ANSI announces paper competition

From hurricanes, floods, volcanic eruptions and tornados to industrial accidents, building collapses or acts of terrorism, natural and man-made disasters make headlines across the world — and cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars every year. To help foster greater awareness about the importance of standardization, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) 2019 Student Paper Competition asks students to consider the question, “How do standards help mitigate disaster?”

Papers should consider how standards have contributed to the mitigation, prevention, relief or recovery of various types of disaster. Participants may choose a real-life disaster and describe the standards that helped get things back on track, as well as potential standards that could have provided even greater assistance, or may choose to get creative and make up a disaster scenario. Specific standards should be referred to wherever possible. Papers must be written and submitted by students. All entries are due by 5:00 p.m. Eastern on April 30, 2019. Click here to view and download the competition flyer.

This year’s ANSI paper competition theme is very relevant to the International Code Council and its work toward demonstrating the importance of regular updates to the building codes and strong code enforcement in order to mitigate damage from natural disasters. The National Institute of Building Sciences recently released the Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: 2018 Interim Report. The study found that adopting the 2018 International Codes — the most widely used and adopted set of building safety codes in the world — generates a national benefit of $11 for every $1 invested. It also found that the national mitigation benefit-cost ratio associated with code adoption is $6 to $1 for floods, $10 to $1 for hurricanes and $12 to $1 for earthquakes, with benefits coming through avoided casualties, post-traumatic stress, property damage, business interruptions and insurance premiums. These results show that all building stakeholders benefit from implementing mitigation strategies in regularly updated codes — from developers, titleholders and lenders, to tenants and communities.

“Disasters are only expected to increase in frequency and severity, so as an industry we need to work collaboratively on how to adapt the built environment to face even greater challenges,” said Code Council Chief Executive Officer Dominic Sims, CBO. “The findings of this report offer encouragement that our work, slow and steady as it may be, is well worth the effort.”

An active participant in the international standards community, the Code Council supports standardization activity for established fields and emerging new technologies, is a member of the the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is an ANSI-accredited standards developer, and proudly supports World Standards Week and World Standards Day each year. The Code Council references almost 1,300 standards in its International Codes and has been re-accredited for its ANSI Standard Development activities under the ANSI Essential Requirements. The Code Council also develops a number of codes and standards, including mechanical, plumbing, structural, resilience, accessibility and green standards.

The Code Council adheres to openness and transparency in our standards development process. All Council standards committee meetings are open to the public. Any interested party can participate in committee meetings and can be considered by the committee for membership on any work-group that the committee creates. Click here for more on the Code Council’s standards development process.