Incorporating societal expectations into seismic performance objectives in building codes

Abstract

Seismic provisions in building codes arguably constitute the most important and effective means for improving the performance of the built environment during earthquakes. Because they serve as the minimum and mandatory requirements for new construction that accumulates over time, building codes can and have reduced disaster risk in cities around the world; moreover, codes have evolved with improvements in scientific and engineering understanding, technology, and professional standards. Yet many have questioned whether the “life safety” objectives used in codes around the world are adequate or appropriate. In this opinion paper, we argue that seismic code objectives should reflect how society expects the built environment to perform in an earthquake. Social science methods can be employed to overcome the challenges of understanding what standards society holds for seismic performance. This opinion paper suggests four guiding principles on eliciting public perspectives and reviews examples of how elicitation has been applied around the world in the natural hazards field. It concludes with recommendations and further research needs.

Keywords

Societal expectations building code social sciences performance objectives code objectives policy

Introduction

Building codes have historically been developed to protect the life safety of building users. Indeed, the improvement of codes after major earthquakes is largely responsible for the declining mortality rate in the developed world from large earthquakes over the previous century. Although building codes may only set the minimum requirements for building performance, it must be recognized that economic pressures result in the vast majority of buildings being designed to satisfy this minimum—no more, no less. As a result, in a deterministic sense, the “life safety” performance level of all international building codes also represents the expected performance of all code-conforming buildings. Such “life safety” designs assume the building will be damaged in a strong earthquake, but control the extent and distribution of damages to ensure the life safety of building occupants. Although performance-based designs have become more common in some regions in the last two decades (e.g. LATBSDC, 2017; PEER, 2017), it must be emphasized that the majority of performance-based designs still target a performance consistent with the building code.

Building codes internationally have been developed and maintained by code committees, generally composed of technical experts. Procedures exist to incorporate external opinions during the code revision process through public comments, but this avenue is seldom used by the general public and functions instead as another opportunity for the technical audience to express views. Furthermore, code revision is generally focused on the detailed prescriptive provisions to satisfy the high-level objectives and not on reconsideration of the code objectives themselves.

As an extension of the universal adoption of life safety performance objectives, one may crudely infer that the performance of our communities will be at most “life safety” (assuming that the majority of buildings in a community will approach code-conforming designs over time with retrofit and renewal of non-code-conforming buildings). Given the significant role that performance objectives have on societal functioning after an earthquake, we argue that seismic code objectives should reflect how society expects the built environment to perform in an earthquake.

But how does society actually expect the built environment to perform in the event of strong earthquakes? As with the case of lifeline infrastructure systems (Applied Technology Council, 2016), little data or information exist to help technical experts to understand what expectations or standards the public holds for the seismic performance of buildings. Systematic research and accepted methods for understanding societal expectations are urgently needed.

We argue that this knowledge gap can be addressed by applying established social science methods. Recent workshops on the societal implications of earthquakes indicate considerable interest in incorporating social science methods and findings into previously engineering-dominated forums such as code development (Jones, 2018). Meanwhile, social science research and practice have increasingly advocated for public participation in community-based hazard mitigation planning (Sarzynski and Cavaliere, 2018). However, the integration of engineering and social science disciplines is fraught with barriers, ranging from lack of full buy-in from all parties, well-established regulatory processes that make change difficult, and the methodological challenges of conducting societal elicitation to ensure diverse and equitable representation. Focusing on methods for societal elicitation, this opinion paper summarizes key challenges and proposes guiding principles, illustrated by recent examples of successful applications.

