ASTM buildings committee strategizes community resilience

The forthcoming ASTM E3130, Developing Cost-Effective Community Resilience Strategies will inform authorities on ways to withstand, respond to and recover from a range of potential catastrophes, such as natural hazards, utility outages and human-caused disruptions. Developed by ASTM International Committee E06 on Performance of Buildings, the new standard provides an economic framework to evaluate investment strategies, plus a seven-step approach to help communities formulate their own resilience plans.



GRAPHIC: ASTM STANDARIZATION NEWS, MAY/JUNE 2018

“Investments in community-resilience projects are difficult due to unknowns surrounding the frequency and magnitude of natural, technological, and human-caused disruptions,” says National Institute for Standards and Technology’s David Butry, E06 member. “Accounting for low-probability, high-consequence events challenges traditional economic evaluation methods, but this standard aims to fill that need. [It] can be used to integrate community resilience plans with economic development, zoning, hazard mitigation, and other community planning activities that affect buildings, public works, and infrastructure systems.”

ASTM E3130 is aligned with the U.S. National Preparedness System and complements NIST’s Community Resilience Planning Guide. It will be available from ASTM International customer relations, 877/909-ASTM; www.astm.org.