA

American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2010, Minimum Design Loads for

Buildings and Other Structures, ASCE 7.10, ASCE, Reston, VA

Building Seismic Safety Council (BSSC), 2009. 2009 NEHRP Recommended Provisions 

for New Buildings and Other Structures FEMA P750, Federal Emergency Management 

Agency, Washington, D.C.

International Code Council (ICC), 2000, International Building Code, ICC, Whittier, CA 

International Code Council (ICC), 2009, International Mechanical Code, ICC, Whittier,

CA

International Code Council (ICC), 2009, International Plumbing Code, ICC, Whittier, 

CA
77

International Code Council (ICC), 2009, International Fire Code, ICC, Whittier, CA

International Code Council (ICC), 2009, International Performance Code, ICC, Whittier, 

CA

International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO), 1976, Uniform Building Code, 

National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), 2011, National Electrical Code (NFPA

70), NFPA, Quincy, MA

Structural Engineers Association of California Seismology Committee (SEAOC), 1976,

Tentative Lateral Force Requirements and Commentary, SEAOC, San Francisco, CA
78

Lifeline Resilience Standards – Approach to Instill Consistent Post

Disaster Performance

Alex Tang, P. Eng., F. ASCE

Abstract

This white paper is intended to provide a base for open discussion on the need for lifeline 

performance standards during and after a disaster that impacts a community. The 

standards establish lifeline performance expectations, which will allow rescue and 

emergency response groups to plan their activities accordingly. In this paper performance 

and resilience are used interchangeably.

Lifelines are assumed to be available in any situation by everyone. This is largely a result 

of the reliable lifeline services in normal times. In North America we are fortunate that 

normal time happens 99% of the time.

Technology advances render the lifeline systems more complex than a few decades ago. 

There is not one lifeline system that does not rely on a certain type of computer to 

function. On top of this, there is lifeline interdependence – operation of one lifeline 

depending on the operation of another lifeline. For example, a water pump in a water 

treatment plant requires electric power to operate.

I am sure that there are many approaches to develop a performance standard. The 

suggestion in this paper is one method or process to achieve the goal of lifeline 

performance standards. There will be more questions than answers through our 

discussion.

Lifeline

Lifeline is a collective word of many systems or networks that any society needs to 

function normally – social, health, law & order, economic, and subsistence.

Lifeline systems or networks are:

1. Telecommunications,

2. Electric Power,

3. Water and Wastewater,

4. Transportation,

5. Ports, and

6. Gas and Liquid Fuel.

Telecommunications includes telephone systems (landline, cellular, and satellite), 

television systems, and radio systems. Electric power includes power generation, 

transmission and distribution. Water and Wastewater includes treatment plants, and
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pipeline and pumping network. Transportation includes roads & highways, bridges, 

overpasses, railways, metro system, traffic control systems, etc. Ports are seaports and 

airports. Gas and liquid fuel are storage systems, pipelines (transmission and distribution) 

and pumping network. The equipment that these systems use to operate is housed in 

buildings – critical facilities.

All of these complicated systems and networks can be simplified as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Simplified network diagram

In order to demonstrate the complexity of a lifeline system/network, an electric power 

system is used as an example. In the electric power system the power generation plant 

will be a major node. It is connected to a transformer substation by power transmission 

lines. The substation reduces the voltage to the distribution lines, which connect to 

individual houses or buildings. There are hundreds of components in this network and 

each one has to perform within its design parameters (standard) so that the whole system 

functions properly. Then there is the control system and network that are overlay on top 

of this network to monitor all nodes and operate the electricity delivery. This control 

system and network is a telecommunication system. Part of this is privately owned and 

part of it is outsourced.

The cables that connect the nodes, either transmission or distribution cables, can be either 

routed underground or aerial via towers or utility poles.

Critical infrastructure is another term of lifeline.