Challenges

Eliciting societal expectations regarding seismic performance objectives poses many difficulties. One fundamental challenge is that earthquakes, as low-probability events, rarely rise to the fore of political agendas and public debate. Populations in earthquake-prone regions may be generally aware of a seismic hazard, but this rarely translates into sustained public demand for government action (May and Feeley, 2000). Earthquake risk reduction policy, when enacted, typically arises from the concerted efforts of individual “champions” rather than broad-based pressure by an informed public (Olshansky, 2005). Furthermore, low public interest is accompanied by poor interpretations of low probability events (Kunreuther et al., 2001; Slovic et al., 1977). When applied to the setting of earthquake risks, Celsi et al. (2005) find that the public’s judgments of damages associated with earthquakes are prone to underestimation due to poor understanding of how earthquake intensities are measured. This has implications on decreasing motivation to take mitigation actions and misconceived views toward the severity of potential damages and impacts.

A related challenge is that “acceptable risk” is a difficult concept to operationalize. If the public is insufficiently aware of, interested in, and knowledgeable about seismic risks, it follows that they cannot be expected to reliably identify thresholds beyond which risk becomes “unacceptable” (May, 2001b).

Furthermore, the “public” is not a monolithic or homogeneous entity, and incorporating societal values requires appropriately recognizing diverse public perceptions. Representing diversity is important because population groups may not only hold varying values, but also experience differential access to decision-making and be affected in disparate ways by building code changes. Although designing approaches to incorporate a cross-section of voices and values into technical decisions remains a research challenge, it is consequential, as the end product of group deliberation depends strongly on which stakeholders participate in the process.

Finally, the public may not have a clear understanding of the role building codes play in mitigating damage from seismic events. Although codes have traditionally been developed to govern the performance of individual buildings without consideration of aggregate damage to the broader community (Mieler and Uma, 2014), public perceptions and societal expectations for earthquake performance may conflate damage and impact of an individual building with the overall functionality of the neighborhood or an entire city. In considering acceptable earthquake outcomes, people consider not only impacts such as personal injury and damage to their home, but also access to emergency healthcare, school closures, business district damages, and other community-scale disruptions (Chang and Shinozuka, 2004). Moreover, seismic safety planning and policy are also commonly and appropriately framed in terms of community functionality (e.g. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), 2016). Even public expectations of an individual building may be framed in terms that exceed the scope of building codes; for example, post-earthquake habitability relates to not only building damage but also utility services. It may therefore be difficult to elicit societal expectations in relation to seismic performance of an individual building.

As discussed further below, these challenges are not insurmountable, and we emphasize that not eliciting societal expectations also entails risks—that code performance objectives will continue to be set by code committee engineers without societal input, and that people and governments will continue to make seismic resilience decisions based on unfounded and potentially erroneous expectations of building performance.

Eliciting societal expectations

Recognizing these inherent challenges as well as the importance of overcoming them, we propose four principles for eliciting societal expectations based on our familiarity with social science research methods, our experience collaborating on earthquake research at the engineering–societal interface, and a review of published examples of public elicitation related to natural hazard risks. This latter review examined the recent peer-reviewed literature and focused on articles that were clearly connected to natural hazards, that provided clear documentation of the methods by which societal expectations were elicited, and where possible, that provided evidence of successful implementation. The purpose of the literature review was to include articles that best represent how societal input has previously been elicited in natural hazard contexts, not to provide a comprehensive review of all projects related to societal expectations or public participation for natural hazard mitigation.

Principles

1. Focus elicitation on what matters to society

A common argument for excluding the public in technical decisions is that the public is poorly informed about the risks and acts irrationally in the face of high consequence, low probability events, and therefore is unable to meaningfully or reliably determine “acceptable” risk standards (May, 1991; Meacham, 2010). From a technical and regulatory perspective, risks are deemed acceptable if the probability of failure and related uncertainties are within the boundaries and objectives defined by a technical board (Meacham, 2010). In contrast, a social framing of acceptable risks focuses not on quantitative thresholds but rather on factors that affect whether or not the public considers certain types of risks to be tolerable. Factors such as values, trust, personal experience, sense of voluntariness, and benefits may influence whether the public will accept or oppose a certain risk (Fischhoff, 2012; Slovic, 2000). For instance, people are seen to have a high risk tolerance for voluntary actions, such as driving a car or participating in risky recreational activities, while the risk tolerance for events outside of one’s control or of unknown impact, such as nuclear power generation or air travel, are substantially lower (Slovic, 2000). From this perspective, managing risks should then entail balancing values and the risk assessment to arrive at agreed-upon acceptable risk levels and appropriate management strategies (May, 2001b; Pidgeon, 1998).

