The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced plans to extend its new voluntary Resilience STAR program to include critical infrastructure. Modeled after EPA’s Energy STAR program, Resilience STAR encourages disaster-resilient homes using construction standards developed by the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety.
The goal of Resilience STAR is to support a business case for making buildings more resilient to extreme weather events, according to DHS. The Department hopes to “raise the bar to improve the resilience of our built environment,” including critical infrastructure.
DHS has also urged Congress to promote resilience by using the language of the extreme weather title of the Senate-passed Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) as a template to improve resilience requirements for the hundreds of billions of dollars the federal government invests annually in water and other infrastructure. A section on extreme weather was added to the Senate’s version of WRDA in the wake of Hurricane Sandy that focuses on reducing water infrastructure risks associated with hurricanes, coastal storms, inland flooding and other extreme weather events.
Every dollar spent by the federal government on mitigation saves an average of four dollars post-disaster, according to a study from the DHS Multi-hazard Mitigation Council.
More information about Resilience Star is available online atwww.disastersafety.org/resilience-star.