September 12, 2023, 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. MDT
The Future is Here: New Flood-Resilient Building Standards Raise the Bar for Risk Protection
Climate-driven increases in sea levels, storm surges, and flood risks make it clear that building standards of the past won’t hold up to today’s escalating risk levels. Luckily, they don’t have to—the American Society of Civil Engineers recently announced an update to their design standards that will protect buildings from 500-year floods as opposed to the previous 100-year flood standard.
The new standard was informed by the National Initiative to Advance Building Codes (NIABC), a multi-agency federal effort working to incorporate consensus-based codes into programs that fund or provide technical assistance on construction and rebuilding. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently created a Building Code Strategy as part of the effort.
Join John Ingargiola of FEMA’s Building Sciences Branch as he discusses how the new standard is a recipe for flood resilient design, blending ingredients that include considerations for higher recurrence intervals, expanding floodplains, and sea level rise. He’ll also detail how the new standard interacts with the FEMA Future of Flood Risk Data initiative and how it will continue to improve in the future.
Attendees will learn how to access the new standard, tools to apply it, and ways to stay engaged with the NIABC.
Speaker:
John Ingargiola, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Lead Physical Scientist, Building Sciences Branch
Natural Hazards Center Overview Slides
Ingargiola Presentation Slides
Continuing Education Credits:
This webinar is eligible for one contact hour of emergency management training within the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) certification program OR one continuing education credit under the Association of State Floodplain Managers Certified Floodplain Manager Program. The webinar is not eligable for both credits, so please choose what type of credit you wish to recieve when you request your certificate following the webinar.
For more information about continuing education credits and how to earn them, please click here.
John Ingargiola is a lead physical scientist in the Building Sciences Branch of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration in Washington, D.C. Ingargiola’s work involves a broad range of mitigation activities that include pre- and post-disaster building sciences, building science education, working with model building codes and standards-producing organizations, guiding agency policy and strategy on building codes, and developing technical guidance for hazard mitigation and coordination. He has managed FEMA’s award-winning post-disaster Mitigation Assessment Team building performance studies for Hurricanes Charley, Ivan, Katrina and Sandy. Since publication, many of the building code, building material, and best practice recommendations contained in these reports have been implemented, thereby improving building performance and increasing resilience to future events. Ingargiola holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Civil Engineering from the Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art.