Prior research has explored how societal expectations can be incorporated into technical risk regulation decision-making, even when an “acceptable” risk is not clearly defined. Including the public has been shown to widen the scope for how risks are represented and the objectives used to manage them. The outcome of the widened scope is an improved regulation that better meets societal needs (Pidgeon, 1998). Related to earthquake risk governance, May (2001b, 2007) has recommended that public deliberation should focus on setting desired levels of safety and incorporating societal preferences into safety standards to meet changing views of acceptable risk. Furthering the idea of opening discussions, Bostrom et al. (2006) have proposed using deliberation on acceptable levels of consequences to combine technical analysis with risk perception research. We suggest that there is a particularly critical need to elicit societal expectations regarding what types of earthquake impacts, besides life safety, are of greatest priority.

Similarly, we argue that processes for understanding societal expectations should focus elicitation on scales that resonate with public risk perceptions, and that translating expectations into terms congruent with the scope of building codes should be treated as a technical task by engineers and other experts. For instance, performance objectives in building codes are common across the entire region governed by the code, and effectively influence performance of the community as a whole. Levels of damage that may be acceptable for a single building may not be acceptable when many buildings in a neighborhood are similarly affected and entire urban districts are disrupted and cordoned off. Eliciting societal expectations at community as well as building scales can also contribute toward more effectively linking building codes to overall community resilience objectives. Approaches have been proposed to link individual components currently in building regulations to community and national-level resilience objectives (Burton et al., 2016; Mieler et al., 2013).

2. Include representation of diverse perspectives

Relevant stakeholders who may be interested in informing the performance objectives of building codes include not only building owners—who may be private citizens, businesses, or governments—but also other interest groups such as building occupants, developers, and emergency managers. The various stakeholders’ expectations of building performance in an earthquake would likely differ (Comerio, 2004; May, 2001a); emergency managers with a focus on earthquake response, for instance, are more likely to take a city-wide systems perspective and advocate for proactive risk reduction. Developers, in contrast, are likely to emphasize short-term costs and the individual building perspective (Chaudhry et al., 2018; Tierney, 2014). For stakeholder engagement, therefore, careful consideration is needed regarding the underlying values, interests, and assumptions of the different participants.

When selecting participants for elicitation, care would need to be taken to have representation of individuals across society, acknowledging that some groups have lesser access to power and resources, and are less likely to have their voices heard. Engineers and developers have strong ties to the current code design process and enjoy access to a wide range of resources and influential connections. In comparison, smaller organizations such as homeowner associations or marginalized communities generally lack access to critical resources and power to equitably participate in discussions and decisions related to changing the building code. Eliciting societal expectations should, therefore, consider the perspective of groups that would be especially affected by the minimum standards in building codes (e.g. homeowner associations, affordable housing groups).

Building codes are especially important for safeguarding less advantaged populations since they represent minimum performance standards. It is well established that socio-economically disadvantaged and marginalized populations tend to suffer disproportionately in disasters (Cutter et al., 2010), in part because they tend to occupy more structurally vulnerable buildings that are designed to minimum standards (Liel and Lynch, 2012). While new buildings that exceed code are not uncommon, they tend to be constructed by developers catering to well-resourced tenants (e.g. large corporations) who are concerned about business continuity. For example, following the 2010–2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand, property markets have responded to demand for information on buildings’ seismic performance levels, and “low-damage” seismic design has emerged as a marketing point for new commercial buildings (Bruneau and MacRae, 2017).

