Lionel Lemay of NRMCA, representing the Concrete Joint Sustainability Initiative (CJSI), presented a 4-point plan for community disaster resilience last week at the Resilient Buildings Workshop in Washington, DC. The workshop, which took place at the National Building Museum, was sponsored by CJSI and co-hosted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) and the National Building Museum. The primary goals of the program were to:

• Provide a solid understanding of resilience and how it aligns with sustainability;

• Demonstrate DHS/NIBS tools and programs to identify and incorporate resilience criteria;

• Discuss how to achieve resilient sustainable design for all types of projects;

• Show how resilience goals are used to select resilient materials and systems for projects;

• Showcase high-performance materials and their benefits; and

• Collect feedback and engage attendees to gain their insights and improve available tools.

Lemay presented a 4-point plan to ensure disaster resilient communities:

• Adopt a building code at the local level;

• Provide incentives to adopt voluntary "code plus" programs such as FORTIFIED for Safer Living;

• Adopt high-performance resilience standards at the local level; and

• Build with robust building materials such as concrete.

This 4-point plan is the main focus of CJSI’s Local Disaster Resilience Workshops offered in communities across the U.S.