Documents guide use of incentives to improve resilience in built environment

by Brianna Crandall — October 14, 2016 — The National Institute of Building Sciences recently released documents containing updated research and recommendations on using incentives to improve resilience. The documents were presented at a briefing of U.S. Congressional staff in September by representatives from the Institute’s Multihazard Mitigation Council (MMC) and Council on Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (CFIRE).

Earlier this year, the Institute went before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management to give testimony based on the MMC-CFIRE white paper, Developing Pre-Disaster Resilience Based on Public and Private Incentivization.

That ground-breaking work describes how the nation can achieve resilience to hazards in a cost-effective manner through a holistic and integrated set of public, private and hybrid programs that incentivize mitigation action. André Carson (D-Indiana), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, requested this follow-up briefing to help educate Congressional staff.

During this follow-up briefing to help educate Congressional staff, MMC and CFIRE representatives presented an overview of the original white paper and talked about the supporting Addendum to the White Paper, which provides an updated concept of incentivization; additional examples of incentives for the stakeholder community; and proposed layered approaches using multiple incentivization strategies; and defines a resilience economy to enhance the construction industry.

The MMC-CFIRE handed out the document, An Introduction to Pre-Disaster Resilience Based on Public and Private Incentivization, which summarizes the white paper, and offered a one-page list, Recommendations for Incentivizing Resilience, of steps the federal government can take to better achieve disaster resilience through incentivization.

The documents are available on the National Institute of Building Sciences Web site: