This publication is available free of charge from: http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.GCR.14-977

NIST GCR 14-977

Disaster Resilience Workshop

April 7, 2014

David R. Mizzen

Peter J. Vickery

Applied Research Associates, Inc.

http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.GCR.14-977
This publication is available free of charge from: http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.GCR.14-977

This publication was produced as part of contract SB1341-13-CN-0084 with the National 

Institute of Standards and Technology. The contents of this publication do not 

necessarily reflect the views or policies of the National Institute of Standards and 

Technology or the US Government.
This publication is available free of charge from: http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.GCR.14-977

NIST GCR 14-977

Disaster Resilience Workshop

April 7, 2014

Prepared for

U.S. Department of Commerce

Engineering Laboratory

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Gaithersburg, MD 20899

By

David R. Mizzen

Peter J. Vickery

Applied Research Associates, Inc.

http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.GCR.14-977

June 2014

U.S. Department of Commerce 

Penny Pritzker, Secretary

National Institute of Standards and Technology 

Willie May, Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Acting Director
This publication is available free of charge from: http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.GCR.14-977
iv

Disaster Resilience Workshop

National institute of Standards and Technology

Gaithersburg, MD

April 7, 2014

Meeting Summary

1. APRIL 7, 2014 NIST DISASTER RESILIENCE WORKSHOP AGENDA.................. 1

2. OPENING SESSION (8:00-8:45 A.M.).............................................................................. 2

3. MORNING GENERAL SESSION (8:45-9:30 A.M.) ....................................................... 5

4. MORNING BREAKOUT SESSION #1: PERFORMANCE GOALS AND METRICS 

FOR COMMUNITY RESILIENCE (10:00-11:30 A.M.)................................................. 6

5. MORNING BREAKOUT SESSION #2: IMPROVING COMMUNITY RECOVERY 

FROM A DISASTER (10:00-11:30 A.M.)......................................................................... 8

6. MORNING BREAKOUT SESSION #3: INTERDEPENDENCIES AMONG 

LIFELINES AND BUILDINGS (10:00-11:30 A.M.)...................................................... 10

7. MORNING BREAKOUT SESSION #4: COMMUNITY IMPACTS OF DISASTER 

EVENTS (10:00-11:30 A.M.) ............................................................................................ 12

8. MORNING BREAKOUT SESSION #5: LESSONS LEARNED FROM PAST 

DISASTERS (10:00-11:30 A.M.)...................................................................................... 13

9. AFTERNOON GENERAL SESSION (1:00-1:45 P.M.) ................................................ 15

10. AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSION #1: BUILDINGS AND FACILITIES (1:45-

3:15 PM).............................................................................................................................. 16

11. AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSION #2: TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS (1:45-

3:15 PM).............................................................................................................................. 17

12. AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSION #3: POWER/ENERGY SYSTEMS (1:45-3:15 

PM)...................................................................................................................................... 18

13. AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSION #4: COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS (1:45-

3:15 PM).............................................................................................................................. 19

14. AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSION #5: WATER AND WASTEWATER 

SYSTEMS (1:45-3:15 PM)................................................................................................ 20
v
1

1. April 7, 2014 NIST Disaster Resilience Workshop Agenda

The following is an agenda for the workshop that took place on April 7, 2014 at the National 

Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg Campus:

7:15-8:00 Arrival, Continental Breakfast

8:00 – 8:45 Opening Session

Welcome, NIST Disaster Resilience Program 

8:45 – 9:30 General Session

Featured Speaker: Warren Edwards, Executive Director, Community and 

Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI), Oak Ridge, TN

“What Is Community Resilience and Why Is It Difficult to Measure?”

9:30 – 10:00 Break and Networking

10:00 – 11:30 Morning Breakout Sessions 

11:30-12:00 Summary of Morning Breakout Sessions

12:00 – 1:00 Lunch Break

1:00 – 1:45 General Session

Featured Speaker: Chris Poland, Senior Principal, Degenkolb Engineers, San 

Francisco, CA

SPUR Disaster Planning Program’s Resilient City Initiative

“Creating Disaster-Resilient Communities” 

1:45 – 3:15 Afternoon Breakout Sessions 

3:15 – 3:45 Break and Networking

3:45-4:15 Summary of afternoon breakout sessions

4:15 – 5:00 General Session – Wrap Up

Review of the Day – Path Forward

How to Participate in Future Meetings/Sessions
2

2. Opening Session (8:00-8:45 a.m.)

The opening session included remarks from Dr. Patrick Gallagher, Director of the National 

