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

生活的方方面面对人们来说没有什么比他们的家更重要。建筑法规是监管的一种主要形式，也是各州和社会试图让自己的家园在飓风和地震等危险面前变得安全的主要机制之一。该项目促进了理解和改进住房设计和建造中的关键防灾做法的遵守所需的科学。它使用监管实用主义的概念来应对这一挑战，该概念认为，提高住房存量的弹性和减少对住房的灾害影响可能需要优先考虑建筑法规中允许建筑商以最低成本和最有效的方式实现这些目标的那些方面。通过工程评估，结合对建筑商和居民的采访和调查，该项目正在收集必要的数据，以设计有用的干预措施，以提高对关键的防灾建筑实践的规范遵从性，并通过这样做，保护人类生命和建筑环境免受灾难的影响。尽管建筑规范与许多人的生活息息相关，但很少有研究研究监管战略和健全的工程如何共同降低灾害风险。项目工作旨在检查建筑商和家庭对关键的防灾建筑实践的遵守情况，并探索影响遵守的因素，包括家庭和建设者的态度和经验、当地法规、感知和实际成本以及当地建筑实践。至关重要的是，该项目将使用以绩效为基础的工程方法，量化在住房安全和事后住房入住率方面遵守防灾建筑做法所带来的好处和风险。这些调查结果将被用来根据关键建筑做法在减少灾害风险方面的有效性和可行性(例如，在成本和与当地建筑做法的兼容性方面)确定这些做法并确定其优先次序。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、促进合规的干预措施。该项目在阿拉斯加和波多黎各两个多危险的美国背景下进行，提供了一个差异最大的比较，以探索基于社区特征的建筑实践、合规性和干预结果如何不同。它还将涉及对学生的跨学科培训，以支持受过培训的劳动力的发展，以应对与抗灾住房相关的监管和工程挑战。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.