CAREER: Assessing the Role of Buildings and Organizations in Community Disaster Resilience

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program project will transform how structural design levels of buildings are prioritized in communities through the consideration of social, economic, and environmental factors. In particular, metrics will value the services and goods offered from organizations in times of normal operation and crisis. Drawing on the fields of systems and structural engineering, urban planning, and sociology, an interdisciplinary community-based model will be developed and employed to assess and assign the highest priority to buildings and organizations that support sustained health and welfare in communities to drastically reduce disaster impacts, disruption, and recovery time following future hazard events. Education and outreach tasks overcome systematic barriers to interdisciplinary research through training the next generation of disaster scholars and structural engineers to value cross-disciplinary contributions and approaches, understand their social and ethical responsibility in enhancing community resilience to disasters, and engage in life-long learning. This scientific research contribution thus supports NSF's mission to promote the progress of science and to advance our national welfare. In this case, the benefits will be better designed buildings, which will save lives, economic losses, and reduce panic, anger and confusion during disasters. This CAREER project asks: (1) how do buildings and their hosted organizations act as a system to support the functioning of a community, (2) what characteristics of buildings and their organizations can be leveraged for prioritization in the design stage to better support continued community functioning in the wake of a disaster, and (3) what constitutes acceptable levels of functionality for buildings, organizations, and communities? To answer these questions, existing work and databases are coupled with new data collection to advance system analysis of buildings and organizations accounting for changes across a disaster timeline and uncertainty. New measures for understanding how buildings support community functionality are grounded on the seven community capitals, namely, built, social, cultural, political, financial, natural, and human. Fault tree analysis, multi-attribute utility theory, and hazard simulation coupled with sensitivity analysis are used to recommend a replacement for the risk category that sets the highest priority of structural performance on buildings that host organizations and offer services that critically support community functionality. Tiered mentoring, role playing and focus group educational activities feedback to inform how to disseminate research findings to diverse stakeholders. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.