Community Resilience Program

Objective - 

• By 2028, deliver novel resilience planning and analysis methods and tools to support informed decision making by communities of all sizes.
• By 2028, implement multifaceted outreach, collaboration, and engagement to ensure the effective dissemination of community resilience guidance documents, methods, and tools.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? 

In 2005, the Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction (NSTC, 2005) identified four key characteristics of resilient communities:

• Relevant hazards are recognized and understood.
• Communities at risk know when a hazard event is imminent.
• Individuals at risk are safe from hazards in their homes and places of work.
• Disaster-resilient communities experience minimum disruption to life and economy after a hazard event has passed.

Despite progress in guidance and tools for community resilience since then, there is continued recognition that hazard events affect communities in terms of significant direct and indirect costs due to lives lost, disruption of commerce and financial networks, properties destroyed, emergency response, and recovery of services and functions (NRC 2012).

Hazards are a continuing and significant threat to communities.  Major catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina (2005), Hurricane Sandy (2012), Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (2017) and future earthquakes like the ones that struck Tohoku and Kobe, Japan in 2011 and 1995, respectively, can cause mega-losses ($80B-$300B) in a single event.  From 2017 to 2022, there were 89 weather/climate disaster events, each with losses exceeding $1 billion in the US (NOAA 2022). These years represent four of the top 5 years with the greatest number of weather/climate disaster events exceeding $1 billion, since 1980 (NOAA 2022). The warmest decade on record was 2011–2020, and 2020 marked five straight years of exceptionally warm weather (WMO 2021).  

The risk for substantial damage and losses across large regions of the nation is substantially greater now than ever before due to urban development and population growth in parts of the country that are susceptible to natural hazards (e.g., along coastlines, in the wildland-urban interface, and in earthquake-prone regions). Additionally, the nation’s physical infrastructure is aging, diminishing its capacity to resist hazards and exacerbating existing vulnerabilities (Maxwell et al. 2018). The effects of a hazard event can compound and cascade locally through impacted infrastructure and society, as well as across regions, or even nationally. 

Current design practice generally focuses on life safety for buildings and structures and on reliability of service during normal operations for infrastructure systems.  A community’s social and economic services and functions, and their recovery after disruptions, are not often addressed by codes and standards. However, community functions should inform the resilient performance requirements of buildings and infrastructure, specifically their ability to resume operations within a specified period of time. The interconnected nature of buildings and infrastructure, and the dependence of social and economic systems, also needs to be addressed in their design and operation. 

Many methods, metrics, and indices are used to assess risks and vulnerabilities of individual assets and communities, and similar tools are being developed for assessing resilience. However, many of these tools have not been validated.  Science-based, validated tools are needed to assess resilience at a community level. 

There is significant demand for guidance, tools, metrics and standards to enhance the resilience of communities (NASEM 2021).  Municipalities, counties, and states have begun to take a longer-term perspective and incorporate resilience in planning (Maxwell et al. 2018). Challenges that remain include identifying dependencies between physical, social, and economic systems, assessing the current state of existing buildings and infrastructure systems, and quantitatively measuring progress toward community      resilience goals. Federal agencies, state and local governments, and private sector organizations are primarily using qualitative measures to assess community resilience, but science-based methodologies, models, and decision-support tools are needed to support decision makers.  

WHAT IS THE NEW TECHNICAL IDEA?

A primary goal of community resilience is to prevent hazard events from becoming disasters. The NIST Community Resilience Program starts with the performance of individual buildings and infrastructure systems, and how they affect community functions and services. Community resilience planning also supports decision makers to prioritize investment decisions for enhancing resilience (NIST 2015, Gilbert et al 2015).

Communities need tools and guidance to help them better plan and recover from disruptive hazard events, as well as other chronic impacts such as sea level rise or prolonged heat waves and drought (NASEM 2021). An understanding of a community’s social and economic functions informs the required performance of buildings and infrastructure systems to minimize community impacts.  The notion of “time to recover functions” or “functional recovery” needs to be addressed during design for new construction or during retrofit of existing infrastructure.

There is also a growing recognition that siloed approaches to constructing, designing, operating, and maintaining buildings and infrastructure systems does not result in resilient communities. Currently, buildings and infrastructure systems are designed and operated as independent systems through existing regulations, codes, and standards (McAllister et al 2022).  As a result, there can be a mismatch between design objectives, the relative performance between systems for the same hazard event, and public expectations.  Establishing performance goals that support the timely recovery of physical systems will also improve the recovery of social and economic systems.

Advances have been made in recent years in computing capacity, modeling of hazards and their impact on physical, social, and economic systems, dependencies between these systems, analysis and management of diverse types of data, and spatial visualization.  A science-based ‘systems of systems’ modeling approach is used to link buildings and infrastructure systems with social and economic systems to develop guidance, tools, and metrics to support assessments and decision making for community resilience.

To transform the way buildings and infrastructure are designed, built, operated, and maintained, NIST is developing science-based guidance, tools, and metrics to measure resilience at the community scale and support decision-making, taking into account the dependencies between the built environment and social and economic systems in the community.  Collaboration with the NIST-funded Center of Excellence (https://in-core.org/) is advancing the rate of research, development, demonstration, and deployment of science-based guidance, tools, and metrics. Additionally, NIST engages a diverse body of stakeholders to provide input and feedback on research direction and products as described in detail below.

WHAT IS THE RESEARCH PLAN?