3. Utilize social science expertise

Social science research offers a breadth of methodologies that can be used to successfully elicit public preferences and values for environmental decisions using facilitated approaches (Beierle, 2002; Gregory et al., 2012). The public can directly participate, whether in a broad manner through surveys, more narrowly through workshops and open houses, or in combined, mixed-methods approaches. Alternatively, representative groups can participate on behalf of the public. In all cases of public involvement, inclusion is more than a one-way notification of management options; instead, it is an ongoing discussion between stakeholders, decision-makers, and those involved with implementation (Stern and Fineberg, 1996). This includes public involvement in early stages where scoping and framing are undertaken through to project implementation, completion, and evaluation (Chess and Purcell, 1999; Rowe and Frewer, 2000).

The method most appropriate to elicit societal expectations depends on the context being examined. In contexts that have high uncertainty or are tied to values, broad public deliberation is needed. This is in contrast to contexts that focus on a narrow, technical decision where expert opinion and narrow inclusion may be most appropriate (May, 1991; Renn et al., 2011). Factors that help determine which method is most important include: the types of questions being asked, whose input needs to be elicited, achieving representation from various perspectives, how stakeholder input will be used, and the amount of ambiguity and conflicting perspectives held on the topic. Care also needs to be taken to select participants based on the required depth (level of details elicited) and breath (diversity of participants) needed for the decision context (Gregory, 2016). We recommend that social scientists who have the appropriate training be engaged to both identify the best method for eliciting preferences and lead the process of public preference elicitation, working in collaboration with technical experts.

To our knowledge, approaches to elicit acceptable levels of risk have yet to be implemented in any code development process. Current processes, which generally involve only engineers and building officials in code change deliberations, neglect fundamental issues of public values, risk tolerance, and trade-offs. A more inclusive approach would not only facilitate incorporating public values into building codes; as found in other areas of risk management decision-making, the process of public inclusion itself can strengthen democracy, legitimacy, and transparency in how standards are arrived at while building trust in decisions and decision-makers (Petts, 2004; Stern and Fineberg, 1996; Webler et al., 2001). This said, collaboration is needed between social scientists and engineers to ensure that the technical information is appropriate and aligned with the types of information most important to the public, and communicated in a way that will be best received.

4. Include those who can implement change

Our final principle addresses the question of who should be involved in eliciting societal preferences about how buildings should perform in earthquakes. Researchers studying natural hazards policy indicate the need for politician support, particularly after an event occurs and interest is high (Birkland, 1998, 2016). As shown in the examples below, projects initiated by local governments to inform local regulation are more likely to lead to successful regulatory change. This raises an important question: who would need to initiate a study on understanding societal expectations of the building code in order to re-assess the codes’ underlying performance objectives and ultimately to implement regulatory change? The answer to this is not clear and varies by region. To make change possible, inclusion of those who hold authority of jurisdiction is particularly important (NIST, 2016), as is engaging directly with policy-makers (Gluckman, 2014). However, if the project is driven by political processes, it has the potential to be set aside if results do not align with expert or politician preferences. As building codes are typically implemented at a state or provincial level, it would be most beneficial to have state or provincial governments initiate the societal elicitation.

In sum, given the challenges of incorporating societal expectations about seismic performance objectives into building codes, we would recommend a process that (1) allows for open dialogue and focuses elicitation on understanding what matters to the general public, rather than only on technical criteria; (2) incorporates representation from diverse societal groups; (3) draws on both engineering and social science expertise; and (4) is led by, or at least initiated by, entities with the jurisdiction and authority to implement the elicitation outcomes.

Examples

A few examples are presented here to illustrate the value of these principles in application. Our review of the recent peer-reviewed literature yielded only a few examples of how public perspectives have previously been elicited in natural hazard contexts, indicating that while such elicitation is feasible, documenting and critically evaluating the process remain rare in practice.

