Defining and Assessing Resilience

The increasing threat to communities from storms, floods, wildfire, and extreme temperatures has increased the focus on the resilience of the built environment. Merriam-Webster defines resilience as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”. While resilience is a simple concept, incorporating resilience into buildings and communities can be extremely complicated.

To evaluate building and community resilience it can be useful to examine it through a series of lenses, including personal or emotional experience, financial impact and community impact. This presentation uses multiple lenses to discuss aspects of resilience (mitigation, disruptive events, response and recovery) in order to understand the ecosystem of standards, specifications, and codes used to define and assess resilience. Government entities, industry organizations, and standards development organizations are developing criteria with which to assess and improve resilience. Many of these criteria have grown out of past work and existing standards that address energy efficiency, durability and sustainability. These criteria range in scope from the individual building to the community level. This presentation will review the industry activities currently underway to assess and improve the resilience of the built environment, including a review of the progress of code, standard practice and guideline development.

Speaker:

Dr. Theresa Weston is a building science research professional specializing in the durability and energy efficiency of buildings.

Theresa started The Holt Weston Consultancy in November 2020 to foster innovation of building materials, and products to improve the resilience and sustainability of buildings. Prior to starting the Holt Weston Consultancy, Dr Weston was a DuPont Laureate with the Dupont Safety and Construction business, having worked for DuPont for 35 years. DuPont Laureate is the highest technical professional level in the DuPont company.

Theresa received her Batchelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Masters and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering, both from the California Institute of Technology.

While at DuPont, Theresa demonstrated a track record of anticipating the need for new technology through the strategic analysis of technology trends and driving the deployment of innovation in the marketplace. She is an inventor on four patents, two of which introduced new product categories into the construction market: 1) Development of industry’s first “drainage wrap”, creating a new waterresistive barrier category [US6355333B1 “Construction Membrane” (2002)], and (2) Introduced the category of “formable window flashing” [US7351296B2“Stretchable Flashing Materials and Processes for Making” (2008)].

Dr. Weston is a 25-year member of ASHRAE, having served on the Technical Activities Committee, the Standards Committee and as the Chair of the Residential Buildings Committee, as well as serving on a number of Technical and Standards Project Committees. As chair of ASHRAE 90.2 ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.2-2018, Energy-Efficient Design of Low-Rise Residential Buildings, Theresa led the committee to transform the standard to a leadership standard. She was also a member of the project committee which produced the initial publication of ASHRAE Standard 160 Criteria for Moisture-Control Design Analysis in Buildings.

Theresa is active with industry standard and code development activities outside of ASHRAE, including with ICC, and ASTM. She chairs ASTM E06.41 the Performance of Buildings Subcommittee on Air Leakage and Ventilation. She currently serves on the ASTM Committee on Publications and as a member of the ICC Residential Code Interpretation Committee.

Dr. Weston is a prolific author and industry speaker. Recent activities include chairing an ASTM Symposium and resulting special technical publication on Whole Building Air Leakage: Testing and Building Performance Impacts (STP1615) as well as presentations at ASHRAE, EEBA and RESNET Conferences. She is the Vice-Chair of the ASHRAE sponsored Buildings Conference Series.