Systems methods and models
Systems-based modeling methods are being developed to (1) simulate the effects of disruptions to the community (both social and physical), (2) analyze the response and recovery of physical, social, and economic systems, and dependencies, and (3) establish community resilience assessment and decision-support methodologies.  Community goals will be used to identify performance and recovery criteria, and data from communities and past events will be used for validation and sensitivity studies.  The NIST ARC (Alternatives for Resilient Communities) tool allows communities to explore decision alternatives for infrastructure systems and their impacts on populations and schools to inform community resilience planning.  See https://www.nist.gov/services-resources/software/nist-arc-nist-alternatives-resilient-communities-tool. This research is being conducted collaboratively with the NIST-funded Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning (http://resilience.colostate.edu/index.shtml). 

Measuring and assessing community resilience
A community resilience assessment methodology is being developed for use by communities of any size for the purpose of assessing baseline resilience and changes in resilience over time with quantitative measures and associated indicators. The assessment methodology employs a complex systems perspective to link social and physical systems. Additionally, the methodology addresses resilience over time to provide useful information about factors influencing recovery following a disruptive hazard event. The methodology will ultimately be coupled with a community-scale analysis tool, TraCR Interactive, for physical, social, and economic systems to provide a means of evaluating decisions for their contribution to community resilience. See https://www.nist.gov/community-resilience/assessment-products.

Economic methodology to support decision making
Economic methodology and tools are being developed to support community decision-making for resilience planning and implementation. This economic methodology is implemented in the NIST Economic Decision Guide Software (EDGe$) Tool Online.  Additional efforts include (1) quantifying resilience co-benefits and (2) understanding socioeconomic impacts to community institutions, such as small- and medium-sized businesses during complex events.  

The methodology must be comprehensive enough to identify resilience strategies that achieve multiple community goals/objectives (e.g., economic development, safety, and equity) and their co-benefits, some of which may not have a straight-forward market value. Such valuation techniques promote an investment portfolio that yields tangible dividends during periods when hazards are not realized in the community.Building upon EDGe$ and ASTM E3130 – 18 (Standard Guide for Developing Cost-Effective Community Resilience Strategies), the method supports the identification of cost-effective resource allocations that minimize the economic impact of hazard events on communities. Continued research will address: (1) advanced uncertainty, (2) risk profiles (perceived and objective), (3) learning over time and (4) consideration for additional community goals, such as temporal and spatial equity. See https://www.nist.gov/community-resilience/edge-and-economic-decision-guide.

Design Methods for Resilient Community Systems
The incorporation of community resilience concepts, measures, and methods into guidance, standards, and codes is essential for meeting resilient community goals. There are two focus areas: (1) guidance for advancing the resilient performance of individual buildings and infrastructure and (2) guidance for communities and planners that provides improved methods for addressing multi-objective planning criteria.

Design criteria that support the resilient performance of individual buildings and infrastructure systems should be informed by community resilience goals. Building occupancy and the role of buildings and infrastructure in the community inform the development of design criteria. Design criteria for resilience must meet or exceed the design requirements in building codes and life safety must not be compromised. Design criteria may vary between building systems (e.g., structural frame, envelope, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems) and infrastructure systems (e.g., energy, water, wastewater, communications, transportation), given the range in interdependencies among social, economic systems, and physical systems. Planning guidance for communities addressing multiple hazards and objectives will provide methods to evaluate alternative solutions with varying sets of co-benefits. Planning guidance for communities addressing resilience, climate adaptation, and sustainability goals will be informed by data collected from planning documents and community planners.

Engage Community Resilience Stakeholders
Community resilience planning guidance documents are developed with input and feedback from stakeholders. A variety of mechanisms are used to interact with stakeholders, such as national workshops, conferences, webinars and pilot studies.

NIST has engaged with communities and their resilience planning as part of the research program to develop and improve guidance documents (e.g., Community Resilience Planning Guide, Guide Briefs, and Case Studies). NIST has engaged with individual communities (e.g., Nashua, NH, Cedar Rapids, IA) and has partnered with universities (UMD with Anne Arundel County, Charles County, and Queen Anne’s County, MD), other federal agencies, such as DHS, NOAA, and HUD, and the Center for Risk Based Community Resilience Planning headquartered at Colorado State University.

An ASTM  Standard Guide for Community Resilience Planning for Buildings and Infrastructure, has been balloted through the ASTM E54 Homeland Security Standards Committee. Private sector organizations supporting community resilience planning indicated that a Guide-based standard would be helpful. NIST is also collaborating with ASTM E60 Committee on Sustainability on the development of a proposed Standard Guide for General Principles of Resilience.

Conduct Disaster and Failure Studies (DFS) and Develop DFS Metrology
The Community Resilience Program is informed by historical disaster events and participates in field studies to collect information on physical, social, and economic system impacts and recovery of function over time following disruptive events. There are active longitudinal studies conducted for: (1) Lumberton, NC, following Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and subsequent hazard events (with the Center at CSU), (2) Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017 (with DFS and NWIRP), and (3) complex event resilience of small- and medium-sized enterprises during the COVID-19 pandemic (with NOAA). 

reference documents:

Boulder County (2015) Infrastructure Policies, Boulder County Collaborative, Longmont, CO. https://www.spur.org/publications/spur-report/2012-02-01/safe-enough-stay Last accessed 20 March 2017.

National Science and Technology Council, Committee on Environmental and Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction, Grand Challenges for Disaster Reduction, June 2005, p.21. 

Oregon (2013) The Oregon Resilience Plan, Reducing Risk and Improving Recovery for the Next Cascadia Earthquake and Tsunami, Report to the 77th Legislative Assembly from Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC), Salem, OR, February 2013. https://www.oregon.gov/oem/documents/oregon_resilience_plan_final.pdf Viewed March 7, 2017.  

SPUR (2012). Safe Enough To Stay. SPUR Report. San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, San Francisco, CA. http://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/publications_pdfs/SPUR_Safe_Enough_to_Stay.pdf.