Institutional and commercial facilities, reeling from the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, also are continuing to grapple with a decades-old challenge that is prompting many facility managers to rethink nearly every aspect of their organizations’ assets, activities and operations — climate change. In particular, rising coastal waters and expanding wildfire seasons are forcing managers to take important steps to improve their organizations’ resilience — the ability to prepare for, respond to and return to normal operations after a catastrophe.
Now, the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) is working with Fannie Mae to develop a roadmap on mitigation investment to help the nation’s built environment prepare for and better respond to climate change. The Resilience Incentivization Roadmap 2.0 is sponsored by Fannie Mae and supported by the NIBS multi-hazard mitigation council’s committee on finance, insurance and real estate.
“Banks, insurance companies, appraisers, and real estate firms all play a significant role in how buildings are procured, designed and constructed,” says Stephen T. Ayers, interim CEO of NIBS. “How these different segments evaluate the risk associated with particular projects, technologies and practices can have an enormous impact on whether an idea gets the funding and insurance needed to move forward to fruition.”
The goal of the Resilience Incentivization Roadmap 2.0 is to identify pathways to work with lenders to explore financial products that support resilient buildings, help developers properly evaluate risk and recognize values of resilient buildings and lower the upfront cost, collaborate with insurers to promote insurance programs that reward safer structures, and support communities to develop layered mitigation investment packages.