In the context of land-use planning, Saunders et al. (2013) and Saunders and Kilvington (2016) have made strides in New Zealand in understanding the needs of diverse stakeholders through a risk-based planning approach (RBPA). This process was guided by a steering group that included researchers as well as government representatives at local, regional, and national levels. The research presented risk acceptability thresholds at a series of 12 community engagement sessions that included a total of 171 individuals. Prior to the sessions, experts created a likelihood-consequence matrix for multiple natural hazard scenarios. Through the participatory process, the public was asked about their beliefs across a range of metrics, including social, cultural, built environment, and health and safety, and the consequences of loss for each. For instance, participants determined that a “catastrophic” loss of culture would be experienced if 25% of culturally significant buildings lost functionality (Saunders et al., 2013; Saunders and Kilvington, 2016). The framework and community engagement led to a regional and district level risk tolerance policy in the Bay of Plenty Regional Council and the Thames-Coromandel District Council, New Zealand, though changes in the underlying building code were not made (Kilvington and Saunders, 2015; Saunders et al., 2013).

In the United States, the San Francisco–based Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS) group and the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR) project undertook a large scale, mixed methods project to understand public preferences of community resilience. San Francisco resilience-building projects have used public advisory groups, the media, workshops, a public survey, and public information meetings to inform and gather input on seismic risks and mitigation preferences. Although much of the work has focused on the technical aspects of managing earthquake risks and has focused on four earthquake scenarios, participation has been sought for public involvement in understanding housing concerns post-event, cultural implications, sense of place, safety priorities, and usability of buildings (Poland, 2009). These targets reflect public perceptions in an indirect manner, and represent one approach to identifying societal expectations of building performance in earthquakes. Recent work takes this further to understand and address the long-term impacts of an earthquake on social and economic systems (Comerio, 2018). These projects have had some success at code implementation with cities in California (e.g. Berkeley, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Los Angeles), in part because the scale used in elicitation resonates with concerns held by the public and politicians.

In Canada, the District of North Vancouver undertook an urban planning consultation process that examined landslide risk tolerance. The local government initiated the project in response to a fatality-causing landslide event. This effort subsequently won the 2011 UN Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction and was presented as an example of innovation and community engagement in the 2012 UN resilience handbook. The approach used a Community Task Force where a small number of residents were educated about the risk of landslides in the region. The Community Task Force and local planning officials then held public meetings where a broader range of residents shared their views of landslide risk tolerance and concerns around natural hazards. This was followed by an online survey that focused on determining quantitative risk tolerance thresholds. Through the survey, respondents were able to identify their ideal risk tolerance (e.g. 72% indicated a tolerable level of risk from natural hazards as between 1:10,000 for existing developments and 1:100,000 per year for new developments), while the workshop allowed for greater discussion on concerns such as different risk tolerances in the community, public versus private land management, and mitigation costs (Dercole, 2009; Joyce, 2007; Natural Hazards Task Force, 2008; Tappenden, 2014). The project has successfully amended North Vancouver legislation to reflect the public’s risk-tolerance criteria for landslide hazards.

Other examples illustrate how social science methods such as survey research can be applied to develop a more foundational and generalizable understanding of how members of the public thinks buildings should perform after a natural hazard, addressing such questions as public awareness of building codes, willingness-to-pay for mitigation investments, and support of changes in local building codes. Scenarios have been shown to help provide context to the concepts that may otherwise be hard to conceptualize (e.g. low probabilities) and to allow assessment of different mitigation options. For example, Flynn et al. (1999) in a survey of residents of Portland, Oregon, found strong support for certain risk reduction programs (especially related to protecting highly vulnerable populations and emergency response capabilities), but not for using public funds to mitigate risks from private buildings. Ripberger et al. (2018) conducted a survey on tornado mitigation and found very low support for changes in building codes to increase protection against tornado damages; as many as 35% of respondents would be uncertain or unwilling to support changes in building codes that would increase costs of a newly constructed home by as little as US$2000. On the contrary, Porter (2018) found that for earthquakes, the public is not aware of the role building codes play in building performance, feels that building codes should target a performance greater than life safety, and states a willingness to pay for a greater level of performance, particularly by wealthier individuals. Results of these three surveys have provided guidance in advocacy efforts to change regulations to match societal preferences; particularly the work done by Porter (2016) and Davis and Porter (2016).

