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Objective:
To develop a user-friendly tool for building owners and managers to aid in the selection of cost-effective strategies for the management of risks associated with natural and man-made hazards.
Problem:
The September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon galvanized the nation to strengthen its defenses against future terrorist attacks. The devastation to the Gulf Coast caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and their impact on the national economy, underscored the need to plan for natural and man-made disasters as well as terrorist threats. These events have forced key decision makers to plan for and respond to natural and man-made hazards in new ways. Among these changes are the way owners and managers think about the design, location, construction, operation, and renovation of constructed facilities. The problem is that the range of responses available to decision makers is extensive, as is the potential expense. Yet decision makers now making these critical choices have no standard, accepted tools for evaluating alternative responses. Building/facility owners and managers are faced with the added challenge of responding to the potential for natural and man-made disasters in a financially responsible manner. It is hard for them to identify the most cost-effective approach to managing hazard risks. Emerging from this new focus on planning is the realization that it makes sense to evaluate all kinds of natural and man-made hazards as a group. Costs for protection against multiple hazards can be shared among the hazards protected against, thereby reducing the cost of any single form of protection. Or, looked at in another way, a given cost of protection can yield extra benefits when considering multiple hazards. This spillover of benefits from one kind of protection to another highlights the need for a holistic approach to planning protection against multiple hazards. Economic tools are needed to direct limited resources to investments in mitigation strategies that will provide the most cost-effective reduction in personal injuries, financial losses, and damages to buildings, industrial facilities, and infrastructure. Current practice is typically to protect infrastructure in a traditional way, such as with security services or insurance, without considering a broader, optimal mix of protection strategies.
Approach:
The technical challenge is to produce an economic tool with a flexible decision methodology, embedded in user-friendly, decision-support software, that helps building/facility owners and managers to maximize the likely reduction in losses from natural and man-made hazards while considering tradeoffs among alternative levels of reliance on three mitigation strategies: (1) engineering alternatives; (2) management practices; and (3) financial mechanisms. The economic tool provides decision makers with the basis for generating a cost-effective risk mitigation plan. The new ideas in this approach are the focus on an optimal mix of mitigation strategies and the holistic approach to planning protection against multiple hazards. BFRL is the best research laboratory to do this work now because of our unique expertise in metrics development, standards work, software development, the World Trade Center investigation, and our on-going work with key stakeholder groups.
In FY 2008, economists from BFRL’s Office of Applied Economics (OAE) will revise, expand, and reissue A Guide to Printed and Electronic Resources for Developing a Cost-Effective Risk Mitigation Plan for New and Existing Constructed Facilities; reissue the Risk Mitigation Toolkit, based on the revised and expanded Guide; and collaborate with the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and the Building Owners and Managers Association to initiate the development of a high-rise office building case study. OAE/BFRL will also develop and distribute Version 4.0 of the Cost-Effectiveness Tool (CET) software product and prepare and publish a Users Manual for Version 4.0. Chapman will work with his co-authors at the Construction Industry Institute to incorporate referees’ comments into an article planned for publication in the ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. OAE/BFRL will continue its outreach efforts focused on creating a strategic collection of collaborative agents.
The Guide, originally published as NISTIR 7390, will be significantly revised and expanded to capture new information and web sites. The Guide is patterned after the three-step protocol outlined in ASTM Standard E 2506. The Guide will be made available both as a printed document and as a web-based publication. The printed document is intended as a ready reference for other researchers and for public and private sector decision makers concerned with cost-effective responses to multiple hazards. The web-based version, referred to as the Risk Mitigation Toolkit, is intended for practitioners—owners and managers of constructed facilities, architects, engineers, constructors, and other providers of professional services for constructed facilities—interested in formulating and evaluating alternative combinations of risk mitigation strategies. All web links in the web-based version available for download from the BFRL web site will be active, enabling practitioners to browse documents and data sources. Furthermore, many of the web links permit documents and data files to be downloaded for future reference and use.
BFRL will initiate a collaborative effort with the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and the Building Owners and Managers Association. The initial focus of this effort will be on the use of the Cost-Effectiveness Tool (CET) in developing cost-effective risk mitigation plans for tall buildings and the critical role that case studies play in facilitating CET’s use by specific stakeholder groups. The focus will then shift to the development of a high-rise office building case study. Completion of the high-rise office building case study and its incorporation into the CET software product is planned for FY 2009.
Economists from OAE/BFRL will explore ways to use the CET software product to evaluate selected recommendations from the World Trade Center investigation. This exploratory effort and its associated analyses will be carried out in collaboration with the Fire Research Division. Work in collaboration with the Materials and Construction Research Division will focus on the analysis of progressive collapse provisions in structural steel and reinforced concrete structures.
OAE/BFRL will expand the use of Monte Carlo techniques in the CET software product, add a Help section covering Frequently Asked Questions, and create a utility for customized Report generation. Version 4.0 will be made available to users either on a CD or for electronic distribution through NIST. Version 4.0 will include a Users Manual. The Users Manual will be published as a NISTIR; also, it will be integrated into Version 4.0 of the CET software product.
During FY 2009 and 2010, OAE/BFRL will produce annual updates to the Guide/Risk Mitigation Toolkit and the CET software product and its associated Users Manual. In FY 2009, OAE/BFRL will complete the high-rise office building case study and integrate it into the CET software product; complete a suite of mini case studies based on selected WTC recommendations and progressive collapse provisions; and produce a journal article on how using the CET software product leads to more cost-effective responses to natural and man-made hazards. In FY 2010, OAE/BFRL will produce a journal article on using the three-step protocol to develop a cost-effective risk mitigation plan.
Progress will be measured by the number of ASTM and other standards that are published with our metrics and case illustrations; the number of users of the CET software product and the Risk Mitigation Toolkit; the number of standards sold that incorporate our metrics and case illustrations; and the number of organizations that adopt and recommend for use to their members our products.
Funding this research enables BFRL to advance the state of the art in helping facility owners and managers make cost-effective choices among mitigation strategies for protection against man-made and natural hazards, thereby helping individuals, businesses, and governments reduce their combined life-cycle costs of hazard protection and damage. The savings to society, given the number of high-valued constructed facilities greatly exceeds the costs of research.
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