Resilience and Complexity

I have no intention to define the term resilience in this paper. It is just a goal that the 

lifeline performance standards are heading towards. I am sure that there are many 

opinions on this subject and resilience will be defined when the boundary of lifeline
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performance is established. The word resilience means readily recovered from depression 

without assistance. In lifeline performance terms, we have to define how ‘readily’ is

‘readily’, and what are the intervention(s) of ‘recovered’.

Each lifeline by itself is a complex system and lifeline interdependence creates a higher 

order of complexity. As a lifeline is spatial, geological factors play another important role 

in the overall consideration of the system performance. Therefore lifelines in different 

geological settings may need to have different degree of resilience.

Lifeline Standards Proposed Processes

Within the lifeline community, there exist many standards for the components used in the 

system/network. These standards are independent of the operation of the system/network. 

For example, telephone equipment buildings have their own set of requirements.

There are also sub-system standards such as computers, pumps, control systems, etc. 

With all these are combined, analysis can be performed to identify the weakest link 

within the system. The weakest link will be the governing factor of the performance of 

the system. That is the resilience is the weakest link within the lifeline/network.

This is independent of other attributes such as system capacity and dispersed redundancy. 

The final performance standard must include these attributes.

As the system evolves (either technology changes or additional capacity) the standard 

must be changed to reflect reality. Therefore a continuous process of reviewing standards 

and a process of making modification must be put in place.

Approach to Performance Standards

This is one of many ways to achieve the lifeline performance standard. This is based on a 

number of assumptions. The first assumption is: there is not a common database of 

standards, guidelines, and practices of each lifeline at the component level. In order to 

identify ‘what is missing’ is to collect all available standards. Integrating these base 

standards will help to develop a concept of the performance standard of a particular 

lifeline. When all these are done for all lifelines, then integrate these concepts within each 

lifeline to establish a general direction of the performance standard of the lifeline. Then 

add in the interdependence and geological factors to arrive at the real resilience.

This sounds awfully simple, however the complexity of each lifeline system/network and 

their inter dependence creates many attributes that govern the final performance standard. 

In addition, system/network capacity is also part of the equation of the performance 

standard.

I am going to provide an example in my presentation at the round table based on PSTN23 

network. Hopefully this becomes the base of our discussion to explore how to deal with 

lifeline performance standard development.

23 PSTN = Public Switch Telephone Network.
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Concerns

Time and effort are the main concerns. The other concern is what and how to guarantee 

adherence to the standard when a standard is developed.

Finally, shall there be a standard for each hazard?

References

Disaster Resilience: A Guide to the Literature by Stanley W. Gilbert. NIST Special

Publication 1117
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C. Roundtable Breakout Discussion by Participants

The input from the three breakout sessions was combined and grouped by topic areas. 

Some items could be grouped under several topic headings, so the groupings are 

somewhat subjective.

1. How should hazard definitions be modified for multiple performance levels?

• Define all hazards in terms of their frequency of occurrence and magnitude for 

each performance level.

• Develop consistent hazard definitions for each performance level, with a 

consistent risk basis for buildings and infrastructure systems.

• Hazard definitions and levels should be developed by experts in hazards and 

engineering; communities need well-explained guidance and examples.

• Broaden wind event definitions to include tornadoes.

• Develop fire hazard definitions for wildland-urban interface (WUI) and building 

fires.

• Evaluate the effects of sequential hazard events and accompanying damage

(consequences), such as fire following earthquake or flood following hurricane.

• Develop separate hazard definitions and performance levels for new and existing 

structures.

2. What performance objectives, in addition to life safety and usability (operability), are 

needed to promote community resilience?

• Develop criteria for issues of adjacency of buildings (damage or failure in a 

building should not affect adjacent buildings).

• Include floor burnout without collapse for building fire hazards (assumes services 

not available to fight fire).

• Develop a methodology that will consider deterioration/aging effects on resilience 

and the increased likelihood of disruption to community functionality.

• Consider differences in performance criteria for urban vs. rural areas due to the

population and ‘built’ density.

