All too often we focus on what the federal government is doing to build disaster resilience. Federal grant funding, though sizable and growing is only one piece of the resilience puzzle. A recently published academic study and a new state-level grant program point to progress made by other stakeholders to incentivize hazardmitigation investments.

Alabama mitigation study

The National Institute of Building Sciences recently brought together leaders from across the architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) industries for the Women Executives in Building Symposium.

One presentation, “Resiliency: A Business Imperative with Profitable Benefits,” addressed climate change litigation. It was presented by Jessica Mederson, partner at Stafford Rosenbaum LLP.

The 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season is here, and Colorado State University released its forecast.

Some states recently were awarded flood mitigation grants by the federal government as well as some state governments.

Federal grants included:

Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality has begun working with Portland’s 13 bulk fuel terminals to assess their seismic vulnerabilities and implement mitigation, according to an opinion piece published today in The Oregonian by NIBS Special Advisor, Lifelines Infrastructure Initiative Yumei Wang, PE, FASCE.

Early this month, NIBS, with the support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), held a mitigation workshop on natural hazards. The workshop was attended by more than 50 built environment professionals, policymakers from the White House and Congress, and many federal and industry partners.

Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the US surpassed $1 trillion in losses and 5,000 deaths from 122 separate billion-dollar disasters over the past seven years. These eyewatering losses demonstrate the need to redouble our collective efforts to reduce disaster impacts.

We want to take this moment to thank you for following and supporting the National Institute of Building Sciences.

The greater built environment is critical to our work to ensure the nation remains healthy, resilient, sustainable, and prepared.

This year, we developed a new three-year strategic plan to guide the organization. Our goals are simple: climate adaptation and mitigation, transformational building sciences and technology, industry development and diversification, and visibility and recognition.