Approved by the Energy, Environment, and Water Policy Committee on October 24, 2022
Approved by the Infrastructure and Research Policy Committee on January 27, 2023
Approved by the Public Policy and Practice Committee on February 15, 2023
Adopted by the Board of Direction on July 2023

Policy

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) supports:

  • Initiatives that increase the resilience of infrastructure against human-induced and natural hazards through education, research, planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance.
  • Development of performance criteria and uniform national standards that address interdependencies and establish minimum performance goals for infrastructure.
  • An all-hazard, comprehensive risk assessment process that considers event likelihood and consequence, encourages mitigation strategies, service life, monitors outcomes, and addresses recovery and return to service during the planning/design process for infrastructure at all government levels.
  • An approach to planning, designing, constructing, financing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure that increases or maintains resiliency.
  • The adoption of the following five resilient infrastructure principles (The World Bank) for infrastructure projects:
    1. Knowing the system through network analysis and criticality assessment.
    2. Improving maintenance to reduce vulnerability and improve resilience.
    3. Involving users/stakeholders for active demand management.
    4. Working with nature to manage and respond to risks.
    5. Applying innovation where appropriate.

Issue

To be resilient, infrastructure projects require a system-based approach. An all-hazards, comprehensive risk assessment, including recovery and return to service, should be incorporated into planning, design, construction, operation, closure, and maintenance activities for infrastructure components including design life. New initiatives should be coordinated across all levels of governments. 

Rationale

Resilience is the ability to plan, prepare for, mitigate, and adapt to changing conditions to enable recovery of physical, social, economic, and ecological infrastructure. Improving resilience will allow for a shorter return to functionality while accounting for interdependence within and across all sectors.

Civil engineers provide leadership for planning, designing, constructing, operating, managing, and maintaining infrastructure systems. The increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters as well as deliberate destructive events, combined with increasing population densities, reliance on technology, aging infrastructure, and interdependencies, have demonstrated vulnerabilities to infrastructure. An important component of resilience is understanding the impact of the loss of infrastructure and the timeline and cost to restore its function following an extreme event. 

The creation of resilient infrastructure systems requires an approach that draws upon all available stakeholders, users, tools, research, and resources. This system-based approach results in more comprehensive and cost-effective solutions to maintaining and restoring infrastructure

This policy has worldwide application
ASCE Policy Statement 500
First Approved in 2003