ASTM E3130-18

5.1 Investments in projects supporting community resilience are characterized by uncertainties regarding the frequency and magnitude of natural, technological, and human-caused disruptions. Accounting for these low-probability, high-consequence events challenge traditional economic evaluation methods.

5.2 The traditional approach to evaluating the benefit-cost of investment decisions routinely focus on measures directly tied to loss avoidance.

5.3 Following this guide when performing an economic evaluation assures the user that relevant economic information, including information regarding uncertainties and indirect inputs, is considered for capital project facing possible disruptions from natural, technological, and human-caused hazards.

5.4 Use this guide in the planning phases of community resilience plan development process. Consideration of risk mitigation choices early in the planning process allows both greater flexibility in addressing specific hazards and lower costs associated with their implementation.

5.5 Use this guide to integrate community resilience plans with economic development, zoning, hazard mitigation, and other community planning activities that affect buildings, public works, and infrastructure systems.

5.6 Use this guide to identify all relevant inputs—that is, costs and benefits (savings)—associated with construction, implementation, and use of the capital asset, over the lifetime of the asset. Relevant inputs include direct, indirect and externalities, and non-market values.

5.7 Use this guide for economic evaluations based on Practices E917 (life-cycle costs), E964 (benefit-to-cost and savings-to-investment ratios), E1057 (internal rate of return and adjusted internal rate of return), E1074 (net benefits and net savings), E1121 (payback), E1699 (value engineering), and E1765 (analytical hierarchy process for multi-attribute decision analysis), and Guide E1369 (treatment of uncertainty).

5.8 Use this guide in conjunction with Guide E2204 to summarize the results of economic evaluations involving natural, technological, and human-caused hazards.

5.9 This guide generalizes Guide E2506 (cost-effective risk mitigation plan for new and existing constructed facilities) by evaluating investments into capital assets for a community.

1.1 This guide describes a generic economic methodology for evaluating investment decisions aimed to improve the ability of communities to adapt to, withstand, and quickly recover from, disruptive events. The methodology describes a framework for developing cost-effective community resilience strategies for new and existing constructed facilities—buildings, industrial facilities, and other critical infrastructure. This guide provides owners and managers of constructed facilities, architects, engineers, constructors, other providers of professional services for constructed facilities, and researchers and analysts with an approach for planning and comparing resilience strategies.

1.2 This guide frames the economic decision process by identifying and comparing the relevant present and future streams of costs and benefits to a community—the latter realized through cost savings and damage loss avoidance—associated with new capital investment into resilience to those generated by the status-quo.

1.3 This guide provides a means to increase the capacity of communities to objectively and effectively compare and contrast capital investment projects through consideration of benefits and costs while maintaining an awareness of system resilience. Topics related to non-market values and uncertainty are also explored.

1.4 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety, health, and environmental practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.

1.5 This international standard was developed in accordance with internationally recognized principles on standardization established in the Decision on Principles for the Development of International Standards, Guides and Recommendations issued by the World Trade Organization Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Committee.