More than a decade after releasing its original report on mitigation in 2005, the National Institute of Building Sciences began a multi-year study on natural hazard mitigation. Since then, the Institute has released a series of reports as it completes its findings.
In January 2019, the Institute issued the Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: 2018 Interim Report. The 2018 Interim Report highlights the significant savings that result from implementing mitigation strategies in terms of safety, and the prevention of property loss and disruption of day-to-day life.
The report is a compilation of the project team’s results to this point and includes the findings from the 2017 Interim Report, released in January 2018, and a second report, Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: Utilities and Transportation Infrastructure, released in October 2018. (See previous documents described below.)
For this part of the ongoing study, the Institute’s project team looked at the benefits of designing buildings to meet the 2018 International Residential Code (IRC) and 2018 International Building Code (IBC)—the model building codes developed by the International Code Council (ICC)—versus the prior generation of codes represented by 1990-era design and National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) requirements. The project team found a national benefit of $11 for every $1 invested.
Based on the project team’s estimates, communities that consistently meet the latest editions of commonly adopted code requirements, culminating in the 2018 IRC and IBC, have added 30,000 new jobs to the construction-materials industry and an approximate .3% increase in utilization of domestically produced construction materials for each year of new construction (over what would have been if buildings were designed as they were in 1990).
For more reports and information visit the National Institute of Building Sciences website.