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5. Technical Report

Title:	Costs and benefits of resilient construction
Authors:	Southeast Region Research Initiative. Napier, Thomas R.
Keywords:	Resilient Home Program RHP Disaster recovery Resilient technologies Residential structures Hardening Cost-benefit calculation Infrastructure Infrastructure; Environment
Publisher:	Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (U.S.) Engineer Research and Development Center (U.S.)
Description:	Technical Report Abstract: Constructing new homes or hardening existing homes, to increase their resistance to natural disasters, is a challenge. The cost to harden a home is not insignificant. It is an out-of pocket expense which the homeowner may be reluctant to pay, especially in times of economic challenge. In this report, the costs of building or remodeling a home for resilience were calculated in dollar terms. However, the actual benefit is a more abstract notion, making it more difficult for homeowners to justify that design and construction upgrades result in a favorable benefit/cost tradeoff. In order to make a clearer cost–benefit calculation, benefits associated with mitigation methods were defined and quantified. In this case, “benefit” has been defined as the damage avoided by incorporating resilient features, and “monetary value” as the avoided cost of damage. This methodology was then applied to two perils—wildfire and flooding. The final product provides value to homeowners by giving them a bottom-line, dollars-and-cents method to evaluate the overall benefit of the available choices of buying a new house built to resilient standards, renovating their existing house to improve resilience against the disasters, or taking no action and leaving themselves exposed to potential disaster perils and expenses.
Rights:	Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/11681/19926
Appears in Collections:	Technical Report