Institute of Standards and Technology and Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and 

Technology. Here is a summary of his remarks:

In a country that lives with continuous hazards, it’s imperative that we be ready to face 

those hazards for national and economic security. Unfortunately it often takes tragedy 

(Katrina, Joplin, Sandy) to make meaningful change. We, as a nation, are vulnerable to 

natural disasters. In 2011, there were 14 weather or climate-related events that each 

exceeded $1 billion in damage and all together totaled $55 billion in damages. Sandy 

alone caused more than $65 billion in damage in 2012. This highlights the need to make 

communities more resilient to the effects of climate change as well as from natural and 

technological hazards. 

Why has NIST been asked to lead this process to develop the framework and what is the 

framework? NIST has a history of activities like this. In the last few years, NIST has 

helped to assemble and encourage public-private collaboration in several emerging 

technology areas. NIST has a long history as a convener of technology experts in many 

different fields to help solve tough national challenges. This has been done for cloud 

computing, cyber security, Smart Grid interoperability, and a project on interoperability 

of cyber-physical systems currently underway. What is a framework? An operational 

framework definition is: Whatever it takes to get action across a community, including 

reference architecture, structures, supporting implementation guidelines, definitions, etc.

In the task we’re facing today, why did we choose the framework approach? In any 

community, we’re talking about systems of systems. In disaster resilience of a 

community, we’re talking about a system that is made up of people, government, 

business, industry, as well as buildings and infrastructure lifelines. All of these need to 

function together and recover after an event. Whenever we find ourselves talking about

complex systems, such as those present in a community, we have found the framework 

approach to be effective. 

This workshop is the kickoff for the Disaster Resilience Framework. In order to be 

effective, this has to be your work. The concepts that we will identify in the framework

are too dynamic to make a shelf document – it will be a living document. Disaster 

resilience will vary nationally, but we believe there is common ground that can be 

applied to every community.

This is the first of several meetings and framework work products. It should evolve into a 

self-governing process. We are working on a draft, and we are building a process that 
3

will keep going. Communities across the nation may have different challenges and best 

practices and a national guideline will be useful. International approaches can also be 

helpful. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Gallagher’s remarks were followed by remarks from Dr. Howard Harary, the NIST 

Engineering Laboratory Director. Here is a summary of Dr. Harary’s remarks:

NIST has been involved in disasters and building safety since it was founded in 1901. 

Following the Baltimore Fire of 1904, where variations of fire hose couplings prevented 

other communities from helping with suppression, the importance of national standards 

for firefighting technologies and many other systems came to light. NIST provides 

research, support, and investigations to help advance standards and codes to enhance 

building performance and safety. 

NIST research includes: 

• Reducing the collapse risk of buildings.

• Reducing earthquake and fire hazards.

• Understanding wind hazards.

• Improving standards and developing a performance based approach. 

Statutory responsibilities include the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program 

(NEHRP), the National Construction Safety Team Act (NCST), and the National 

Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). The World Trade Center Investigation 

and the Joplin Tornado Study are examples of investigations carried out under the NCST 

Act. Work conducted under NEHRP and NCST have led to significant improvements in 

building performance through increased understanding of how structures respond to 

hazards, as well as new codes and standards provisions based on this work. 

Disaster resilience requires us to go further and consider how buildings and infrastructure 

can continue to perform their functions during and after a disaster. The role of these 

systems is crucial to providing shelter, basic services, financial and economic means, and 

the other attributes of modern life. Buildings and infrastructure lifelines within 

communities need to resist hazards and must regain function within a reasonable time. 

Otherwise, people move away, businesses leave, and economic recovery is significantly 

impacted. Disaster resilience, with a focus on community-based disaster resilience, is 

critical to a national solution.

