News Detail

Resilience – A Priority for Communities Everywhere

4/3/2015

Natural disasters and aging structures continue to cause challenges for cities, towns, and communities.

ACI, working with the construction industry, is leading the way in developing and disseminating the resources needed to improve the sustainable and resilient properties of communities.

“The building industry has a responsibility to assure that the facilities we design, construct, operate, and maintain protect the health, safety and welfare of our nation’s citizens. The concept of resilience is not new. Yet, the world is seeing increasing numbers of hazardous events,” noted Henry Green, President, National Institute on Building Sciences, in his keynote presentation “Resilience: It’s a Concrete Notion,”  presented at ACI’s seventh annual Concrete Sustainability Forum, held in Washington, D.C., in 2014. “For the first time as an industry, we have all come together to formally recognize our role in addressing this increasingly urgent challenge. It is vital to our nation’s communities that we refocus our efforts to address this new paradigm.”

A Tour of the "Designing for Disaster" exhibit at the U.S. National Building Museum followed Green’s 2014 presentation. This tour examines how we assess risks for natural hazards and how we can create policies, plans, and designs yielding safer, more disaster-resilient communities.

The upcoming Concrete Convention and Exposition in Kansas City, MO, April 12 – 14, 2015, will host several resilience-themed sessions. Hot Topic Session: Building Resiliency, sponsored by ACI Committee 130, Sustainability of Concrete, will offer knowledge on how to continue to rebuild and prevent against natural disaster, and ageing structure challenges that buildings face. Presentations in this session include:

Resilience: What Role Will Concrete Play in Making Our Communities Safer?

Enhancements in Building Design and Construction: Prerequisites for Resilient Communities

Building Resilience as a Design Objective.

Other scheduled sessions will address environmental themes: 

Is Global Climate Change Killing Our Concrete Structures? 

Ternary Blends and More (Two-Part Session)

Toward Sustainable Infrastructure with Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites Session (Two-Part Session)

Resilient Housing: Making the Case for Sustainable Residential Concrete (Two-Part Session)

In addition to the resiliency-themed sessions, ACI’s Technical Committees 130, Sustainability of Concrete, 377, Performance-Based Structural Integrity & Resilience of Concrete Structures, and 133, Disaster Reconnaissance, will all meet at the Concrete Convention and Exposition.

ACI, together with the Portland Cement Association, National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, and nearly 30 other concrete-industry institutes and associations participate in the Concrete Joint Sustainability Initiative–a coalition of industry organizations representing companies who make or maintain concrete structures.  With shared goals of educating ourselves, our members, and our customers about the role and responsibilities of concrete in sustainable development.

ACI’s nearly 20,000 members, chapters, and partners around the world are working together to keep the focus on resilience and sustainability to mitigate the financial, environmental, and community impacts from natural threats and aging infrastructure.

Read ACI’s guest blog post on the U.S. Green Building Council website “How Resilience and Sustainability are Shaping Concrete Solutions for Stronger Communities”

For more news, publications, research, committees, events, and free web sessions on concrete sustainability and resilience, visit ACI’s Topics in Concrete web pages on: sustainability.