Risk Reduction and Recovery Program

Summary

NIST’s Risk Reduction and Recovery Program fulfills objectives in the Engineering Laboratory’s Disaster-Resilient Buildings, Infrastructure, and Communities strategic goal area. The mission of the program will be carried out by the Earthquake Engineering and Community Resilience groups via research on two thrust areas: (A) one focused on community resilience to natural and technological hazards, with objectives to enhance cost-effective local-level capacity to prepare, adapt, withstand, and recover from events; and (B) the second focused on earthquake risk reduction in buildings and infrastructure, with objectives to enhance the performance and recovery of the built environment from seismic hazards by advancing knowledge required to develop first-generation recovery-based design guides and standards, and to improve current performance-based design codes, in ways that enhance public safety, community resilience, and economic security. The program enables collaborative efforts on complex risk reduction initiatives from the asset to community scale, and on the interactions and dependencies across scales.

After hazard events, costs due to damage or demolition, and disruption and downtime for critical services and functions continue to increase and are becoming less acceptable to the US public. Building on foundational contributions enhancing building performance during earthquakes and providing tools and guidance for comprehensive and effective community resilience planning, the program evaluates and selects high-priority efforts that reduce the risk of damage and shorten and otherwise improve recovery. Priorities for achieving the goal of recovering more quickly include 1) advancing the design of buildings to resist earthquake shaking, 2) making available a database of designs specifically targeting quicker repair and recovery, 3) completing studies to support the codes and standards-setting processes, 4) refining computer models for simulating the benefits of adopting resilient designs, codes and standards, and 5) learning through post-disaster field studies the effectiveness of these actions.

Description

Objective
Advance innovative, high-value solutions to inform earthquake risk reduction and multi-hazard community resilience by applying measurement science, developing design standards and guidance recommendations, producing interdisciplinary decision-support tools, and conducting stakeholder outreach and collaboration.

What is the problem?
The costs and negative impacts of natural hazard events continue to increase each year in the US, pointing to critical and strategic opportunities for strengthening the built environment to reduce asset-level damage and downtime and enhancing tools and capacity for recovery and community-level resilience planning. New engineering approaches are needed to continue improvements to the seismic performance of existing buildings, new buildings, and lifeline infrastructure systems so that they can withstand shaking, protect lives and property, quickly recover, and support nationwide resilience by lessening negative impacts such as downtime, disruption, and costs to communities. At the same time, advances in standard scientific approaches for the quantitative and qualitative assessment of resilience within communities are needed to gauge the effectiveness of resilience interventions and improvements to the built environment in mitigating natural hazard risks. A key focus over the coming years is on determining efficient and cost-effective solutions to improve the performance of assets and simultaneously support the timely resumption of operations, systems, and organizations providing key functions and services across US communities.

What is the new technical Idea?
For the Risk Resilience and Recovery thrust areas, strategic objectives have been defined to solve engineering measurement science problems related to reducing risk from hazards and supporting the broad recovery needs of US communities. These solutions-oriented objectives are produced through contributions to codes, standards, design guidelines, and best practices for the performance of the built environment (both buildings and lifelines infrastructure), as well as tools, modeling resources, and insights that communities can leverage to improve post-hazard outcomes.

Earthquake Engineering has recently contributed various products that advance the state-of-the-art and practice for earthquake risk mitigation and enhanced performance of buildings and infrastructure. These products include the development of code change proposals, guidelines, tools, and frameworks to provide measurement science solutions to support a paradigm shift in the design of buildings and infrastructure to meet a specific target recovery time. This supports implementation of the recommendations from the NIST SP-1254 report to Congress and include: a) multiple code change proposals to identify the appropriate design target recovery times, risk-informed seismic hazard levels, and engineering design provisions for the first-ever functional recovery design chapter in the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP) Recommended Seismic Design Provisions; b) a functional recovery design guide for new reinforced concrete buildings (ACI 374A); c) comprehensive benefit-cost analysis for a functional recovery design approach; d) an investment planning tool (TRIP$) to improve seismic resilience of bridge network; and e) a framework for infrastructure system owner operators to implement functional recovery performance. Earthquake Engineering has also developed guidelines for seismic design and evaluation of reinforced concrete columns retrofitted using fiber reinforced polymers (FRP); these guidelines are being balloted by the American Concrete Institute (ACI) to form the first-ever FRP retrofit chapter of the primary retrofit and evaluation seismic standard in the US. In addition, work under this thrust has developed frameworks and tools to address key measurement science gaps in seismic performance-based design. This includes a framework for systematic uncertainty quantification in reinforced concrete structures and a ground motion selection and scaling tool. Building on these advances, Earthquake Engineering will continue developing tools, guidelines, and science-based solutions to improve the resilience of the built environment. This includes the development of the following tools and products.