We need to think about buildings and lifelines as a connected system of systems, as 

multidimensional systems. The framework will specifically focus on the role of building 

and infrastructure systems, existing codes and standards, and the gaps that must be 

addressed to enhance resilience. We will publish a draft framework for public comment 

in April 2015. The Framework will be updated on a regular basis as a living document.
4

Finally, Mr. Stephen Cauffman, the Lead for the Disaster Resilience Program, gave a 

presentation summarizing the goals and development plan for the Disaster Resilience 

Framework. The slides from Mr. Cauffman’s presentation can be found on the website where the 

workshop documents are archived at 

http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/resilience/workshop_documents.cfm or can be 

accessed directly from the following link:

http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/resilience/upload/Cauffman_April-7-DisasterResilience-Workshop-final.pdf
5

3. Morning General Session (8:45-9:30 a.m.)

The featured speaker for the morning general session was Warren Edwards, the Executive 

Director of the Community Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI) in Oak Ridge, TN. The slides 

from Mr. Edward’s presentation, entitled “What is Community Resilience and Why is it Difficult 

to Measure?” are stored on the website where the workshop documents are archived at 

http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/resilience/workshop_documents.cfm or can be 

accessed directly from the following link:

http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/resilience/upload/NIST-April-7-2014.pdf
6

4. Morning Breakout Session #1: Performance Goals and Metrics for 

Community Resilience (10:00-11:30 a.m.)

For the built environment, there was a focus on mitigation, performance/functionality, and 

recovery.

For a nominal community with homes, schools, businesses, manufacturing, healthcare, public 

safety services, power, communications, roads and bridges, and water and wastewater systems, 

the following questions were asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What are community and social needs during and after a disaster event?

The group worked to summarize and prioritize the following needs: 

 Before the disaster:

o Connectedness of neighborhood/family – getting the community to understand 

that it needs to be tied together (through training).

o Trustworthy multi-level leadership.

o Recovery planning for disasters. 

 During the disaster:

o Communicate information.

o Stability (order/government).

o Life safety survival needs – healthcare and life safety.

 After a disaster:

o Jobs.

o Schools.

o Meet social needs.

o Hope for full recovery to keep community together.

Question 2: Based on the social needs, what are desirable community performance goals 

for the built environment? 

A lively discussion was held within the group during this session, which was summarized with 

the following points:

 The time frame for restoration needs to be specific, tied to infrastructure, and change 

based on community.

 Performance goals differ by region – rural versus urban, reflect cultural fabric of a 

community.

 The value of the system is important (i.e., how much are you willing to pay for 

resilience?).

 It is important to organize resources at the community level.
7

The community should be involved in scenario development (i.e., the probability of occurrence, 

how concerned, what would be impacted?) and an assessment of existing capability for different 

scenarios. We need to focus on creating additional capability/capacity required for full recovery.
8

5. Morning Breakout Session #2: Improving Community Recovery from a 

Disaster (10:00-11:30 a.m.)

Recovery is an extremely important part of resilience. Damage to a community during a hazard 

event is always a possibility, though the level of damage may vary. The following questions 

were asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What types of emergency plans are needed for a disaster event?

The group discussed emergency plans and developed the following main points:

 Recovery and hazard mitigation planning needs work. Hazard mitigation plans should be 

updated quite a bit.

 Communication during planning and design needs to be improved.

 Emergency plans need to incorporate more science.

 Local community must be included in planning and crisis management.

 Need to think about all appropriate types of disasters, both short and long term (e.g., 

drought is an example of a much different type of disaster).

 Social needs, age groups, language barriers, etc. all need to be accounted for in planning, 

which will vary by region and community.

Question 2: What type of recovery plans are needed for a disaster event?

The group discussed recovery plans and summarized the needs as follows:

 Each community needs to complete a self-assessment to understand where its weaknesses 

are and where improvements can be made (i.e., define their vulnerabilities).

 The community should define the sequence of events in order to have an organized 

recovery after a disaster event. 

 Plans developed must be concise and easily understood by the community. 

 Need to clearly define recovery generated from resilience. Recovery is ultimately the 

end-product of a community’s resilience. 

Question 3: What are obstacles to rapid recovery of buildings and lifelines in communities?

The group discussed and summarized the obstacles to rapid recovery as follows:

 Lack of prioritization by communities.

 Plan implementation, money, and political will.

 Lack of accurate inventory. There is a known capacity before an incident, but what 

about afterwards?

 Demographics (e.g., some areas of the U.S. have literacy rates akin to developing 

countries).
9

 Lack of communication about plans in place, what is expected of people, resources 

available to people, and lack of training.
10

6. Morning Breakout Session #3: Interdependencies among Lifelines and 

Buildings (10:00-11:30 a.m.)

Buildings and other structures are not functional without lifelines, and recovery of one type of 

lifeline may be hampered if other lifelines are damaged. The following questions were asked and 

discussed by the group:

Question 1: How do building and facility functions depend on lifelines? 

