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Buildings & Construction

Building economics

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  • Published Date
Displaying 26 - 50 of 153

Human Behavior in Home Fires

November 9, 2021
Author(s)
Stanley W. Gilbert
Casualties in fires--and in particular, deaths--are tail events. The average fire does not cause deaths or injuries. There is increasing evidence that the people susceptible to dying in fires are a specific subset of the people in homes. It seems likely

Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) Online 2.1 Technical Manual

September 20, 2021
Author(s)
Joshua D. Kneifel, Anne Landfield Greig, Priya Lavappa, Brian Polidoro
Building stakeholders need practical metrics, data, and tools to support decisions related to sustainable building product selection. The Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has addressed this national need

Response Time Impact of Smoke Alarms

September 9, 2021
Author(s)
Stanley W. Gilbert, Thomas Cleary, Paul A. Reneke, Richard Peacock, David Butry
It can be assumed that smoke alarms reduce reported fires and casualties by reducing on average the amount of time it takes to detect a fire. This paper sets out to determine by how much that detection time is reduced. It does so by comparing the effect of

The Total Costs of Seismic Retrofits: State of the Art

May 7, 2021
Author(s)
Juan Fung, David Butry, Siamak Sattar, Steven McCabe
This article presents the current state-of-practice with respect to quantifying the total cost to retrofit an existing building. In particular, we combine quantitative, qualitative, and heuristic data to provide a taxonomy for understanding the direct and

Estimating the Impact of 16 CFR Part 1633 on Bed Fire Outcomes

November 18, 2020
Author(s)
Stanley W. Gilbert, David Butry, Rick D. Davis, Richard Gann
Effective July 1, 2007, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission promulgated a standard to severely reduce the heat release rate and the early heat output from mattresses and foundations when ignited by a flaming ignition source. This study estimates

Machine Learning Methods for Predicting Seismic Retrofit Costs

September 23, 2020
Author(s)
Juan F. Fung, Siamak Sattar, David Butry, Steven L. McCabe
Aging building clusters all around the world, especially in high seismic regions, will require a retrofit approach to improve the resilience of the built environment. One of the main challenges of retrofitting existing buildings is the associated cost

Economic considerations for recovery-based design

September 20, 2020
Author(s)
Juan Fung, Dustin Cook, Yating Zhang, Katherine Johnson, Siamak Sattar
Current building design practice targets life safety performance for the design-level earthquake. While some buildings (e.g., schools, hospitals) may be designed for higher performance, the actual performance of most residential and commercial buildings

A Predictive Modeling Approach to Estimating Seismic Retrofit Costs

February 20, 2020
Author(s)
Juan F. Fung, Siamak Sattar, David T. Butry, Steven L. McCabe
This paper presents a methodology for estimating seismic retrofit costs from historical data. In particular, historical retrofit cost data from FEMA 156 is used to build a predictive model to estimate retrofit costs as a function of building

The Economics of Firefighter Injuries in the United States

December 11, 2019
Author(s)
David T. Butry, David H. Webb, Stanley W. Gilbert, Jennifer Taylor
This report identifies, summarizes, and evaluates the available data and the literature describing the economic costs associated with non-fatal firefighter injuries, illnesses, health exposures, and occupational disease (‘health outcomes’) resulting from

Quantifying Macroeconomic Resilience Dividends in Cedar Rapids

July 17, 2019
Author(s)
Juan F. Fung, Jennifer F. Helgeson, Cheyney M. O'Fallon, David H. Webb, Harvey Cutler
Cedar Rapids, Iowa offers a unique case study in planning for increased resilience. In 2008, Cedar Rapids experienced severe flooding. Rather than simply rebuilding, the city of Cedar Rapids is investing in a resilient flood control system, as well as in
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