• Nonstructural Element Database: Develop a robust web-deployed database (NED) that represents the largest collection of nonstructural seismic testing data and seismic fragility models collected to date. NED will have an integrated query function and will directly support a critical knowledge gap for researchers and practitioners implementing new functional recovery design practices.
• High-Fidelity Regional Model: Simulated damage, social, and economic impacts for a high-fidelity regional model of a large urban environment in a highly seismically active region of the West Coast. This study provides essential insights to help identify the asset-level recovery objectives to support ultimate community-level recovery goals.
• FRP Seismic Design Guide for Reinforced Concrete Walls: Develop guidelines for seismic design and evaluation of reinforced concrete shear walls retrofitted using fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP). These guidelines provide provisions for the design and detailing of FRP systems used to retrofit walls. This document addresses the lack of a vetted science-informed approach to evaluating and retrofitting reinforced concrete walls and will improve the accuracy of structural response estimation and reduce the seismic risk of existing buildings.
• Cost-benefit Report and Design Guidelines for Low-Damage Concrete Walls: Develop a comprehensive report summarizing the benefits and additional costs and design requirements associated with designing and constructing low- and mid-rise buildings with low-damage, post-tensioned concrete walls as an alternative to conventional concrete walls. The report will compare the analytical performance of a set of archetype residential and office buildings with low-damage and conventional seismic-resisting systems and it will introduce a set of improved structural design criteria to make this low-damage design strategy more approachable for structural engineers, maximize the seismic performance benefits, improve post-earthquake functional recovery of concrete buildings and the communities they serve, and minimize additional costs.

Community Resilience has made significant strides in advancing the state-of-the-art for community-level disaster preparedness, response, and recovery, reflecting a crucial evolution beyond traditional infrastructure design to address the multifaceted direct and indirect costs of natural, technological, and human-caused hazard events. Recognizing that communities often take years to fully recover their built environment and essential social and economic services, NIST is actively developing science-based tools and metrics to both quantify resilience and facilitate the identification and evaluation of solutions. Key contributions include the publication of two new standards. The ASTM E3350-22 Standard Guide for Community Resilience Planning for Buildings and Infrastructure formalizes the widely-referenced NIST Community Resilience Planning Guide's six-step process. The second, ASTM E3130-18, advances community resilience benefit-cost analysis by incorporating non-disaster-related benefits such as resilience dividends and windfalls, setting a new standard for BCA in community resilience planning; the standard evolved from the development of NIST’s Economic Decision Guide and Software (EDGe$) Tool.

The commitment to empirical validation is exemplified by the longitudinal Lumberton Waves 1-6 NIST Special Publications, a prime example of successful cross-disciplinary collaboration that integrates engineering assessments of physical damage with social science data on dislocation and recovery. This comprehensive approach provides invaluable time-series data, allowing researchers to track recovery trajectories, understand cascading disruptions, and refine flood-damage and population-dislocation models. Collaborative efforts with the NIST Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning have accelerated the development of system-level models, culminating in the Interdependent Networked Community Resilience Modeling Environment (IN-CORE), now available for broader use in research and community modeling. Additionally, the NIST ARC (Alternatives for Resilient Communities) beta version has been published as a systems modeling tool, leveraging IN-CORE data to help communities identify viable solutions for various hazard scenarios, including WUI fire, hurricane, tornado, and seismic events. Complementing these tools, the TRaCR Beta Version Public database and associated publications offer a first-generation, systems-based community resilience assessment methodology, providing a public data resource of community resilience indicators and assessment frameworks. Building on these substantial advances, the Community Resilience thrust has ambitious goals for near-term tools and products, alongside multifaceted outreach and engagement. These include:

