Overview of Disaster Resilience 

Changes, Framework, and 

Community Resilience Center of 

Excellence

Jason D. Averill

Acting Chief, Materials and Structural Systems Division

October 7, 2014
Outline

• Organizational Changes to Strengthen D&FSP

• Progress on Disaster Resilience Framework 

• Resilience Fellows Program

• Community Resilience Center of Excellence

• Summary

• Discussion
Reminder: Statutory Authorities

– National Construction Safety Team (NCST)

– National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP)

– National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP)

– NIST Organic Act Authorities for Building Failure and Fire 

Studies
Community 

Resilience 

Framework

Community Resilience 

Guidelines

Flood Fire 

Research NEHRP NWIRP

Built Environment, Materials Research

Community Resilience

Social Needs, Policy

Engineering / Design

Loads, Probabilities

Disaster and Failure Studies

Data Collection and Validation

Hazards
Organizational Changes

Materials and Structural Systems Division

• Create the Community Resilience Group within the Materials 

and Structural Systems Division

• Relocate the Disaster and Failure Studies Program (D&FSP) 

into the Community Resilience Group
Organizational Overview: FY14

Materials and Structural Systems Division

Structures 

Group

Inorganic 

Materials 

Group

National 

Earthquake 

Hazards 

Reduction 

Program

Polymeric 

Materials 

Group

NWIRP D&FSP
Organizational Changes: FY15

Materials and Structural Systems Division

Structures Group

Inorganic 

Materials Group

National 

Earthquake 

Hazards Reduction 

Program

Polymeric 

Materials Group

Community 

Resilience Group

NWIRP

D&FSP
Benefits of Realignment

• Brings Community Resilience work together into a single group 

structure.

• Formalizes the move beyond a focus on life safety and into function 

as a driving consideration.

• Programmatic and investigative objectives within same 

management structure enhances alignment for staff, particularly for 

future growth of D&FS program.

• Resilience Program requires data to establish the technical basis, 

inputs, and validation for modeling and D&FS is a significant 

mechanism, along with the Resilience COE.
Progress Report: Disaster Resilience 

Framework and Standards Panel

• Disaster Resilience Standards Panel will be formed to adopt 

and advance:

– Disaster Resilience Framework

– Disaster Resilience Guidelines
What is a “Framework”?

• Conceptual structure

• Educational tool

• Identifies mature standards 

• Recommends best practices

* Not a standard

10
Stakeholder Engagement is Critical

– Codes and standards 

organizations

– State, local, and regional 

officials

– Insurance/re-insurance 

industry

– Architects

– Engineers

– Utility operators

– Urban planners

– Industry

– Emergency managers

– Relief organizations

– Regulators

– Academia

Stakeholders include, but are not limited to:
Federal Stakeholders

• Federal stakeholders include, but are not limited to:

– Executive Office of the President (NSS, OSTP, NSTC)

– Department of Homeland Security

– Department of Commerce

– Department of Defense

– Environmental Protection Agency

– U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

– Department of Energy

– Department of Health and Human Services

– Department of Housing and Urban Development

– Department of Transportation 

– U.S. Geological Survey

– National Science Foundation
Disaster Resilience Framework 1.0

• The Disaster Resilience Framework focuses on the role that 

buildings and infrastructure systems play in ensuring 

community resilience.

• The Framework will:

– Establish types of performance goals and ways to express 

them

– Identify existing standards, codes, and best practices that 

address resilience

– Identify gaps that must be addressed to achieve resilience

– Capture regional differences in perspectives on resilience

• The Disaster Resilience Framework will be informed through a 

series of stakeholder workshops.
Framework Development Process

July 2014 

Workshop

• 25% Draft

October 2014 

Workshop

• 50% Draft

January 2015 

Workshop

• 75% Draft

April 2015 

Workshop

• Draft for 

Public Comment

Community 

Resilience 

Framework 

Version 1.0

April 2014

Kick-Off Meeting http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/resilience/disresworkshp.cfm
Framework Chapters – 50% Draft

(Overview Chapters)

• Ch. 1: Introduction and Scope

– Alignment with Other Programs

• Ch. 2: The Community

– Social Vulnerabilities, Social Needs

– Economic Development and Emergency Planning

• Ch. 3: Overview of Built Environment

– Performance Goals, Hazard Events, Risk Equivalency

– Mitigation Strategies

• Ch. 4: Sectors, Interdependencies, and Cascading Effects

– Recovery Sequencing
Framework Chapters – 50%

(Sector Chapters)

• Ch. 5: Building Sector

– Goals

– Systems (Schools, Healthcare, Governance...)

