A Standard to Measure Risk and Building Resilience

Measuring and improving the resiliency of the country’s building stock is not only a national imperative, it preserves property values after a disaster and hastens the return to “business as usual.” Current methods to define and assess resiliency are inconsistent and lack both standardization and verification. The newly formed non-profit US Resiliency Council (USRC) develops technically defensible metrics to evaluate and communicate the resiliency of individual buildings.

The USRC generates Certification of Resilient Engineering (CoRE) Ratings. CoRE Ratings will become the standard for due diligence in real estate transactions and for quantifying the value of improved disaster resilience. Using the highest technical standards, CoRE ratings assess safety, reparability and functionality. The USRC is initially focusing seismic risk, and will extend its efforts to the risk from catastrophic wind and flood events.

 

CoRE Ratings: Certification of Resilient Engineering 
A Standard to Measure Building Resilience

The USRC awards Certification of Resilient Engineering (CoRE) Ratings, much like the US Green Building Council® issues LEED® ratings. Among commercial buildings, CoRE Ratings will become the standard for quantifying the value of improved disaster resilience and key metric for due diligence in real estate transactions.

Ratings will benefit building users, owners, and lenders, by increasing the value of well-designed properties and offering a metric to minimize risk. Policy makers will be able to use CoRE ratings to compare and prioritize relative risks and to form a basis for developing long-term resilience policy. Ultimately, Ratings will benefit our communities by creating demand for better buildings overall.

The CoRE rating system builds on the work of national research efforts by universities, government agencies and non-profit professional organizations. The USRC uses resources with a strong foundation of consensus and technical excellence, establishing CoRE as a consistent and trusted rating system by stakeholders at all levels.

USRC CoRE RATING SYSTEM

USRC CoRE Rating	Safety	Reparability	Functionality
*****	Safe	Loss <5%	Occupiable Immediately Functional < 72 hours
****	Safe	Loss <10%	Occupiable Immediately Functional < 1 month
***	Safe	Loss <20%	Occupiable < 1 month Functional < 6 months
Certified	Safe	Not estimated	Downtime not estimated
Not Certified	Safety Hazard	Not estimated	Downtime not estimated