The group discussed how building and facility function depend on lifelines. The key points were 

summarized as follows:

 First, the framework needs to define lifelines because international reports have different 

definitions and it is better to make sure the readers understand the terminology correctly. 

The domestic definition includes water, power, communication, transportation, and 

access to health facilities.

 The broad way to look at lifelines is to look at examples from each sector (e.g., hospitals, 

residential, government, etc.) and determine what is needed to supply the required 

services. For example, a hospital needs functionality, including support services:

pharmacy, laundry, food, and sanitation. Another example from Sandy is that there was 

no fuel at the pumps. Therefore, transportation was restricted and civilians could not get 

to hospitals.

 The critical factors were agreed to be water and power because you cannot occupy a 

home, school, etc. without it. Fuel can also be a big concern if everyone is relying on 

generators for power.

 Communication is important as it improves the speed of recovery for power and water. 

 The level of service is an important consideration. After a disaster event, the lifelines do 

not need to be 100% operational as there should be time allowed to recover all loss of 

functionality. However, minimum levels of service should be established quickly so that 

buildings and facilities are functional.

Question 2: What lifelines do we want to prioritize?

Once the group discussed how buildings and facilities depended on lifelines, the group discussed 

prioritization of the lifelines:

 Prioritization will vary by region and community.

 Local customs and practices will have to be taken into account for prioritization.

 All institutions are dependent on lifelines; however, the question is to what degree the 

building/facility relies on each lifeline.
11

 Must consider what role each facility plays in the community. Not every building/facility 

needs to be functional immediately after a disaster event. Therefore, need to identify 

critical facilities and establish priorities for bringing buildings/facilities back online.

 Fragility and redundancy of lifelines need to be addressed.
12

7. Morning Breakout Session #4: Community Impacts of Disaster Events

(10:00-11:30 a.m.)

Damage to the built environment during natural hazard events can have long-lasting impacts. 

Significant or cascading damage effects can greatly increase the recovery time and further add to 

the community impacts. The following questions were asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What is the best way to define resilience? Does resilience refer to a disaster, a 

disruption or both? 

The following key discussion points were summarized by the group:

 Resilience does not necessarily have to do with just extreme events, but also has to do 

with a major disruption.

 Cascading failures must be considered where one issue or multiple smaller issues can 

lead to a larger disaster.

 Events can happen immediately (over a short duration) or over time (e.g., earthquakes 

have a short duration without warning, whereas hurricanes last hours to days and 

communities typically have days to prepare for the storm).

 Public needs to have reasonable expectations.

The following questions were also raised by the group that should be considered in developing 

the resilience framework:

 What do we do about the existing, nonconforming construction as it pertains to 

resiliency?

 Can the marketplace force the raising of the level of performance required by standards?

 How do we manage perceived risk versus actual risk?

 System redundancy can have a mitigating effect, but what is the “sweet spot” of cost 

versus benefit?

 How often do we check if the redundancy of a system works?

o How do we verify redundancy? 

o How do we verify consistency?
13

8. Morning Breakout Session #5: Lessons Learned from Past Disasters 

(10:00-11:30 a.m.)

Many best practices or changes to codes and standards are based on lessons learned during past 

disaster events. Lessons at the community level need to be identified. The following questions 

were asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What was the disaster? What happened? What improvements could/have been 

made?

A number of past disasters were discussed as well as their lessons learned during this breakout 

session. The following lists some of the disasters discussed and main lessons learned from them:

 World Trade Center – 9/11

o Lessons Learned: Spread infrastructure out to limit impacts and have built-in 

redundancy, so as to avoid a situation where single point failures shut down an 

entire system (e.g., communications).

 Hurricane Katrina and Super-storm Sandy

o Lessons Learned: Elevating backup equipment has been a recommendation for

over 15 years. Changing the codes and standards is good, but incentive/drive 

needed to make changes is missing.

o Need a decision-making system to evaluate how to decide to spend money to get 

the best combination of results (mitigation versus maintenance cost after storm).

 Moore, OK tornadoes 

o Moore, OK has been hit three times by tornadoes. Result is that they developed a 

local residential building code where the wind design speed is 135 mph instead of 

90 mph, per ASCE 7.

Question 2: What improvements could/have been made to emergency planning, 

constructed systems, and recovery plans?

