How Structural Engineers Are Revolutionizing Disaster Risk Reduction

Key Concepts

• Disaster Risk Reduction
• Social Vulnerability
• Life Safety vs. Habitability
• Functional Recovery
• Equitable Resilience
• Building Code Reform
• Community Engagement
• Risk Communication
• Policy Advocacy

Disaster Risk Reduction and Structural Engineering

• Life Safety vs. Habitability: Structural engineers traditionally focus on life safety, ensuring buildings don't collapse during disasters. However, life safety doesn't guarantee habitability, meaning people may not be able to return to their homes or workplaces after a disaster.
• Functional Recovery: This concept emphasizes designing buildings to be quickly habitable after a disaster, not just safe to exit. It's gaining traction in Congress and communities with high disaster risk.
• Proactive vs. Reactive: Engineering efforts are often concentrated in post-disaster scenarios. A shift towards proactive measures, considering habitability and functional recovery, is crucial.
• Social Vulnerability: Engineers need to consider the social context of their designs, including the affordability of retrofits and the availability of temporary housing during reconstruction.
• Community Engagement: Collaboration with planners, public health officials, and local communities is essential to understand their needs and vulnerabilities.
• Expanding Role of Engineers: The role of structural engineers is evolving beyond calculations and risk metrics to encompass community support and social responsibility.
  • "It's more like it's a community that I want to live in and I want to support with my technical background and whatever, you know, skills I have in order to understand that I have to be part of the social fabric and the political fabric of those communities." - Dr. Zara Sed

Case Study: Lima Safe Schools

• Holistic Approach: This project in Lima, Peru, addressed both the structural safety of public schools and the social issues of bullying and gang initiation.
• Socially Embedded Design: Schools were reimagined as multifunctional urban spaces, incorporating safety-evoking design and creating safe corridors between students' homes and schools.
• Community Ownership: The project emphasized collaboration with students and communities to ensure they felt ownership of the solutions.
• Key takeaway: Risk mitigation is most effective when it fosters a sense of societal ownership.

Building Code Reform and Community Resilience

• Code Updates and Enforcement: Many states lack up-to-date building codes, and enforcement is often inadequate. Engineers should advocate for code updates and proper enforcement.
• Equity in Building Codes: Building codes primarily focus on new construction, which often benefits higher-income populations. Retrofitting older buildings that house vulnerable populations is rarely required and difficult to fund.
• Race-Based Equity: Race is a significant factor in social vulnerability, but there's often resistance to explicitly addressing it in policy.
• Funding Mechanisms: Codes must be tied to funding mechanisms that don't burden marginalized communities.
• Community-Level Advocacy: Achieving equitable building codes requires advocacy at the community and state levels.
• Key takeaway: Building codes are not inherently equitable, but community-level advocacy can help make them more so.

Addressing Equity: Practical Steps

• Raising Awareness: Engineers should raise awareness about disaster risks and potential impacts, tailoring their communication to different audiences.
• Multilingual Training: Better multilingual training on equity principles is needed for engineers.
• Integrating Social Vulnerability: Social vulnerability should be integrated into hazard models.
• Empowering Messaging: Communication should empower communities and avoid language that makes them feel "less than."
• Policy Priorities: Engineers should work together to develop and advocate for policy priorities that address social vulnerability.
• Key takeaway: There is a privilege to understand your disaster risk and do something about it.

Engaging with Policy Makers

• Levels of Governance: Advocacy is needed at the federal, state, and local levels.
• Federal Level: Focus on federal funding and laws that set guidelines for states and localities (e.g., National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program - NEHRP).
• State Level: Build relationships with state policy makers and become a trusted advisor.
• Local Level: Participate in community meetings and city council meetings to advocate for resilience measures.
• Unified Voice: It's crucial for agencies and organizations to speak with a unified voice to maintain credibility.
• Building Relationships: Building relationships with staffers and policy makers is essential for effective advocacy.
• Key takeaway: Advocacy is something that anybody can pick up.

Final Advice for Engineers

• Avoid Siloing: Expand your knowledge beyond technical skills to include social, governance, political, and economic aspects.
• Listen to Community Priorities: Understand the priorities of community members to better integrate your expertise.
• Resilience and Equity: Recognize that resilience without equity is not true resilience.
• Contribution to Society: Think about how your work contributes to improving the lives of everyone, not just buildings.
• Key takeaway: Resilience without equity is not really resilience.

Synthesis/Conclusion

The discussion emphasizes that structural engineering's role in disaster risk reduction is evolving beyond life safety to encompass habitability, functional recovery, and social equity. Engineers need to proactively engage with communities, understand their vulnerabilities, and advocate for policies that promote equitable resilience. This requires expanding their knowledge beyond technical skills, communicating effectively with diverse audiences, and building relationships with policy makers at all levels of governance. The ultimate goal is to create communities that are not only structurally sound but also socially just and resilient in the face of disasters.