Building damage & repair

News and Updates

NIST Earthquake Engineering Group Members Conduct a Preliminary Earthquake Reconnaissance Mission to Turkey

August 31, 2023

In the early morning hours of February 6, 2023, a M W 7.8 earthquake occurred in Turkey, followed by four additional earthquakes throughout the day with MW of 5

A steel column with a deep web on the left and a steel column with a shallow web on the right.

Proposed Updates to Steel Building Standard Could Enhance Earthquake Resilience

January 7, 2022

Since the mid-1990s, a type of steel column that commonly features slender cross-sectional elements has become more prevalent in buildings along the West Coast

NIST Establishes Expert Team to Investigate the Champlain Towers South Collapse

August 25, 2021

GAITHERSBURG, Md. — The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced today the expert team members who will

Projects and Programs

Building-Level Seismic Performance Assessment

Ongoing

Objective: To better understand the seismic performance of buildings designed in areas of medium-to-high seismicity and to identify ways to create enhanced performance through low-damage approaches, improved code provisions, and improved analysis procedures. What is the Problem? Despite progress

Hierarchical Materials

Ongoing

The STG develops the methods and metrology that will lead to the understanding of the structure-property relationships of hierarchical composites in real medical PPE or protective applications, which heretofore has been lacking. This work establishes in situ monitoring of advanced manufacturing

Publications

A Technical Framework to Map Functional Recovery Performance Objectives to Prescriptive Seismic Design Provisions for Buildings

September 19, 2024

Author(s)

Dustin Cook, Siamak Sattar

Designing buildings for improved functional recovery represents a major shift in the current design paradigm. Given the novelty of the functional recovery

Autonomous cementitious materials formulation for critical infrastructure repair

January 17, 2024

Author(s)

Howie Joress, Rachel Cook, Austin McDannald, Mark Kozdras, Jason hattrick-simpers, Aron Newman, Scott Jones

Despite the long history of cement and concrete, there are still large gaps in fundamental knowledge of their properties development. The dire need for improved

LEVERAGING DECISION TREES TO MAP FUNCTIONAL RECOVERY SEISMIC DESIGN PROVISIONS FOR REINFORCED CONCRETE MOMENT FRAMES

October 31, 2023

Author(s)

Dustin Cook

While recent advancements have been made in performance-based earthquake engineering to stochastically quantify functional recovery times for individual

Improving Windstorm and Tornado Resilience: Recommendations for One- and Two-Family Residential Structures

February 21, 2023

Author(s)

Brian O'Connor, Karah Osburn, Jennifer Mitchell, Heidi Szabo, Marc Levitan

The purpose of this fact sheet is to provide a brief overview of building envelope considerations and load path improvements to reduce damages to wood framed