1. Forum on Risk Management and Assessment of Natural Hazards
Fire, Wind, and Earthquake Disaster Reduction Research David D. Evans Fire Research Division Building and Fire Research Laboratory
Forum on Risk Management and Assessment of Natural Hazards
February 5-6, 2001
Washington, DC
Good morning everyone, I am Karen Brown, the Deputy Directory of NIST.
I would like to welcome you NIST and will give you a very brief overview of NIST, what we do and where this work on heat flux research fits at NIST.
U.S. Department of
Commerce
Technology Administration

2. National Institute of Standards and Technology
NIST, a non-regulatory Federal agency, works with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards.
Technology
Deployment
R&D
Measurements
Standards
Quality
Building and Fire Research Lab.
The source of the measurement and prediction tools used to transform the building and fire safety communities.
Good morning everyone, I am Karen Brown, the Deputy Directory of NIST.
I would like to welcome you NIST and will give you a very brief overview of NIST, what we do and where this work on heat flux research fits at NIST.
Helping America Measure Up
U.S. Department of
Commerce
Technology Administration

3. NIST Measurement and Standards Laboratories
Enhance US industrial competitiveness and economic growth through critically-needed standards, measurements, and data
Finally, and for this workshop, most immediate, is NIST's Measurements and Standards Program, involving its seven Laboratories and Technology Services unit. This effort is planned and implemented in cooperation with industry and focused on infrastructure technologies, such as measurements, standards, evaluated data, and test methods. The benefits from such enabling technologies typically spread across entire industries, and the investments needed to produce them cannot be recovered by individual companies.
All of the work being discussed today is done in this part of NIST. When it is successful, ATP and MEP are outreach organization which can help carry the results through to industry.
Highly leveraged measurement and research capabilities supporting trillions of dollars in products and services

4. Fire, Wind, and Earthquake Engineering
TECHNICAL APPROACH
DISASTER MITIGATION: Enable the development and adoption of performance-based standards for new construction and retrofit of existing construction.
NIST PRODUCTS
Measurement, evaluation, and performance prediction technologies enabling cost-effective improvements in practice to increase the disaster-resistance of new and existing construction
DISASTER RESPONSE AND RECOVERY: Develop and disseminate nondestructive evaluation methods for condition assessment and quality control.

5. NIST’s Legislative Mandates
Fire Research Center established at NIST
To perform and support research on all aspects of fire with the aim of providing scientific and technical knowledge applicable to the prevention and control of fires.
• Research to understand the fundamental processes underlying all aspects of fire.
• Research into factors affecting human victims of fire and the performance of individual members of the fire services.
• Operation tests, demonstration projects, and fire investigations in support of the research [Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974]
Role in NEHRP
Goal B: Improve techniques to reduce seismic vulnerability of facilities and systems
Goal A: Accelerate implementation of earthquake loss-reduction practices and policies.
Budget: NIST represents 2% of NEHRP program

6. Urban-Wildland Fire
Site Specific Fire Model
Include building fire effects in urban-wildland fire spread models.
Quantifying the value of mitigation measures
Means to study strategies for protection and fire fighting with limited resources.
1993 Laguna Fire
Newsweek 1 1

7. ALOFT A Large Outdoor Fire Plume Trajectory Software
In Situ Burning -- Oil Spills
ALOFT A Large Outdoor Fire Plume Trajectory Software
Downwind prediction of fire plume
trajectory and concentrations
Terrain and structures modeled
Based on NIST measurements
over 10 orders of magnitude
Used for state guidelines and
approvals for intentional burning
Field use with portable PC’s
PICTURES (clockwise from upper left): (1) ALOFT simulation of oil spill burn near Valdez, Alaska,
(2) TEM micrograph of smoke particle (size 1 micrometer), (3) NIST fuel burn in Mobile Alabama,
with blimp smoke sampling, (4) ALOFT-PC prediction of downwind smoke concentrations.
ALOFT is software developed by NIST to help the oil industry respond to spills and industrial fires.
It was developed under support from DoI, USCG, State of Alsaka, and the oil industry. It is the first
of a series of industrial fire simulation (IFS) tools to be developed by BFRL.
Measurements over an enormous range of scales have been used in the development and
verification of the software and related hazard analysis. Soot particle TEM micrographs from
CSTL (Eric Steel) and particle collection from airborne blimp instrument platforms at large scale
fire experiments exemplified the range of NIST measurements made in this research.
ALOFT has been used to establish approval guidelines for intensional burning in Alaska. The PC
version of the software has been distributed to regional response teams around the country.
This software has been used to plan the large scale oil burns in Tomakomai, Japan.
ALOFT is capable of calculating smoke plume trajectories including the local effects of terrain
and man-made structures. With the cooperation of ITL (Terry Griffin, John Hagedorn, Christine
Piatko, and Holly Rushmeier) walk-thru and visulaization of burn events based on ALOFT
computations have been assembled.
PC version of ALOFT incorporates many algorithms to assemble the model inputs from field
observations. ALOFT is a compliment to NOAA’s ALOHA air model used by emergency
responders including the fire service.