The key improvements were summarized by the group as follows:

 Code incentives:

o Build to higher standards.

o Consider as-built versus as-designed.

o Consider existing versus new construction.

o Prevent additional damage seen in past disasters.

 Recovery plans:

o Use lessons learned.

o Educate people.

o Evacuation planning.
14

o Models of other disasters.

 Motivation on a local/personal level:

o Personal connections.

o Educating the public.

o Relationship/trust building.

o Risk construction. Why build here?

 Evaluation process/standards:

o System/decision-making process to rebuild.

o Evaluate performance.

 National level support:

o Funding and policy changes.

o Include resilience requirements.
15

9. Afternoon General Session (1:00-1:45 p.m.)

The featured speaker for the afternoon general session was Chris Poland, the former Chairman of 

Degenkolb Engineers and Co-Chair of the SPUR Disaster Planning Program’s Resilient City 

Initiative. The slides from Mr. Poland’s presentation, entitled “Creating Disaster-Resilient 

Communities” are stored on the website where the workshop documents are archived at 

http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/resilience/workshop_documents.cfm or can be 

accessed directly from the following link:

http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/resilience/upload/SF-Case-Study-in-Resilience.pdf
16

10. Afternoon Breakout Session #1: Buildings and Facilities (1:45-3:15 pm)

The current codes/standards are considered to be the minimum requirements and primarily 

address life safety. Community resilience also addresses minimizing loss of functionality,

recovery time, and costs. For homes, businesses, critical facilities, manufacturing, etc., the 

following question was asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What issues affect resilience that need to be addressed?

The group discussed the issues affecting the resilience of buildings and facilities at length. The 

following are some of the main points that resulted from the discussion:

 Critical facilities need to look at the supply chain related to that facility.

 Since disasters are generally local, the solutions need to be local (i.e., defined and 

planned out at the community level).

 A broad framework would be very useful to support resiliency. 

 Geography and demographics will play an important role in community planning and 

implementation of the framework at the local levels.

 Research is required to understand what people are already doing with regards to making 

improvements in resilience.

 A financial framework or financial element of the framework is needed to help develop 

incentives for resiliency so that communities are more interested in making their 

buildings and lifelines more resilient.

 Some form of definition needs to exist in order to communicate what resilience is and 

how to accomplish it (e.g., something similar to the LEED program with a tiered 

approach may be viable). LEED started small and focused and then grew to encompass 

more types of structures.

 For wind events, what your neighbor does is very important because wind-borne debris,

collapse, etc. can affect your exposure to risk (i.e., what the community does impacts the 

individual and what the individual does impacts others in the community).
17

11. Afternoon Breakout Session #2: Transportation Systems (1:45-3:15 pm)

The current codes/standards are considered to be the minimum requirements and primarily 

address life safety. Community resilience also addresses minimizing loss of functionality,

recovery time, and costs. For roads, bridges, airports, ports, railroads, etc., the following question 

was asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What issues affect resilience that need to be addressed?

The group discussed the issues affecting resilience that need to be addressed for transportation in 

detail, which include:

 Coastal flooding.

 Sea level rise.

 Weather.

 Lack of a detailed inventory of what is contained within the community.

 Debris removal (i.e., where do we put the debris? Where do we stage the repair 

materials?).

 Need to break-up transportation resiliency problems into parts: evacuation, soundness of 

infrastructure, nodes.

Roadblocks to implementing resiliency plans were also discussed and it was agreed that these 

included:

 Cost.

 Maintenance.

Other considerations regarding transportation systems included:

 The current transportation system is old and needs to be strengthened via replacement 

and upgrading of materials.

 Need to consider transportation systems as networks (i.e., need to think about the flow of 

the system, not just individual pieces).
18

12. Afternoon Breakout Session #3: Power/Energy Systems (1:45-3:15 pm)

The current codes/standards are considered to be the minimum requirements and primarily 

address life safety. Community resilience also addresses minimizing loss of functionality,

recovery time, and costs. For generation, transmission, and distribution facilities, the following 

questions were asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What issues affect resilience that need to be addressed?

The group discussed the issues affecting resilience of the power/energy system, and identified 

the following main points:

 Utilities and state regulators would benefit from identifying areas within the electrical 

transmission/distribution system that are the weakest and cause the most power outages.