• A Roadmap to Advance Codes and Standards for the Built Environment for Future Hazards and Conditions. The Roadmap will identify short- and long-term actions and goals for addressing future hazard readiness of buildings and infrastructure. The Roadmap will be informed by a series of workshops that convene experts and stakeholders to collect information and resources on specific practice needs and implementation activities and obtain feedback on the gaps and needs identified in the NIST report. The data collected at the workshops will inform the Roadmap, which will include specific action items for standards and prioritized research activities.
• Updates to the Community Resilience Planning Guide and associated standards (ASTM E3350-22 Standard Guide for Community Resilience Planning for Buildings and Infrastructure): The updates to the Community Resilience Planning Guide are intended for technical users who engage directly with community stakeholders well-versed in urban and hazard mitigation planning, natural hazard risk assessment, and the incorporation of resilience planning results into community-level plans such as comprehensive plans, hazard mitigation plans, or capital improvement plans. Updates are to be reflected in the renewal of the Published ASTM E3350-22 Standard Guide for Community Resilience Planning for Buildings and Infrastructure and future standards development efforts.
• Economic Decision Guide and Software (EDGe$) Tool: Research to enhance uncertainty and risk in the premier benefit-cost analysis tool for community resilience planning. Data collection instruments will continue to be developed and deployed to better understand individual and group decision-making risk preferences to be added to the BCA Tool. Future updates to ASTM E3130-18 are planned to provide advanced risk preference capabilities. EDGe$ will be used in the Community-informed Decisions for Efficient, Cost-effective, and Integrative Disaster Resilience planning (Co-DECIDR) Tool that implements Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models to account for non-market valuation, highlighting resilience dividend values.
• Technology Transfer: Alternatives for Resilient Communities (ARC) Tool: Extend and validate the screening tool’s ability to produce scientifically sound and implementable solutions for communities. This will be accomplished through extensions to address more systems more comprehensively (e.g., economic and social costs), testing of ARC through additional case studies involving new hazards and scenarios, improvement of the algorithms and methods underlying the model, coding improvements to enhance usability, efforts to further establish its scientific basis, and evaluation of the utility of the model through work with communities.
• Validated Tracking Community Resilience (TRaCR) Database: To identify empirical relationships between community functions and physical systems, a theoretical framework of community-wide social and physical systems, their attributes, and their dependencies is being developed. This framework provides a foundation for the methodology, which has a social science approach to composite indicator (or metric) development. To support the methodology development, two distinct products are being developed, both of which are applicable for use by decision makers and affected parties at the regional and local levels. First, the Community Resilience Indicator Inventory, which supports the identification and consensus of indicators for testing and evaluation. Second, the TraCR database will house the measures and data needed to produce the priority indicator values used in the community resilience assessment tool, TraCR Interactive. TraCR is expected to support the final assessment methodology, which will include selected priority indicators, the analytical approach(es) for computing each indicator over time in a relevant manner for at least one spatial scale, best practices for how the approach can be replicated for different spatial scales, public data sources for all indicators, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, and validation studies.
• Spatial Data Collection Support System (SDCSS) for Field Reconnaissance and Recovery Tracking: The SDCSS platform will allow for integrating diverse datasets, supporting temporal analyses, and visualizing patterns of vulnerability and recovery across geographies using GID as a platform. There will be a measurement science focus on data ontology and interoperability of data collections in response to challenges in data collection for disaster reconnaissance, evaluation, and recovery—such as the difficulty of capturing data before, during, and after hazard events; integrating information across site-specific to regional scales; and accounting for complex interactions between social, built, and natural systems.