8. Next Generation Standards for Wind Loads
Objective
Enable the development and use of next generation wind load standards by U.S. industry to achieve safer, more cost-effective, and efficient design of structures
Challenge
Develop advanced computational models based on state-of-the-art aerodynamic measurements and extreme value statistics to predict time- and direction-dependent wind effects associated with performance limit states, including structural collapse.
Milestones
Impacts
Bottom line - The NIST laboratories do two things - develop world class metrology and work with U.S. industry to use it to advantage through their products and services in global markets and at home. Doing has required we shift to a new, portfolio approach to our programs. Our STRS program has 10 objectives - 6 of which we call major products. The remaining four include the balance of our measurement and rprediciton wi
In the last two years we have implemented a sea change in BFRL reducing the number of STRS projects from over ___ to just ___ in FY ‘98. In particular, we are investing __% of our STRS on just 6 major products. These are designed to address major needs with high impact products developed and implemented in partnership with carefully chosen industrial collaborators. These products will be developed within 3-5 years and early demonstrations in use will be evaluated to quantity impacts. This necessitated major shifts in the way we do thingsall the way from the bench up within the lab. These are $1-3million , typically multi-division efforts.
The buildng and fire communities represent a major share of the doestic economy and very important potential for export development.
The lack of research support for these industries has
Estimated loss reduction of about $1 billion/year based on 5-10% reduction each in wind-induced structural losses and in structural material costs
NIST Tech Note on Fujita Tornado Scale (3Q98)
Concept paper Int. J. Wind Engrg. & Ind. Aerodyn. (4Q98)
ASCE 7-98 changed to allow electronic standards (4Q99)
CE article Tornado Aftermath: Questioning Tools (1Q99)
Paper on wind directionality effects (4Q99)
Paper on extreme effects uncertainties (2Q00)
Paper on collapse-induced by wind fluctuations (4Q00)
Pilot project demonstration of electronic standards (4Q01)
Complete electronic standard for public release (4Q02)
Research Team
Leader: Emil Simiu
Collaborators: Cornell University, Texas Tech University, Lehigh University, CECO Building Systems.

9. Precast Concrete Moment Frames
Impacts:
Enables use of precast concrete construction in high
seismic regions
Savings of $5-$10 /sq.ft. in construction costs over
conventional steel and CIP concrete structure (Fortune
Magazine, Sept. 8, 1997)
Used in four construction projects; selected for a 39-story (420 ft.) $128 million apartment building in San Francisco.
Accomplishments:
ACI provisional standard under development
Acceptance Criteria for Moment Frames Based on
Structural Testing - Published Spring 1999
Precast Post-Tensioned Moment Frames – Draft
incorporating TAC comments, March 1999
Product approval from the International Conference of
Building Officials (ICBO), 1995
Finalist - CERF Award for Innovation, 1996
ACI Structural Research Award, 1997
Leader: H. S. Lew, William C. Stone, Geraldine S. Cheok
Team:
American Concrete Institute (ACI)
Charles Pankow Builders, Ltd., CA
University of Washington
Englekirk and Nakaki, CA

10. Structural Performance of Housing Systems
Objective
WIND LOADS
AND RESISTANCE
ALTERNATIVE MATERIALS
AND STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS
INNOVATIVE CONNECTIONS
AND FASTENERS
EARTHQUAKE LOADS
STRUCTURAL FIRE
ENDURANCE
Enable construction cost reduction and increased disaster resistance of housing systems by U.S. industry through design and innovation.
Challenge
Develop a validated 3-dimensional model of housing systems to predict and evaluate structural performance.
Measure and predict failure mechanisms of typical systems and assist the development of high performance systems.
Impacts
Milestones
Bottom line - The NIST laboratories do two things - develop world class metrology and work with U.S. industry to use it to advantage through their products and services in global markets and at home. Doing has required we shift to a new, portfolio approach to our programs. Our STRS program has 10 objectives - 6 of which we call major products. The remaining four include the balance of our measurement and rprediciton wi
In the last two years we have implemented a sea change in BFRL reducing the number of STRS projects from over ___ to just ___ in FY ‘98. In particular, we are investing __% of our STRS on just 6 major products. These are designed to address major needs with high impact products developed and implemented in partnership with carefully chosen industrial collaborators. These products will be developed within 3-5 years and early demonstrations in use will be evaluated to quantity impacts. This necessitated major shifts in the way we do thingsall the way from the bench up within the lab. These are $1-3million , typically multi-division efforts.
The buildng and fire communities represent a major share of the doestic economy and very important potential for export development.
The lack of research support for these industries has
Severe damage or destruction was suffered by nearly 10,000 homes during Oklahoma tornado; 49,000 during hurricane Andrew; 75,000 in Northridge earthquake.
Losses to residential construction represented 72% of the $15.3B in insured losses for the Northridge earthquake.
State-of-the-art report and research plan (4Q98)
Develop 3-D models for shear walls, floors, and roof (3Q99)
Measure roof truss-to-wall connection performance (4Q00)
Measure wall-to-wall connection performance (3Q01)
Measure wall-to-foundation connection performance (2Q02)
Develop/validate 3-D model of housing systems (1Q03)
Establish performance of typical systems through model simulation (4Q03)
Establish performance of innovative systems through model simulation (3Q04)
Research Team
Leaders: John Gross, Fahim Sadek, and Michael A. Riley
Collaborators: NAHB RC, IBHS, North Carolina State University, CUREe (University of California, San Diego), CSIRO (Australia).