• Balance the challenge (competing demands) between mitigation and recovery 

planning.

• Identify practices for preparing structures for the future (different) uses.

• Link resilience to sustainability and its recognized benefits.
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• Develop guidelines to help communities determine the relative importance of 

facilities to the community resilience.

• Adoption and enforcement of current codes and standards would contribute to 

improved performance as well as routine inspections during construction to 

ensure compliance.

• Design and evaluate all building systems for meeting criteria for usability

(operability) and functionality (e.g., if the structure survives and the envelope fails

– the building is nonfunctional).

• Recognize redundancy in building and lifeline systems and its role in resilience.

• Develop comprehensive design standards for buildings that address all building 

systems.

• Review approach to man-made hazards (e.g., industrial accidents) addressed with 

fail-safe systems.

• Develop performance and recovery objectives for hazard events that also meet 

customer service objectives for lifelines.

• Determine the interaction and interdependence of lifelines on a systems level

o prioritize performance levels for lifeline components for community 

resilience needs

o address co-location impacts on community resilience (e.g., a bridge 

carrying utility lines)

• Evaluate the transfer of risk from one community to another when changes are 

made to the built environment. For example, consider how flood events interact 

with engineered controls (urban development, dams and levees) and resulting 

consequences (e.g., lack of drainage increases flood frequency, constrained flow 

areas lead to more frequent overtopping).

OBSERVATIONS

• Codes could emphasize: (1) property conservation (reduced damage after hazard 

events); (2) mission (business) continuity; and (3) better tools to enforce codes.

• TISP Regional Resilience Guide provides a process for considering resilience 

planning at the regional scale.

• High end resilience standards can be developed for reference as an option by the 

codes.

• Develop options for flexibility in lifeline standards so communities can adapt 

them for their needs.

• A series of comprehensive standards needs to be developed to address each type 

of infrastructure system.

• A community process is needed that guides zoning and planning for resilience.
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• Consider recommended principles in the ASCE Guiding Principles: Leadership 

and Stewardship responsibility of the engineering community.

• Some communities will have to want to become resilient – leaders or drivers of 

the process are needed to demonstrate the benefits.

• Communities and the private sector need to be persuaded/convinced to spend 

money in advance for disasters that may be far in the future.

• Challenges and gaps are relatively small for technical issues and big for political 

issues.

• Retroactive requirements will be difficult for the community to accept.

• The as-built condition often does not match the as-designed condition.

3. What metrics and vocabulary is needed to describe building and infrastructure 

performance in terms of response and recovery?

VOCABULARY

• Definitions of successful performance levels and recovery times

• Definition of levels for state/community adoption and enforcement of most recent 

codes and standards

• Rebuilding vocabulary and metrics to measure progress of recovery

• Tend not to talk about risk. DHS risk lexicon. Need to get risk lexicon into our 

discussions. Safety factors not enough.

• Politics play a significant role in decision-making. Political leaders should set the 

definition to ensure consideration of existing work in this area and to get 

community involvement in the process.

• Need to include the word “durability” in discussions of resilience.

• Develop methods to communicate what performance levels mean to the technical 

and nontechnical communities.

• Educate technical and nontechnical communities on hazard definitions.

• Understand resilience message content vs. how it is conveyed to the affected 

groups.

• Clearly communicate hazards between code/standard bodies and policy makers.

• Include insurance industry in resilience research as they can play a significant role 

in communicating importance of resilience and have the data to inform the 

discussion.

METRICS

• Resilience ‘component’ measures for individual homes, buildings, infrastructure

• Cost-benefit or other economic measure for recovery costs for existing building 

stock
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• Guidelines for communities/regions/states to determine hazards and resilience 

performance levels for buildings and infrastructure

o New construction

o Existing construction

• Overall levels of community resilience – can be used to encourage businesses 

wanting resilience

• Develop regional analyses with loss estimation tools for all types of disasters.

