Given the gravity of manmade and natural hazard events of the last decade, designing buildings that not only offer resistance, but continue to function after a catastrophic event are significant challenges to government and the building industry. The National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) has recommended better understanding of the role of design and construction in infrastructure resilience.

Buildings are complex and becoming more so as owners and policymakers demand particular levels of performance. The focus is no longer on single building characteristics but providing high performance through the optimization of numerous attributes including safety and security, accessibility, historic preservation, functionality, productivity, sustainability, cost effectiveness, aesthetics, and resiliency.

Resiliency has become a growing concern in the national psyche. President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force’s Rebuilding Strategy and other high-profile documents call for the implementation of measures to improve resiliency. However, assigning who is responsible for implementing such resilience strategies is not clear-cut. Multiple agencies at multiple levels of government, along with the private sector and individual citizens, bear responsibility. Recognizing and aligning the diverse parties involved is a necessary step to achieving resilience.

This report, released by the International Code Council (ICC), summarizes the findings of a Town Hall Meeting held during the 2014 ICC Annual Conference. The ICC engaged the Institute to conduct a nationwide survey of building code compliance professionals. The results of this first-of-its-kind demographic survey of code professionals confirmed the growing concern within the building industry about a pending retirement exodus. Eighty percent of the existing code professional workforce is expected to retire in the next 15 years, and more than 30 percent plan to do so within five years.

In this report, the Institute’s Council on Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (CFIRE) issued findings and recommendations on the financing of small commercial retrofit projects for energy efficiency. Although small commercial buildings (less than 50,000 square feet) make up the majority of the nation’s building stock, investments in energy-efficiency retrofit projects for this vast segment of the building stock have lagged behind those for larger buildings. This CFIRE report identifies several barriers to investment in such retrofits.

This white paper, released by the Institute’s Multihazard Mitigation Council (MMC) and Council on Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (CFIRE) in October 2015, promotes the use of private and public incentives to achieve resilience in U.S. communities.

In this report, the Institute’s Council on Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (CFIRE) examines the current and potential roles of three key equity investing structures in capitalizing the sustainable and energy-efficient development and retrofit of investment-grade commercial buildings and renewable-energy production. The report evaluates the effectiveness of these vehicles—Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) and Yieldcos—in accessing the public capital markets and recommends needed legislative and regulatory changes.