Engineering Resilience:
The Resilence Star™ Home Pilot Program
After a devastating tornado ripped through
Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011, senior officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) decided there had to be a
way to finally break the cycle of destruction that repeatedly plays out across the
United States every year.
“The cycle looks like this,” explained Julie
Rochman, president and CEO of the
Insurance Institute for Business & Home
Safety (IBHS), “a catastrophe, usually an
extreme weather event, strikes a community. Residents are devastated by the tragic loss of life and tremendous amount of
property damage,” she continued.
“Local and state officials vow to rebuild
the area as quickly as possible so people
can return to ‘normal.’ Sadly, this results
in rebuilding and repairing structures in
the same ways, in the same places that
are subject to the same extreme weather
events again and again and again.”
“Given that most people are not able to
move out of the way to escape Mother
Nature’s fury, what else can be done to
help communities better withstand the
devastating disasters that will continue
to plague our nation?” asked Rochman. “If
we cannot move structures out of harm’s
way, the only alternative is to strengthen
them in the face of natural hazards.”
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Disaster Safety Review | 2013
DHS has developed a new program to do
just that by helping create safer, stronger communities that can withstand
the destructive forces of nature. Called
Resilience STAR™, the program is modeled after the very successful, ubiquitous
ENERGY STAR program. In the same way
ENERGY STAR assigns a relative rating to
appliances that meet certain energy efficiency standards, Resilience STAR will assign a certain number of stars to homes
that meet specific resilience standards.
After two years of thorough vetting, IBHS’
FORTIFIED Home™ (hazard-specific retrofits) and FORTIFIED for Safer Living® (allhazard, new construction) standards were
selected as the sole construction and
building criteria for the Resilience STAR
pilot project.
Pilot communities featuring new construction and retrofitted homes will be
selected on both the Atlantic and Gulf
Coasts later this fall. The process was delayed somewhat by the shutdown of the
federal government in early October.
Eventually, DHS envisions Resilience STAR
designations being applicable to buildings of all types; during the pilot phase,
however, only single-family homes will
be eligible for designation.
Upon selecting IBHS’ FORTIFIED standards
for the pilot, DHS senior officials said:
The unparalleled value of the IBHS
FORTIFIED program is that it includes easyto-use design guides for homebuilders
and third-party evaluators, which are
based on the same peer-reviewed,
accredited, scientifically sound standards
used in FEMA guidance documents.
DHS has gathered a wealth of evidence
through two years of discussions with
subject matter experts and thought
leaders in the field of structural resilience,
including IBHS, the International Code
Council, FEMA, National Institute for
Building Sciences, National Institute for
Standards and Technology, and Habitat
for Humanity, along with actively
participating in conferences, symposia,
and workshops on structural resilience.
The evidence points unambiguously
to the conclusion that the FORTIFIED
program offers resources that cannot be
found in any other resilience programs.
This public-private initiative will demonstrate how DHS can enhance national resilience by leveraging and integrating efforts that already exist. The pilot adds a
designation and a licensing scheme to existing industry-tested standards and programs, packaged in a compelling business case for building resilient homes.