• From a standards and codes perspective

o how will the ‘stovepiped’ standards and codes be integrated to a consistent

‘systems’ approach to codes and standards (how to avoid ALA problems?)

o how will changes to one standard be evaluated to avoid adverse impacts to 

other standards or overall resilience

• Ensure that any incremental improvement for resilience is consistent with the 

incremental cost.

• Tie disaster relief with requirements for community improvements for resilience

• Include social impact and costs to homes, businesses, and government for 

consequences.

OBSERVATIONS

• Resilience is an outcome of the design process.

• Has to be a reward for implementing resilience.

4a. What can be done in the short-term to improve codes and standards for buildings to 

implement concepts of resilience (in the next 3 yrs)?

VOCABULARY

• Develop definitions of multiple performance levels for resilient facilities.

• Resilience should be defined for various levels as communities and hazard events 

are not all equal. Examples of resilience levels and resilient communities should 

be developed for communication with communities.

METRICS

• Develop a way to convey resilience value for builders and communities (e.g., an

example is the Fortified program for homes by IBHS)

• Develop rigorous performance criteria for non-structural systems in buildings.

• Address the performance of the building envelope as it often fails in wind and rain 

events (e.g., to hurricane prone regions).

• Develop a building commissioning process where certain features must be present 

and/or functioning before the building is considered a resilient facility.
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• Establish a voluntary building rating system for evaluating resiliency that

addresses multiple hazards (this could be a possible basis for the resilience star 

concept).

• Establish levels of resilience star ratings, where as a minimum the facility or 

system must meet current codes and standards, such as the International Building

Codes (IBC) code requirements for buildings or AASHTO standard requirements 

for transportation systems.

• Develop a voluntary resilience rating system, such as the resilience star rating, to 

be useful for marketing facilities and buildings, similar to the LEEDS criteria in 

place today.

DATABASE

• List the performance criteria in present codes and standards for all hazards and 

construction types/systems.

• Develop a public database of loads and construction technology for all hazards 

and construction types to identify gaps in current practice within sectors and 

between sectors (e.g., build on FEMA’s Hazus data).

PERFORMANCE GOALS

• Develop an example of community performance goals for other communities to 

follow, such as the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) 

Association initiatives.

• Develop performance goals and objectives for resilient systems that could be 

published in standard commentaries (e.g., Public Welfare goal in NFPA codes).

• Address subsystem failures (e.g., sprinkler system) when considering the 

performance of building and infrastructure systems after an event.

STANDARDS

• Develop a commentary or appendix on resilience for inclusion in existing 

standards for voluntary reference.

• Encourage the adoption and enforcement of building codes and design standards, 

without amendments that make the local code less stringent than the model code.

• Consider larger load requirements to improve robustness and support reoccupancy after an event.

4b. What long term improvements are needed?

METRICS

• Develop measures of performance for resilience that can be used when upgrading 

existing buildings.
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PERFORMANCE LEVELS

• Develop more accurate procedures for analyzing structures to enable use of 

defined levels of structural performance for resilience.

STANDARDS

• Develop standards for performance of envelope and building systems that is 

consistent with structural performance levels.

• Develop standards for total building performance.

PERFORMANCE GOALS

• Establish an improved federal disaster aid program by creating two distinct 

components: humanitarian and economic. The economic assistance (rebuilding 

city hall, etc.) should not be available if reasonable efforts to mitigate the 

damages have not been taken by the community in advance. Why will anyone 

spend money on mitigation if the risk is shifted to a higher level of government?

4c. What technical basis is required to support long-term improvements?

METRICS

• Develop a methodology for considering community level cost-benefits for 

resilient features.

• Develop a technical basis for building system standards and interaction of 

building systems.

5a. What can be done in the short-term to improve codes and standards for 

infrastructure systems to implement concepts of resilience?

VOCABULARY

• Develop a document to define terms related to resilience for infrastructure 

systems.

