Integrating Future Climate into Codes and Standards

There is an urgent demand to advance design practice so that climate hazard projections can be incorporated into our standards and building codes. Development of design criteria that address future hazard conditions requires application of climate science to engineering requirements for design hazards and reassessment of current approaches for addressing risk, as reliability methods based on historical events cannot fully address the risks for future nonstationary.

Jennifer Goupil will open this session with a broad overview of current efforts to advance best practices, standards, and codes for future hazard events, including wind, storm surge, flooding, rain, and snow, and moderate the panel discussion after presentations on the following topics:

NIST Roadmap for Incorporating Climate Projections into Codes and Standards for the Built Environment, based on a critical assessment of current data, methods and practices and research and implementation steps needed to incorporate climate science into codes and standards and improve resilience -Marc Levitan

ASCE/SEI plans and progress for incorporating climate change into design guidance and standards, including collaboration with federal partners NOAA, NIST and FEMA, highlighting progress of the new ASCE 7-28 Subcommittee on Future Conditions of Environmental Hazards, and plans to get this information into practice even before publication of ASCE 7-28 -Don Scott

Discussion of the roles of FEMA and ASCE as it relates to future climate-related activities and support for code development and adaptation of the next generation of standards and codes including FEMA 500-year FIRM flood maps, ASCE/SEI 7-28 Chapter 5 Flood Loads and ASCE/SEI 24 Flood Resistant Design and Construction. – John Ingargiola & Dan Cox

PDH 1.5