The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate will hold a workshop, "Resiliency of the National Building Inventory: Creating a Roadmap for the Future," at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, September 13-14.

DHS S&T, in cooperation with Karagozian & Case (K&C), and Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (WJE), is sponsoring the workshop to identify the state of the national building inventory and performance issues associated with aging buildings, and to outline retrofit techniques for the future of the building inventory. The workshop will address the need for high performance and continuity of operations considerations in the building life cycle. It will focus on large commercial, residential, institutional and industrial buildings.

The purpose of the workshop is to characterize the condition of the existing building inventory within the United States and to prepare a roadmap that will aid the public and private sectors in planning for impacts on the built environment due to demographic, economic and societal trends. Attendees will consider two primary issues: changing demographics in the U.S. and the simultaneous aging and obsolescence of the building inventory. In addition, the capacity of the building inventory to support current and future urbanization trends is to be considered, with high performance and resiliency as key components of the discussion. The roadmap developed will describe how the aging building inventory will need to change to meet the evolving demands present in the modern world.

The National Institute of Building Sciences is part of the planning team for the event. Two Institute staff presentations will be among the sessions, covering the topics of "Performance-Based Design" and "Demographic Trends and the Impact of Man Made and Natural Hazards."

To attend, please RSVP to the URS Corporation no later than August 15 at aging_buildings@urscorp.com. View the invitation and agenda.