Collaborative Research: Regulatory Pragmatism and Building Codes for Hazard-Resilient Housing

对于人们来说，生活中没有什么方面比家更重要了。建筑规范是一种主要的监管形式，也是国家和社会在面临飓风和地震等危险时试图使家园安全的主要机制之一。该项目推进了理解和改善住房设计和建造中关键的抗灾实践的科学。它使用监管实用主义的概念来应对这一挑战，该概念认为，提高住房存量的抗灾能力和减少灾害对住房的影响可能需要优先考虑建筑规范的那些方面，使建筑商能够最便宜和有效地实现这些目标。通过工程评估，结合对建筑商和居民的访谈和调查，该项目正在收集必要的数据，以设计有用的干预措施，使主要的抗灾建筑做法更加符合法规，从而保护人类生命和建筑环境免受灾害的影响。尽管建筑规范影响到许多人的生活，但很少有研究探讨监管策略和健全的工程如何共同减少灾害风险。项目工作旨在检查建筑商和家庭对关键的抗灾建筑实践的遵守情况，并探索影响遵守情况的因素，包括家庭和建筑商的态度和经验、当地法规、感知和真实的成本，和当地的建筑实践。至关重要的是，与此同时，该项目将使用基于性能的工程方法，量化与遵守住房安全和事后住房占用方面的抗灾建筑做法有关的效益和风险。这些调查结果将用于确定关键的建筑做法，并根据其在减少灾害风险方面的有效性及其可重复性（例如，在成本和与当地建筑实践的兼容性方面）。在初步调查结果的基础上，该项目将考虑设计和评估一项务实的、促进遵守的干预措施。该项目是在两个多危害的美国背景下进行的，阿拉斯加和波多黎各，提供了一个最不同的比较，以探讨如何建筑实践，合规性和干预结果不同的基础上社区的特点。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Few aspects of life are more important to people than their homes. Building codes are a major form of regulation and one of the primary mechanisms by which states and societies try to make their homes safe in the face of hazards like hurricanes and earthquakes. This project advances the science needed to understand and improve compliance with key hazard-resistant practices in the design and construction of housing. It approaches this challenge using the concept of regulatory pragmatism, which argues that improving housing stock resilience and reducing disaster impacts for housing may necessitate prioritizing those aspects of the building code that allow builders to most cheaply and effectively reach these goals. Through engineering assessment, combined with interviews and surveys of builders and residents, this project is collecting the data necessary to design useful interventions to increase code compliance with key hazard-resistant building practices and, in so doing, protect human life and the built environment from the effects of a disaster. Despite the fact that building codes touch the lives of many, there is little research studying how regulatory strategies and sound engineering can together reduce disaster risk.Project work aims to examine compliance with key hazard-resistant building practices among builders and households, and explore the factors that influence compliance, including household and builder attitudes and experiences, local regulations, perceived and real costs, and local building practices. Crucially, in parallel, the project will use performance-based engineering methods to quantify the benefits and risks associated with complying with hazard-resistant building practices in terms of housing safety and post-event housing occupancy. These findings will be used to identify and prioritize key building practices based on their effectiveness in reducing disaster risk and their achievability (e.g., in terms of cost and compatibility with local building practices). Building on initial findings, the project will then consider the design and assessment of a pragmatic, compliance-fostering intervention. The project is conducted in two multi-hazard U.S. contexts, Alaska and Puerto Rico, providing a most-different comparison to explore how building practices, compliance, and intervention outcomes differ based on community characteristics. It will also involve interdisciplinary training of students supporting the development of a workforce trained to address regulatory and engineering challenges associated with disaster resilient housing.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.