METRICS

• Include resilience in ASCE report card on infrastructure.

DATABASE

• Identify differences between state transportation system standards and national

AASHTO standards

PERFORMANCE GOALS
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• Hold forums for interactions about resilience among lifelines professionals, public 

health, public safety, and engineers.

• Establish utility councils to identify interdependencies between infrastructure 

systems for selected cities.

STANDARDS

• Encourage adoption of current AASHTO standards by states DOTs.

5b. What long term improvements are needed?

PERFORMANCE GOALS

• Develop a system-wide, interdependency approach to all lifeline systems.

• Develop criteria for consistent performance for hazard events within segmented 

industries (e.g., power generation, transmission, distribution)

PERFORMANCE LEVELS

• Address the existing condition of infrastructure and its continuing decline.

• Address tolerated decline in infrastructure performance over time through 

performance measures and capital reinvestment approaches.

• Identify gaps and possible solutions for community resilience (recovery) from 

review of best practices used by supply chains for business continuity.

• Create environment and policies where competitors would cooperate to keep 

lifeline services available for hazard events.

• Create reliability councils for other lifeline systems, beyond electric power, to 

support establishment of resilience criteria.

STANDARDS

• Modify current standards to address systems, not just components, and hazard 

events that can cause multi-point failures.

• Develop national resilience standards for light rail transit, fuel pipelines, and other 

lifeline systems.

5c. What technical basis is required to support long-term improvements?

METRICS

• Use Presidential Policy Directive 8: National Preparedness and the revised CIKR 

criteria to help define resilience goals, system definitions, and mitigation and 

response criteria.

DATABASE
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• Develop a database of building and infrastructure systems to collect a body of 

knowledge for multiple purposes.

PERFORMANCE GOALS

• Promote the creation of resilience metrics, tools, and standards.

PERFORMANCE LEVELS

• Develop a way to link infrastructure resilience documents to address community 

resilience and infrastructure interdependence issues.

• Develop a list of technical gaps for systems that are not currently being designed 

for hazards.
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D. Standards for Disaster Resilience Workshop Participants

Co-Chairs

Chris D. Poland Degenkolb Engineers

Stephen A. Cauffman National Institute of Standards and Technology

Participants

Don Ballantyne Degenkolb Engineers

William Billotte National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Jami Blackmon Environmental Security International

Joseph Booth Stephenson Disaster Management Institute

John Bridges The National Graduate School of Quality Management

Wayne Bryden FLIR Systems

Jessica Carl American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 

Stephanie Carroll American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 

John Catlett Department of Code Administration

Stephen Cauffman National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Robert Chapman National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Bert Coursey National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Michelle Deane American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

Tamara Dickinson Office of Science and Technology Policy, EOP 

Paul Domich CIP-Consulting, Inc.

Chris Dubay National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 

Leonardo Duenas-Osorio Rice University

Elizabeth English University of Waterloo School of Architecture

Steve Ernst Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)

Gordon Gillerman National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Sandra Gogol U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

David Goldbloom-Helzner U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Pamela Greenlaw U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

James Harris JR Harris Company

Dan Howell FM Global

Tasha Johnson AASHTO

David Karmol International Code Council (ICC) 

Kristin Korte FLIR Systems

John Kulick Siemens USA 

Richard Lake ASTM International

Hai Lew National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Alison Littlepage U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
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Jennifer Marshall National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Jon Martin National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Evette Maynard-Noel U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Terri McAllister National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Nancy McNabb National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

David McWhorter Catalyst Partners

Kalpesh Patel U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Will Peart William H. Gordon Associates, Inc.

