NIBS Announces BEST6 Call for Abstracts
Lifeline Infrastructure Hub
Our nation is experiencing an urgent need to better understand and improve aging and unreliable lifeline systems. These systems include water, wastewater, electricity, natural gas, liquid fuels, communications, and multi-modal transportation—highways and roads, rail, airports, and ports and harbors.
Particularly as natural disasters grow more frequent and destructive, lifeline services are critical to protect our communities and essential for disaster recovery.
The NIBS Lifeline Infrastructure Hub aims to help the nation with community resilience and recovery after disasters. Robust partnerships with government, the private sector, and various stakeholders to advance this effort are crucial for our safety and security.
SERVE
in a coordinating role to forge and engage public-private partnerships across lifeline sectors for natural hazards, including hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, wildfires and future extreme weather events
UNDERSTAND
the fundamentals of lifeline infrastructure systems, plus identify gaps and cost-effective ways to mend gaps in lifeline resilience
PRIORITIZE
investments and improvements, in the technical and policy realms, that are most needed for lifeline infrastructure in all communities to improve disaster resilience and modernization
- Establish key partnerships among federal, state and local governments, not-for-profit entities, industry and stakeholders
- Create new avenues for regular and sustained communication among key partners
- Host webinars with facilitated panel members and other special events
- Offer Congressional and other leadership briefings to disseminate knowledge
- Conduct surveys and gather evidence on lifeline deficiencies, needs and priorities
- Develop guidelines (e.g., design and performance) on lifeline infrastructure systems to address federal programs, business continuity and societal needs
- Lead post-disaster investigations and develop recommendations on corrective actions
- Explore gaps in state-of-practice methods, improve implementation for state-of-the-art techniques, perform applied research, advance technologies and more
- Support international lifelines workshops (e.g., U.S.-Japan engineering workshops)
Functional Recovery Design of New Buildings
The Functional Recovery Task Committee is charged with developing technical proposals and other resources regarding design of new buildings to meet post-earthquake functional recovery performance objectives within the context of the 2026 NEHRP Provisions. Learn More
NIBS Infrastructure 2022 Webinar Series
Last year, despite lingering challenges with COVID and in-person meetings, NIBS found a solution and launched the year-long virtual Resilience 2021 series. Our subject matter experts looked at everything from natural disaster mitigation and the pandemic’s impact on technology in the built environment to building information modeling. Learn More
Portland Resilient Runway Benefit-Cost Analysis
Oregon could experience a magnitude-8.7 or larger earthquake within 50 years that causes catastrophic deaths and damage. Portland International Airport (PDX) can play a crucial role speeding the response and recovery and prevent much of the harm. The Port of Portland engaged the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) to estimate the benefit of protecting PDX’s south runway from earthquake damage. NIBS estimates savings of $7.4 billion, which is 50 times the cost. Learn More
Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves on Utilities and Transportation
The Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: 2019 Report represents the most exhaustive benefit-cost analysis of natural hazard mitigation, from adopting up-to-date building codes and exceeding codes to addressing the retrofit of existing buildings and utility and transportation infrastructure. Learn More
American Lifeline Alliance (ALA) reports
The American Lifelines Alliance (ALA) is a public-private partnership project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and managed by the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), with the goal of reducing risks to lifelines from hazards. Learn More
Guidelines for Assessing the Performance of Oil and Natural Gas Pipeline Systems in Natural Hazard and Human Threat Events
Guidelines for Assessing the Performance of Electrical Power Systems in Natural Hazard and Human Threat Events
HAZUS
The HAZUS tool provides an approach to quantifying future earthquake losses that is national in scope, uniform in application, and comprehensive in its coverage of the built environment. Learn More
NIBS Lifeline Infrastructure Hub Contacts:
Jiqiu (JQ) Yuan,
VP of Engineering, NIBS
jyuan@nibs.org
Yumei Wang,
Lifeline Infrastructure Special Advisor, NIBS
ywang.ctr@nibs.org
