NIST Releases New Community Resilience Planning Guide

On the three year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy—one of the costliest natural disasters on the east coast in recent years—the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a new community resilience planning guide that is intended to help U.S. communities better withstand and rebound from severe weather events.

The NIST Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems contains a practical six-step process that communities can follow to develop resilience plans to help them prepare for hazards, adapt to changing conditions and withstand and rapidly recover from disruptions. It outlines crucial resilience steps for communities including:

• Form a collaborative planning team

• Understand the situation

• Determine goals and objectives

• Plan development

• Plan preparation, review and approval

• Plan implementation and maintenance

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) also supports resilience planning, as a large number of its accredited standards developers have various standards that can be utilized for resilience and disaster preparation, ranging from floods and hurricanes to wildfires and power outages, as highlighted earlier this year during National Preparedness Month.

To access the NIST resilience guide, which will be updates as new best practices and research results become available—visit NIST's website.