Chris Poland Degenkolb Engineers

Nancy Pomerleau U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Irmak Renda-Tanali University of Maryland University College 

James Rossberg American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

Fahim Sadek National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Woody Savage University of Nevada Las Vegas

Fran Schrotter American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 

Everett Sedgwick Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 

Peter Shebell U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Steve Skalko Portland Cement Association

Robert Stenner Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) 

Kaan Tanali Weidlinger Associates

William Taylor Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority

(WMATA)

Robert Vondrasek National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 

Randy Wagoner Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 

Erin Walsh U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 

Jefferson Welch Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute 

Heiko Werner Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) - Germany 

Marcus Williams Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute

Kevin Wong National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

Robert Zimmerman Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute
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E. Presentations for Standards for Disaster Resilience

Workshop

Workshop on Standards for Disaster Resilience for Buildings and Physical

Infrastructure Systems

November 10, 2011

Panel 1 – Introduction to Resilience of the Built Environment

• Therese McAllister, NIST: Introduction to Resilience for Buildings and

Infrastructure Systems

• Chris Poland, Degenkolb Engineers: Community Planning for Resilience –

SPUR

Panel 2 – Focus on Building Systems

• Jim Harris, JR Harris Company: Standards for Building Systems

• Dan Howell, FM Global: Insurance Perspective on Building and Infrastructure

Resilience

Panel 3 – Focus on Lifelines

• Woody Savage, University of Nevada Las Vegas: Standards for Electric Power

Systems

• Steve Ernst, FHWA: Standards for Transportation Systems

• Don Ballantyne, Degenkolb Engineers: Standards for Water and Wastewater

Systems
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F. Resilience Standards Workshop Discussion

Recommended Research Areas for Resilience

• Synergies with sustainability, green, high performance (EISA)

• Consensus on definition and scope – who is audience, what is purpose

• Support of White House OSTP/NSTC (David Applegate for Natural Hazards)

• Business Incentives – standard practices and supporting data for 

o Builders/owners/leases – only respond to what is valued 

o Protection/security/hardening

o Energy reliability

• Community planning for mitigation, robustness, and recovery (easily repaired)

with supporting standards

• Identify what is implicit in codes and standards, and gaps

• Information to inform decision making – risk management, cost effective for 

defined scope and duration

• Evaluate combinations of component failures

• Clarify use of importance factors vs PBD risk approach

• Is community measure adequate for systems that are regional (water supply or 

power) or national (communication)?

Hazards

• Cyber attacks for power

• National criteria for definitions and levels

Recovery

• Stockpile supplies/components for recovery (e.g., borrowed transmission units 

from other locations and mutual aid agreements between power companies)

• Plans for coordination of crews, equipment materials for water systems in 49/50 

states

• Measure impact of asset loss in network system (small bridge, large bridge, 

effects on business)

• Stockpile only for Risk Cat I systems?

• Shakeout Drills conducted in San Fernando Valley to exercise interoperability of 

lifelines 

http://www.firerescuemagazine.com/bonus_content/frm_great_shakeout.html

Standards development process/mechanism

• Smart Grid model

• BSSC model

• DHS Resilience Star

Building Codes based on
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• Health (water)

• Safety (conflagrations)

• Welfare (sustainability)

Documents/Orgs

• EISA

• PPD-8

• NIPP 2009

• National Security Strategy – Mar 2011

• National Disaster Recovery Framework – Sep 2011

• CIKR annual strategies

• National Earthquake Resilience NRC 2011

• Grand challenges in Earthquake Engineering Research 2011

• National Academies, Disaster Roundtable, 26 Oct 2011, Report??

• UNISDR – United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

• BOMA

• FEMA

• NAHB

• ATC 33

• ATC 58

• ASCE 41-06

• ALA

• TCLEE- lifeline interdependencies

Utilities and Networked Systems

• GIS utility locator

• Plan to bury all utilities when restoration occurs for aging water systems

Electric power

• Consider roles of nuclear power and smart grid in resilience of electric power.

• Identify potential cascading events and consequences that lead to ‘disaster’

situations.

Code/Standard Bodies

• ASHRAE – energy, HVAC

• IAPMO – plumbing

• NFPA – fire, electric

• ICC - buildings and other structures

• ASCE – buildings and other structures (8 institutes – architectural engineering, 

coasts oceans ports rivers, construction, engineering mechanics, environmental 

and water, geotech, structural, transportation)

• AWWA - water

• AASHTO – state highways and transportation

• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – fuels and power
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• North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) – reliability of bulk 

power

• Smart Grid – NIST, George Arnold http://collaborate.nist.gov/twikisggrid/pub/SmartGrid/IKBFramework/Draft_NIST_Framework_Release_2-0_10-

17-2011.pdf

Failures or Lack of Performance Data

• Pre-Engineered systems

• Building envelope

• Dock doors (large areas for wind loads)

• Roofing

• Collect damage data – standardize format, make accessible (TCLEE)

• Natural hazard insurance losses are approx. 30%

o Flood 35-40% - physical loss plus time for decontamination & cleanup

o Wind 35-40% - 80% losses in hurricane prone regions

 75% roofing

 25% walls, fenestrations

 Enclosed building become non-enclosed with damage

o Snow 10-15% - roof steps lead to drifting (add-ons to existing structures)

o Rain/drainage 10% - debris leads to ponding, roof collapse

Community Resilience

Performance goals, system dependencies, integrated hazard and performance levels

• Safe havens – community design

– Shelter & recreational

• Framework document

– Example – comparable to SPURs/Project Impact

– Process guidance & tools

– From White House - NSTC

• Temporary Housing

– One design for both ADA & non-ADA

• Determine goals/principles (DHS/public/private)

• Methodologies – consistent across sectors

• Collect other activities & materials, i.e. ALA (Get from FEMA)

•

• National Consensus Guidelines

• Spreadsheet/poster of all standards

•

Water and Wastewater

Supply, treatment, transmission, storage, distribution, collection, transmission, treatment,

outfall

• Seismic Standards for pipelines and sewer systems
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• General system evaluation for multi hazards (consistent with ALA documents)

• Community based water resiliency (local level interdependencies) (guidance –

EPA?)

• “smart grid” for water sector

• Look to other countries (Japan, Australia)

• Replacement of old systems, integration of new with old

• Community planning – replace water lines, bury power

• Mid 90s – AWWA established service goals

Electric Power

Generation, transmission, and distribution systems

• There needs to be a near-term focus on implementation of performance-oriented 

guidance based on current knowledge of hazards and vulnerabilities. 

Implementation issues such as investment priorities and confidentiality* could be 

addressed by utility-public agency partnerships. The time to get this 

implementation experience is now!

• The ALA public-private approach to identifying and developing risk reduction 

guidance was successful and cost-effective; such activities should be resumed.

• Smart grid – resilience collaboration

• Solar/Wind farms - Alternative energy power

• ASCE – wind turbines guidance

• Solar as a backup power for community resilience (more distribution of power 

supply)

Transportation

Roads, bridges, tunnels, ports, rail

• System evaluation

• Intermodal dependencies and efficiencies

• Hazards (non-traditional) into planning process – waves, security

• Inspection and maintenance (asset management)

• Part of the Supply chain

• Public private funding mechanism (creative financing)

• First line interdependency (transportation) – needs to be understood and 

communicated

• Risk management for our systems

Buildings

Architectural, structural, life safety, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, security,

communication, IT

• Standards for primary, secondary building systems

• Public/private partnerships – local/state/federal partnerships as well

• Incentive to adopt codes

• Robustness of buildings (codes are minimums)
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• Durability of building envelope to maintain themselves

• Inspection and enforcement

– Vary from location to location

• Education (re-education) - look to the past - .i.e. shutters – low cost, high impact 

solutions

• Allocate resources based

• Standardized evaluation procedures

• Provide how to go beyond code if offered and known – owners may choose to do

(incentive and costs)

• Look to – National Research Council: Increasing National Resilience to Hazards

and Disasters.... (being developed)

• FM Global has public information on costs/savings (other insurance companies)