 Since the power system is changing, we need to look forward to the next 10-15 years,

coupled with the idea that this is not governed by communities – the utilities and state 

regulators are governing. 

 Biggest weaknesses are in the distribution system, which have little redundancy. 

Transmission systems also have vulnerabilities, but have a lot of redundancy to offset the 

vulnerabilities. 

Question 2: What are the inter-dependencies with other buildings or lifeline systems that 

need to be considered?

The group identified the following inter-dependencies of other lifelines with power/energy 

systems:

 Need communication and transportation for any response to resolve power failures.

 Putting IT equipment into electric infrastructure has increased interdependency between 

communications and power sectors. Redundancy of both of these systems is needed to 

avoid failures.

 Communications drive the rest of the utilities. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, power and 

water utilities were denied access to their own assets to begin the recovery process, which 

goes back to communication.
19

13. Afternoon Breakout Session #4: Communication Systems (1:45-3:15 pm)

The current codes/standards are considered to be the minimum requirements and primarily 

address life safety. Community resilience also addresses minimizing loss of functionality,

recovery time, and costs. For cellular, landline, and IT facilities, the following questions were 

asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What issues affect resilience that need to be addressed?

The group identified the following resilience issues as top priorities:

 Strength of communications systems in a multi-dimensional environment.

 Asset management (i.e., exercising, testing, training, etc.).

 Shift in method/mode of communication based on technology (i.e., look forward, not 

backward in planning process).

 Ensure that there is a Plan B, C, etc. in case the plan (e.g., response/recovery) does not 

work as intended.

 Need to consider time frame, hazard and expected importance in decision-making for 

resilience improvements and recovery and response planning.

Question 2: What are the inter-dependencies with other buildings or lifeline systems that 

need to be considered?

The group discussed interdependencies of other lifelines with communications systems and 

summarized the discussion as follows:

 Communications systems are dependent on power.

 Other lifelines (including buildings, transportation, water, law enforcement, security, etc.) 

are dependent on communication. 

 Co-dependence was also discussed. For example, security and communications may have 

to be recovered simultaneously as security personnel want to be able to communicate 

with each other to secure an area, but communications personnel want the area to be 

secured before they enter to work.

 Financial aspects, prioritization and user dependence must also be considered.
20

14. Afternoon Breakout Session #5: Water and Wastewater Systems (1:45-

3:15 pm)

The current codes/standards are considered to be the minimum requirements and primarily 

address life safety. Community resilience also addresses minimizing loss of functionality,

recovery time, and costs. For water and wastewater treatment facilities and pipelines, the 

following questions were asked and discussed by the group:

Question 1: What issues affect resilience that need to be addressed?

The group identified the following resilience issues for water and wastewater systems:

 Lack of redundancy.

 Prohibitive cost retrofitting.

 Plant ownership, investment capability, and willingness.

 Climate impacts (e.g., droughts, floods, sea level rise).

 Lack of primary and back-up emergency power for pumps.

 Politics and jurisdiction.

 Personnel for recovery.

 Using green infrastructure to build resilience.

 Lack of standards for pipeline design retrofit.

Question 2: What are the inter-dependencies with other buildings or lifeline systems that 

need to be considered?

Water and wastewater systems are a part of a complex overall system that must be evaluated as a 

whole to make improvements in resilience. The group discussed inter-dependency with other 

systems regarding the following:

 Inter-dependency with buildings. 

o Buildings are designed (typically) for 50 years, whereas infrastructure/lifelines 

are expected to have a longer service life. Communities should consider how to 

resolve the differences in their planned service periods.

o Many buildings have built-in fire protection systems. In the event of a disaster, if 

there is no water, the suppression system will likely be non-functioning.

 Inter-dependency with transportation.

o Employees need to get to the plant and need to mobilize personnel and supplies

to repair water and sewer mains. 

 Inter-dependency with communications systems. 

o Utility companies rely on cell phone communications to dispatch personnel. 

 Inter-jurisdictional water supply. 

o Downstream jurisdictions will be impacted if the feeding jurisdiction is affected.
21

Question 3: What are the intra-dependencies that need to be considered?

The group also discussed intra-dependencies within the water and wastewater system, which 

include:

 Facility versus distribution systems.

 Pumps offsite, booster systems, gravity only systems, and valves.

 Hundreds of miles of pipes resulting in a large area of potential problems to maintain and 

fix.

 Lab capability. If there is a failure, the community needs to know if the water is safe.