Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Community Resilience Economic Decision Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems

Published

Author(s)

Stanley W. Gilbert, David Butry, Jennifer Helgeson, Robert E. Chapman

Abstract

This Economic Guide provides a standard economic methodology for evaluating investment decisions aimed to improve the ability of communities to adapt to, withstand, and quickly recover from disasters. The Economic Guide is designed for use in conjunction with the NIST Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems, which provides a methodology for communities to develop long-term plans by engaging stakeholders, establishing performance goals for buildings and infrastructure systems, and developing an implementation strategy, by providing a mechanism to prioritize and determine the efficiency of resilience actions. Using the methodology described, in this report frames the economic decision process by identifying and comparing the relevant present and future streams of costs and benefits—the latter realized through cost savings and damage loss avoidance—associated with new capital investment into resilience to those future streams generated by the status-quo. Topics related to non-market values and uncertainty are also explored. This report provides context for increasing resilience capacity through focusing on those investments that target key social goals and objectives, and providing selection criteria that ensure reduction of risks as well as increases in resilience. Furthermore, the methodological approach aims to enable the built environment to be utilized more efficiently in terms of loss reduction during recovery and to enable faster and more efficient recovery in the face of future disasters.
Citation
Special Publication (NIST SP) - 1197
Report Number
1197

Keywords

Benefit-cost analysis, buildings, communities, constructed facilities, disaster resilience, economic analysis, economic decision tool, life-cycle costing, natural and man-made hazards, present expected value, resilience, risk assessment, vulnerability

Citation

Gilbert, S. , Butry, D. , Helgeson, J. and Chapman, R. (2015), Community Resilience Economic Decision Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems, Special Publication (NIST SP), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1197 (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created December 29, 2015, Updated October 12, 2021