Concluding remarks

To our knowledge, no examples currently exist of building code processes that have incorporated information on societal expectations of how buildings should perform in a major earthquake. Current processes, which generally involve only engineering technical experts and building officials in code change deliberations, neglect fundamental issues of public values, risk tolerance, and trade-offs. A more inclusive approach would not only raise awareness of the risks and mitigation options available, it would facilitate incorporating public values into building codes, as found in other areas of public infrastructure decision-making. The process of public inclusion itself can strengthen democracy, legitimacy, and transparency in how standards are arrived at while generating trust in decisions and decision-makers. Furthermore, moving toward higher performance in building standards by engineers alone runs the risk of being derailed prior to implementation if the broader input is not sought and considered in the development of the new provisions. Social science approaches could be used to select representative stakeholders appropriate to the objectives of elicitation and the method used (e.g. homeowners associations, emergency managers, or building developers for targeted methods, or an open survey to the general public for broader input; May, 1991).

In this opinion paper, we have argued that incorporating societal expectations is not only important but feasible, and have focused on approaches to developing understanding of expectations. Recognizing inherent challenges to eliciting societal expectations, we have proposed a few principles and reviewed relevant examples from the natural hazards field. However, the limited quantity of literature is an indication that there is still little understanding about what the public actually expects should occur post-earthquake, what risk tolerance levels are, and if the current building codes meet societal expectations. In particular, we do not know what variables are of interest to the public beyond life safety (e.g. restoration time, repairability, community-level considerations) and if the public is willing to invest resources to improve seismic resilience.

Future data collection should include social scientists and focus on understanding societal beliefs and preferences of seismic performance that can then be included in building code committee deliberations. We argue that in relation to seismic design codes specifically, such engagement should focus not on technical aspects such as probabilities and costs per square feet, but rather on eliciting understanding of what the public values and expects of the built environment in earthquakes (e.g. life safety, reduced property damage, business continuity). This would allow for the public to have its expectations inform changes to the underlying performance objectives of building codes without having to be included in the technical and regulatory decision-making. Multi-disciplinary teams should be used that bring together engineering and social science expertise, and goals and objectives of the project should be clearly defined. When selecting the appropriate research method, care needs to be taken to ensure that the method used allows for the project questions and objectives to be answered and that it is the most appropriate method given the range of stakeholders involved.

The time for change in the long-standing life safety performance target may be upon us, as there appears to be a political appetite in some jurisdictions to seek higher performance objectives in building codes. California Assembly Bill 1857 proposed the formation of a working group to determine “whether a ‘functional recovery’ standard is warranted for all or some building occupancy classifications and to investigate the practical means of implementing that standard” (California Assem, 2018). Although the bill has been vetoed by the Governor, we applaud the Legislature for considering the importance of elicitation of societal expectations in this process by designating a “functional recovery working group comprised of appropriate public and private sector entities.” This indicates AB-1857 already addresses two of the principles outlined above; namely, including a diverse representation and being initiated by those who can implement change. We hope that this opinion paper will encourage the consideration of the remaining principles described above—focusing elicitation on what matters to people, and utilizing social science expertise in the process—if and when such a working group is formed. We further support similar efforts in other earthquake-prone regions of the world where experts and the public alike are questioning whether the life safety objective of seismic building codes is adequate for meeting societal expectations.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was partially supported by QuakeCoRE, a New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission-funded Centre. This is QuakeCoRE publication number 0581.

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