Some are developing resilience ratings. FEMA has trademarked "Resilience STAR" for resilient products, styled after the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Energy STAR program. The U.S. Resiliency Council has a prototype for a Certification of Resilient Engineering rating, styled after the USGBC's LEED green-building rating. Eventually, CoRE will assess safety, repairability and functionality under all hazards. But the first generation will address only earthquake risk.
IIBHS's Reinhold is leery of credit-based ratings. Resilience must be evaluated holistically, he says. A weak link can negate resiliency, even if a rating is high.
"It is interesting to consider a LEED pilot credit around a third-party criteria, like Resilience STAR," says USGBC's Pyke. "However, we need these efforts to come into sharper focus before we can take action."
The U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development's Hurricane Sandy Task Force is set to release its rebuilding strategy on Aug. 19. HUD announced, on Aug. 9, the 10 finalists of its regional "Rebuild by Design" competition to promote innovation in resilient buildings. HUD plans to fund construction of the winning concepts using some of the $15.2 billion in community-development block grants the U.S. Congress appropriated for post-Sandy rebuilding.
There are local contests, too. On Oct. 24, AIA New York will announce the winner of the "For a Resilient Rockaway" competition to garner ideas for a sustainable community on an 80-acre waterfront site in Queens.
On June 13, AIA and Architecture for Humanity announced an ideas competition for resilient communities. And on May 7, FEMA announced 30 recipients of up to $35,000 in seed money from the FEMA 2012 Community Resilience Innovation Challenge.
In June, President Obama directed federal agencies to make sure any new project funded with taxpayer dollars is built to withstand increased flood risks. To help, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a sea-level-rise planning tool that provides users with information about future risks of coastal flooding in parts of New York and New Jersey.
"We are all still taking baby steps when it comes to understanding what resilient communities really are and what resilient standards might look like in the future," says Kevin Shanley, CEO of landscape architect SWA Group. "For now, it's really perfect that so many people are talking about the issues and are exploring possible solutions.
"The optimal strategies should emerge from this outwardly confusing but ultimately efficient creative effort," Shanley adds. "In time, standards-setting bodies can adopt the best approaches."
