NIST Renews $20M Award to Community Resilience Center of Excellence

The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a renewal of a $20 million cooperative agreement to Colorado State University (CSU) to continue the work of the Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning. 

As it receives $4 million annually for five years, the Fort Collins-based center will bring together NIST researchers and partners from 13 universities to continue developing computer and field study tools, best practices, and guidance that help local governments decide how to best invest resources intended to lessen the impact of extreme weather and other hazards on communities and to recover rapidly.

Over the last five years, the center has supported the implementation of the NIST Community Resilience Planning Guide, released in 2015, which provides planning guidance to communities as they consider pre- and post-event actions and investments to prevent future hazards from inflicting devastating consequences. The NIST guide focuses on buildings and infrastructure systems and addresses how to maintain social and economic functions. Work at the center will continue to support this sustained resilience effort at NIST.

Another significant result of the center’s efforts is IN-CORE — the Interdependent Networked Community Resilience Modeling Environment. Released in December 2019, this tool enables community resilience planners to model the physical and socio-economic systems of a community and assess the effectiveness of measures aimed at minimizing post-disaster disruption and recovery time. 

NIST and the center are currently conducting a longitudinal field study on Lumberton, N.C., following Hurricanes Matthew and Florence. Integrated assessment of damage to homes, businesses, schools, and the water system was initially conducted. The study is collecting data on recovery of the affected residents and systems in the community. This research has led to development of novel survey instruments that integrate physical, social, and economic community impacts.

The center's multi-disciplinary team includes experts in engineering, economics, data and computing, and social sciences from the California Polytechnic University in Pomona, Georgia Tech, Stony Brook University, Oregon State University, Portland State University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Kansas, University of Oklahoma, University of South Alabama, and the US Naval Academy.