Recommended Options for Improving the Built Environment for Post-Earthquake Reoccupancy and Functional Recovery Time FEMA P-2090/ NIST SP-1254 / January 2021 NIST-FEMA Special Publication FEMA P-2090/NIST SP-1254 Recommended Options for Improving the Built Environment for Post-Earthquake Reoccupancy and Functional Recovery Time This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1254 or by calling FEMA at 1-800-480-2520 Final Report, January 2021 Department of Homeland Security U.S. Department of Commerce Peter T. Gaynor, Acting Secretary Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Secretary Federal Emergency Management Agency National Institute of Standards and Technology Robert J. Fenton Jr., Senior Official Performing Walter Copan, NIST Director and the Duties of FEMA Administrator Undersecretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology NIST-FEMA Special Publication FEMA P-2090/NIST SP-1254 Federal Emergency Management Agency National Institute of Standards and Michael Mahoney Technology Robert D. Hanson Siamak Sattar John (Jack) R. Hayes, Jr. Katherine J. Johnson Pataya Scott Steven L. McCabe Applied Technology Council Science and Technology Policy Institute Jon A. Heintz * Leslie Abrahams * Project Technical Panel Project Review Panel Ryan A. Kersting (Chair) * Marissa Aho Lucy A. Arendt * John M. Bozeman David Bonowitz * Dan Eschenasy Mary C. Comerio * Robert Ezelle Craig A. Davis * William T. Holmes Greg G. Deierlein * James Kendra Susan Dowty * Steven L. McCabe Gary Ehrlich * Thomas D. O’Rourke Ronald O. Hamburger * Marios Panagiotou Jon A. Heintz * Keith Porter Katherine (Jo) Johnson * Lakisha Ann Woods Ron C. Larsen * Michael Mahoney * Rachel Minnery * Aspasia (Sissy) Nikolaou * Chris D. Poland * Siamak Sattar * Pataya Scott * Jonathan Siu * Jeffrey R. Soulages * Kent Yu * * Co-authors of the report. Acknowledgments In 2019, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contracted with the Applied Technology Council (ATC), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) contracted with the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI), to jointly convene a Committee of Experts to develop this report to Congress. A Project Technical Panel, led by ATC, was charged with developing the report, and a Project Review Panel, led by STPI, was charged with providing review and feedback on the report during development. FEMA and NIST greatly appreciate the efforts of the Project Technical Panel for their contributions in developing the original source material for this report, and to the leadership of Ryan Kersting (Chair), Lucy Arendt, Craig Davis, and Ron Hamburger who served as lead authors. NIST and FEMA also acknowledge the members of the Project Review Panel, under the direction of STPI, for providing peer review and comment at different stages of report development. NIST and FEMA also recognize the contributions of the many individuals who participated in a series of stakeholder workshops, facilitated by STPI, at five locations across the United States. Insights from these regional discussions helped shape the content of the final report. Finally, FEMA and NIST recognize the dedication that Jon Heintz of the Applied Technology Council showed in preparing this high-quality product under unexpected conditions and tight scheduling. The final report benefited from his leadership and guidance. The names and affiliations of all who contributed to this report are provided in the list of participants at the end of this report. Key Words Building, Built Environment, Community Resilience, Critical Infrastructure, Earthquake, Functionality, Functional Recovery, Lifeline Infrastructure System, Lifeline Services, Natural Hazard, Performance-Based Design, Recovery-Based Objective, Reoccupancy, Safety. Disclaimer Certain commercial entities, equipment, or materials may be identified in this publication in order to describe an experimental procedure or concept adequately. Such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Applied Technology Council, or the Science Technology Policy Institute, nor is it intended to imply that the entities, materials, or equipment are necessarily the best available for the purpose. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Applied Technology Council, or the Science Technology Policy Institute. As the work of the Committee of Experts was conducted to provide a range of perspectives on options for improving reoccupancy and functional recovery time, this report does not represent a consensus-based opinion being provided to the government. Cover Images: Courthouse and emergency communications buildings courtesy of R. Kersting; railway and water distribution lifeline infrastructure systems courtesy of C. Davis. Executive Summary The most recent reauthorization of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), P.L. 115-307, includes a heightened focus on achieving community resilience and a new requirement for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to jointly convene a Committee of Experts to assess and recommend options for improving the built environment and critical infrastructure to reflect performance goals stated in terms of post-earthquake reoccupancy and functional recovery time. To comply with this mandate, NIST and FEMA developed a plan of action in which FEMA funded a Project Technical Panel, responsible for report development, and NIST funded a Project Review Panel, responsible for report review. The Committee of Experts consisted of the Project Technical Panel, with 17 outside experts and representation from all interest groups named in the reauthorization, and the Project Review Panel, with 10 outside experts and similar representation. To facilitate national-level stakeholder interaction, NIST hosted five stakeholder workshops that were used to gather additional information and feedback. This report provides a set of options in the form of recommendations, tasks, and alternatives for improving the built environment, which have been developed and assessed by the Committee of Experts. It describes community resilience, defines the concepts of reoccupancy and functional recovery, and explains the relationship among these three ideas. It explains why reoccupancy and functional recovery concepts are needed, describes a target performance state, and identifies potential cost and benefits associated with implementing enhanced seismic design. To fulfill the Congressional mandate, this report addresses the issue of functional recovery for seismic hazard. Although this report does not discuss the unique challenges associated with improving functional recovery for other hazards, recommendations in this report could be leveraged and adapted for other natural hazards. The motivation for this report is the risk that the United States faces each year from all forms of natural hazards, including hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and earthquakes. Natural hazard events can affect communities through damage that results in injury and loss of life, interruption of lifeline services, displacement of residents and businesses, and economic and socio-cultural impacts. Almost half of the U.S. population – 150 million people – reside in portions of 42 states that are at risk of experiencing a damaging earthquake within the next 50 years. Earthquakes have caused disastrous impacts in the past and are expected to cause more in the future. In regions of high seismic risk where an earthquake hasn’t occurred for some time, scenario studies predict deaths in the thousands, injuries in the tens of thousands, and hundreds of billions of dollars in direct economic losses, along with long-term, destabilizing impacts to community function. FEMA P-2090/NIST SP-1254 Executive Summary v In all cases, whether historic or scenario-based, the loss of life and property, and the negative impacts to the economy, were a direct result of the inability of the built environment to withstand the effects of earthquakes and other natural hazards. Because federal, state, and local, governments have critical functions in disaster recovery, they all can play an important role in facilitating the process to reduce the costs of recovery. To protect U.S. communities and taxpayers against future losses on the scale of those experienced in Hurricane Katrina, or predicted in earthquake scenario studies, a change in building codes, building practices, and societal values is needed. To support resilience goals at the community level, there is a need to establish a link between the design, construction, and retrofit of individual buildings and lifeline infrastructure systems, and community resilience, as measured by time to recovery of function; but this link is currently missing. The concepts of reoccupancy and functional recovery have been introduced to serve as this link, defined as follows: Reoccupancy is a post-earthquake performance state in which a building is maintained, or restored, to allow safe re-entry for the purposes of providing shelter or protecting building contents. Functional recovery is a post-earthquake performance state in which a building or lifeline infrastructure system is maintained, or restored, to safely and adequately support