NIST Economics Team doc – Drs. Sammy Zahran, Harvey Cutler, Martin Shields and Daniele Tavani

The Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning at Colorado State University, funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will accelerate the development of system-level models and databases that will provide the technology for enhancing community resilience in a research and development program involving three major thrusts. In addition to faculty at CSU, the team members include noted experts in resilience from the University of Oklahoma, Oregon State University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, the University of Illinois, the University of Washington, the University of South Alabama, and two minority serving institutions, California Polytechnic University, Pomona and Texas A&M-Kingsville. The decision framework created in the Center will provide a unique set of science-based measurement tools, supported by fully integrated databases and risk-informed decision methods, to optimize the design and management of individual facilities and interdependent community infrastructure systems so as to achieve resilience goals while managing life-cycle costs, thus making it possible to establish, for the first time, a business case for achieving community resilience.