– Regulatory Environment, including Codes and Standards

– Tools and Strategies

• Ch. 6: Transportation

• Ch. 7: Energy

• Ch. 8: Communications and Information

• Ch. 9: Water and Wastewater Typical
Framework Chapters – 50%

(Summary Chapters)

• Ch. 10: Existing Tools and Metrics

– Community

– Sector-specific

• Ch. 11: Priority Action Plans and Research Needs
Disaster Resilience Standards Panel (DRSP)

• The DRSP will represent the broad interests of the 

stakeholder community.

• The DRSP will be: 

– open to all interested participants

– a self-governing entity

• The DRSP will lead development of:

– Disaster Resilience Framework 2.0

– Model Resilience Guidelines

© gmg9130- Fotolia.com
Disaster Resilience Standards Panel (DRSP)

• Charter for DRSP being developed during breakout groups at 

the quarterly workshops

– July 2014 - Focus on mission and vision

– October 2014 – Organizational requirements to best fulfill 

mission and vision

– January 2015 – Draft DRSP charter available for public 

comment

– April 2015 – Formal establishment of the DRSP and review 

of Draft Resilience Framework

– July 2015 – Adoption of Resilience Framework by DRSP
Community Resilience Fellows

• Two-year NIST funding provided through NIST Strategic and 

Emerging Research Initiatives (SERI*) program

– Expertise in areas not traditionally strengths at NIST 

– Resilience Fellows Program will provide in-depth engagement to 

support development of the Resilience Framework

– One to six months of effort each over the next year, including 

orientation period at NIST

* SERI is 1 to 3 yr term funding from the NIST annual appropriation for 

specific projects to jump-start efforts in selected new proposed 

initiative areas
Community Resilience Fellows

Expert Expertise

Donald Ballantyne Water Infrastructure

Joseph Englot Transportation Infrastructure

Erich Gunther Electrical Power Infrastructure

Stuart McCafferty Electrical Power Infrastructure

Kevin Morley Water Infrastructure

Chris Poland Community Resilience

Liesel Ritchie Sociology of Disasters

Jay Wilson Emergency Planning and Response

Ted Zoli Transportation Infrastructure
NIST Centers of Excellence

The NIST Centers of Excellence will:

– Enable collaborations between NIST and Leading Research 

Institutes in areas of emerging technology important for 

NIST.

– Provide new opportunities for training in measurement 

science.

– Enhance technical innovation through early alignment of 

measurement science with emerging and innovative new 

fields of research.
Community Resilience CoE Overview

• Funding: $4 million per year for five years, with possibility for 

an additional five year award.

• Application Process: Single application. No pre-application is 

required.

• Cost Share: Cost sharing is not required.
Community Resilience CoE

• NIST is initiating research to develop a systems-based 

modeling environment for evaluating the impacts of loss of 

function in the built environment and the consequential 

effects on community response and recovery. 

• The envisioned computational modeling environment will be 

a research tool that will establish a scientific basis for 

understanding resilience at a community level. 

