- Author
- Bukowski, R. W.
- Title
- Building Regulatory Systems in a Post-September 11 World.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Book or Conf
- Fire Safety Engineering International Conference 2004. Issues and Solutions. FSE2004. Proceedings. March 22-24, 2004, Sydney, Australia, 1-11 p., 2004
- Keywords
- fire safety | safety engineering | regulations | terrorists | terrorism | World Trade Center | uncertainity | risk management | fire protection | building collapse | egress
- Identifiers
- World Trade Center (110-story-high) Towers, Manhattan, New York, September 11, 2001; societal expectations; minimum performance levels; target buildings; progressive collapse; passive and active protection; Chemical, Biological, and radiological (CBR) threats; public policy debate; target buildings; standards of practice; ethics
- Abstract
- The September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States have initiated a significant discussion and rethinking among building regulators not only in the U.S., but also around the world. While most quickly state that regulations should not require that buildings be designed to resist impact by fully loaded aircraft, there is an active dialog on what have come to be called extreme events. Much of the discussion in the literature has focused on technical issues like structural fire resistance and progressive collapse, but there is a public policy debate that should precede and drive the engineering and design discussions. The purpose of this paper is to lay out some of these issues, such as expected response to extreme events; "target" buildings; standards of practice, qualifications, and ethics; regulation of existing buildings; management of risk; and others, and to hopefully start that policy debate.