Experts convene on resilient buildings benchmarks
The Alliance for National and Community Resilience (ANCR) convened the Buildings Benchmark Committee this month in Washington, D.C., for final discussion and approval of the requirements resilient communities should demonstrate in the functional area of buildings. The 30-member committee — which includes a diverse and active group of subject matter experts representing industry leaders, regulators, designers and builders — will continue its work by developing the acceptable evidence needed for communities to demonstrate they’ve reached essential, enhanced or exceptional levels of resiliency. The committee expects to deliver its work to the ANCR Board of Directors for approval in late 2018.
The Alliance’s goal of creating 19 coordinated Community Resilience Benchmarks identifying the essential elements of community resilience continues later this year and into 2019 with the engagement of the Water Benchmark Committee as well as four additional benchmark committees.
The Community Resilience Benchmarks system is intentionally cross-sector, encompassing elements including, but not limited to, communications, housing, water, food distribution, energy, waste management, finance, education, public health, transportation, public safety and business. This will consolidate existing assessments, certifications and research to serve as a useful, centralized tool to help communities, businesses, governments and people make decisions to become more resilient, based on consistent and comparable information — on where to live, where to invest, what to prioritize and how to measure progress.
Related:
ANCR announces a distinguished group of specialists
ANCR Water Technical Committee formed
ICC & ANCR join Resilient Nation Partnership Network
ICC leads national conversations on high-performance construction and resilience
A part of the ICC Family of Companies, ANCR is a national coalition aimed at improving resilience and implementing good community practices in towns and cities across the United States and helping cities prevent infrastructure failure caused by natural and other disasters, thereby avoiding negative social, economic and welfare repercussions caused by such damages. ANCR’s primary objective is the development of a system of community benchmarks — the first system of its kind in the United States — that will allow local leaders to easily assess and improve their resilience across all functions of a community. When adverse events occur, all gears in the local system must continue to function. ANCR intends to give communities a voluntary, transparent, usable, and easily understandable accredited self-assessment that helps to showcase their whole-community resilience and provides a simple gauge of how their resilience continues to strengthen.
The Code Council believes in a “whole community” approach toward building resiliency in the built environment, which begins with strong, regularly adopted and properly administered building codes and ends with communities look across all of its interconnected functions to truly be a resilient community. Click here to view the many resources ICC offers to assist jurisdictions, manufacturers and the public with resilient building practices.
If you are interested in participating in the development of future benchmarks as a subject matter expert, please contact ANCR Interim Executive Director Justin Wiley.