• The long-term objective is to provide decision-makers and 

professionals with methods and tools to support costeffective infrastructure designs and investments that make 

our communities more resilient
Community Resilience CoE

By combining NIST’s expertise with performance-based 

studies of structures, community resilience, and disaster 

and failure studies with the Community Resilience Center of 

Excellence, the next level of science-based modeling and 

desired performance levels can be achieved to enhance 

community resilience through the following research areas: 

1. Computational Modeling Environment for Community 

Resilience

2. Data Management Tools for Community Resilience 

Systems

3. Resilience Field Studies 
Community Resilience CoE -

Computational Modeling

• The COE will work towards an integrated, multi-scale, 

computational modeling environment to accelerate 

development of systems-level models to enable new 

standards and tools for enhancing Community Resilience

• The COE scope includes buildings and other structures, energy 

systems, transportation systems, communication and 

information systems, and water and wastewater systems.

• Sensitivity studies will examine the effect of parameters, such 

as event sequence, interdependencies, time, or cost, on the 

outcomes and community resilience.
Community Resilience CoE -

Computational Modeling

• The modeling tools will support evaluation of the potential 

impact of disasters to buildings and infrastructure systems for: 

• Building and infrastructure interdependencies and 

cascading effects of failures among infrastructure systems 

and buildings;

• Decision making for planning, risk mitigation, response, and 

recovery with specific consideration of corresponding 

infrastructure system performance; and

• Metrics that quantify the state and improvement of 

community resilience with regard to the built environment 

and societal needs.
Community Resilience CoE -

Data Management Tools

• The COE will foster the development of data architectures and 

data management tools to enable resilience planning for 

emergency and decision-making officials, code and standards 

professionals, engineering design experts, and researchers.

• The data management tools must include:

– Development of standardized data ontology, format, and 

other informatics characteristics to enable the collection, 

storage, and data analysis appropriate for a spectrum of 

hazard types and resilience infrastructure data.

– Development of a resilience data architecture that will 

accommodate system-level computational models with 

data for model input and validation. 
Community Resilience CoE -

Resilience Field Studies

• The Resilience CoE will conduct studies to validate resilience 

data architectures, data management tools, and models for a 

variety of hazard events including:

– Tornado, hurricane, earthquake, flood, Wildland-Urban 

Interface (WUI)

– Effects of climate change

– Effects of aging infrastructure

• These field studies will be an opportunity to exercise new data 

formats and collection methods. 
Community Resilience CoE Timeline

• Application period closed September 12, 2014

• Administrative and technical review during 

September and October 2014

• Award decision anticipated in December 2014
Center of 

Excellence:

Computational 

Modeling

Center of 

Excellence:

Data 

Management

Center of 

Excellence:

Field Studies

Disaster 

Resilience 

Fellows
Summary

• Issue: Statutory programs, particularly the Disaster and Failure 

Studies Program, have significant expectations associated 

with the authorities.

• Solutions: 

– Provide depth to deployment management by embedding 

the D&FS Program with Community Resilience Group.

– Provide experience and resources to deployments through 

the Community Resilience CoE’s annual field data 

collections.
Summary, cont’d

• Issue: Need to transition from a life safety objective to a view 

that the built environment serves a function and delivers on 

social needs.

• Solutions:

– Community Resilience Group will be the source for 

science-based tools to measure resilience and sound 

decisions to prioritize, plan, and implement actions to 

achieve community needs .

– Through the DRSP, a framework and guidelines will provide 

path for implementation by local communities.

– Resilience Fellows will bridge the gap in expertise for 

critical infrastructure elements not presently at NIST.
Summary, cont’d

• Issue: Critical data to support development of science-based 

Community Resilience models and methods either does not 

exist or exists within ‘sector silos.’

• Solutions:

– Community Resilience CoE’s annual field deployment will 

develop new data, data collection methods, and data 

management practices.

– Resilience Fellows representing critical sectors bring 

expertise to the Framework; the DRSP will provide forum 

to begin sharing data across silos.
Contact Info:

Jason D. Averill, Acting Chief

Materials and Structural Systems Division

averill@nist.gov

Links of Interest:

Materials and Structural Systems Division: 

http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/index.cfm

Disaster Resilient Buildings Goal: 

http://www.nist.gov/el/disresgoal.cfm

Disaster and Failure Studies Program: 

http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/index.cfm

Community Resilience Program at NIST: 

http://www.nist.gov/el/building_materials/resilience/index.cfm