What is the research plan?
The overarching research plan is dedicated to significantly enhancing the resilience of both individual assets and entire communities against a spectrum of hazards with a special focus on earthquake engineering. Under the Community Resilience thrust, the plan aims to publish updated guidance and multi-objective planning tools, such as the interactive Alternatives for Resilient Communities (ARC) model, to facilitate community-scale decision-making for infrastructure systems and their societal impacts. It also seeks to establish a first-generation community resilience assessment methodology through a database of validated county-level indicators and associated guidance. Furthermore, the plan addresses resilience for future hazards and changing conditions by developing guidance on flood mitigation and characterizing future threats, and emphasizes resilience data standardization with a modular, GIS-based Spatial Data Collection Support System (SDCSS) for systematic post-disaster data collection and recovery tracking. Concurrently, in the Earthquake Engineering focus area, emphasis is on achieving functional recovery of buildings and lifelines by developing prescriptive and performance-based design guidelines, creating a database and fragility curves for nonstructural systems, and producing tools for lifeline investment planning, all underpinned by benefit-cost assessments and integrated with social science insights. This includes strengthening building seismic performance through the development of: design recommendations for low-damage systems, novel component-level seismic assessment criteria, retrofit guidelines, enhanced risk evaluation techniques, and forward-looking building standards that account for future hazards and degradation mechanisms.

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References:

ASCE/SEI (2010). Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures. ASCE Standards ASCE 7-10, American Society of Civil engineers, Reston, Virginia.
ASCE/SEI (2013). Seismic Rehabilitation of Existing Buildings (ASCE/SEI 41-13). American Society of Civil Engineers, Reston, VA.
FEMA (2009) Quantification of Building Seismic Performance Factors (FEMA P-695) Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, D.C.

Harris and Speicher (2015). Assessment of First Generation Performance-Based Seismic Design Methods for New Steel Buildings Volume 1: Special Moment Frames (NIST Technical Note 1863-1) Gaithersburg, MD.
LATBSDC (2011). An Alternative Procedure for Seismic Analysis and Design of Tall Buildings Located in the Los Angeles Region, Los Angeles Tall Buildings Structural Design Council, Los Angeles. 
LA Times (2014) Older concrete buildings in Los Angeles, January 25, 2014 http://graphics.latimes.com/la-concrete-buildings/
Los Angeles (2017) Mandatory Retrofit Programs: Ordinance 183893 http://www.ladbs.org/services/core-services/plan-check-permit/plan-chec…

Seattle Times 2016, Buildings that kill: The earthquake danger lawmakers have ignored for decades, May 14, 2016 http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/buildings-that-…

Tall Buildings Initiative (2010). Guidelines for Performance Based Seismic Design of Tall Buildings, Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, UC-Berkeley.
 

Major Accomplishments

Some recent accomplishments for the Earthquake Risk Reduction in Buildings and Infrastructure Program include:

• The NEHRP Secretariat was created at NIST in 2006, and the EL Earthquake Risk Mitigation R&D Program was restarted in 2007.
• The NEHRP Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazards Reduction (ACEHR) was formed in mid-2007 and has provided annual assessments on the program to the NIST Director in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.
• The NEHRP Strategic Plan was released in October 2008. In March 2011, the NRC produced for NEHRP a twenty-year roadmap of all research and implementation activities needed to support improved national earthquake resilience.
• NEHRP activated the first generation of the "NEHRP Document Clearinghouse," where all NEHRP-related documents available through the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) are available on-line at no cost to the user.
• Seven techbriefs have been produced: Downloads available Here
  • Seismic Design of Reinforced Concrete Special Moment Frames: A Guide for Practicing Engineers, NIST GCR 08-917-1;
  • Seismic Design of Steel Special Moment Frames: A Guide for Practicing Engineers, NIST GCR 09-917-3;
  • Seismic Design of Cast-in-Place Concrete Diaphragms, Chords, and Collectors: A Guide for Practicing Engineers, NIST GCR 10-917-4;
  • Nonlinear Structural Analysis for Seismic Design: A Guide for Practicing Engineers, NIST GCR 10-917-5;
  • Seismic Design of Composite Steel Deck and Concrete-Filled Diaphragms: A Guide for Practicing Engineers, NIST GCR 11-917-10;
  • Seismic Design of Cast-in-Place Concrete Special Structural Walls and Coupling Beams: A Guide for Practicing Seismic Design of Reinforced Concrete Mat Foundations: A Guide for Practicing Engineers, NIST GCR 12-917-22.