Designing for Natural Hazards

Published Monday, May 15, 2023

Home Innovation Research Labs (Home Innovation) was tasked by HUD to develop a set of practical, actionable guidelines to assist builders and developers in designing and constructing residential buildings, neighborhoods, and accessory structures in a manner that could improve residential resilience to natural hazards and integrate resiliency throughout the community. The resilience guides provide technical content in a straightforward way that is easy for a layperson to understand, while also providing references through which design professionals, builders, developers, and public officials can obtain full details. The guide consists of five volumes. Each volume focuses on a major category of hazard that may pertain to a given project: wind, water, fire, earth (seismic, earthslides, sinkholes), and auxiliary (other hazards such as volcanoes, hail, and temperature extremes). These resilience guides are not intended to substitute for engineering or architectural project design work; rather, the technical guidance identifies components that can be enhanced or improved to achieve above-code performance to make residential buildings and other community assets more resilient.

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