The Case for Resiliency
According to NOAA, from 1980 to 2024, the U.S. sustained 403 weather and climate disasters in which overall damages reached or exceeded $1 billion (inflation-adjusted). Tropical cyclones—including hurricanes and tropical storms—account for over $1.5 trillion in total damage since 1980, and are the costliest event type among billion-dollar disasters. After tropical cyclones, other billion-dollar disaster types ranked by cumulative costs are: severe storms, droughts, flooding, wildfires, winter storms, and freezes. The Southeast Climate Region (including AL, FL, GA, NC, SC, and VA) experienced 220 billion-dollar events from 1980–2024, making it one of the most disaster-impacted regions in terms of frequency. In 2024, the U.S. recorded 27 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, collectively costing about $182.7 billion.
Despite the evidence – we are ignoring the consequences of building in vulnerable places.
According to the National Institute of Building Sciences, hazard mitigation is one of the highest-return investments a community can make. Their widely cited 2017 report found that federally funded mitigation grants save the nation an average of $6 in future disaster costs for every $1 spent. Similarly, designing buildings to exceed select code requirements yields a $4 return for every $1 invested. More recent analyses suggest that depending on the type of resilience measure, the benefit-cost ratio can be even greater—ranging from $4 up to $11 for every $1 spent—underscoring the long-term value of proactive hazard mitigation.
They estimated that implementing these two sets of mitigation strategies would prevent 600 deaths, 1 million nonfatal injuries and 4,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Resiliency is similar to sustainability but there is a difference. Sustainability is reducing a building’s impact on the environment and resiliency is reducing the environment’s impact on a building or community.
Generally, sustainability initiatives are add to a buildings resiliency but some resiliency requirements are not as sustainable, especially when they’re creating redundancy.
Resilience is about surviving and thriving—regardless of the challenge—and whether it's chronic stress or acute shock. Chronic stresses weaken the fabric of a city on a day-to-day, or cyclical, basis. They include issues like global warming, poverty, homelessness, and aging infrastructure. Acute shocks are sudden, sharp events that threaten a community. Often acute shocks are weather related, but they can also be human induced such as an act of terror.
Four Kinds of Resiliency:
Climate Resiliency
Architect Lance Hosey identifies four kinds of resiliency. The first is climate resiliency which is reducing the environment’s impact on the building. Depending on the anticipated hazard, buildings and landscapes may be protected or hardened against the elements to withstand hurricanes, floods, and fires. Other options include adapting or retreating.
In the case of rising sea levels, protective options might include building levees or other “hard” methods, accommodating would be raising structures or using “soft” or natural protection measures such as wetlands restoration, and finally retreating would be accomplished by moving or demolishing flood-prone buildings.
This is a huge issue for the southeastern US in particular, since it alone represents nearly 70% of the entire projected populations at risk.
Functional Resiliency
The second is functional resiliency. This includes the systems where the building is still habitable and functions. Current standards and codes focus on preserving lives by reducing the likelihood of significant building damage or structural collapse from hazards But they generally don’t address the additional need to preserve quality of life by keeping buildings habitable and functioning as normally as possible, what we call ‘immediate occupancy.
Community Resiliency
The third is community resiliency which focuses on municipal and neighborhood resources that help people bounce back to normality or better. The National Institute of Standards & Technology’s Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems provides a practical and flexible approach to help all communities improve their resilience by setting priorities and allocating resources to manage risks for their prevailing hazards.
Aesthetic Resiliency
The fourth is Aesthetic Resilience which is best described by the Senegalese poet Baba Dioum, “In the end, we conserve only what we love.”