The NIST-NOAA Resilient Communities Cooperative Initiative and Its Contribution to Coastal Community Resilience

Inspired by the development of a collaborative plan on understanding wildland fires, their interaction with weather and the built environment, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), both within the U.S. Department of Commerce, completed a more comprehensive collaborative plan entitled “Disaster Resilient Communities: A NIST/NOAA Partnership” during the winter of 2006. This plan addresses, in addition to wildland fires, the effects on the built environment of winds (hurricanes, tornadoes, and straight-line thunderstorm-generated winds), storm surge, tsunamis, and earthquakes. Since most of the structural risks appear in coastal areas of the U.S., the plan provides some emphasis on coastal communities. The plan also has two cross-cutting themes: 1) Multi-hazard failure analysis and mitigation and 2) community scale damage forecasting, including loss estimation methodology. This paper provides an overview of the NIST-NOAA plan with a focus on the components of the plan that address issues related to the resiliency of coastal communities.