In September of last year, Simpson Strong-Tie hosted our first Strong Partners Seismic Symposium in Southern California. We were pleased to feature several top speakers, including seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones, discussing the importance of making our communities more resilient. Resilience has become a hot topic in the past several years as we continue to experience more frequent and more powerful natural disasters that devastate communities. We’ve seen numerous distressing examples of what happens when people are left without structures in which to live, learn, work and shop.
There’s been a lot of discussion recently about resilient buildings and resilient communities, including what it means to be resilient, why it’s important, whether it’s possible within budget constraints, and how it can be achieved. The 100 Resilient Cities Rockefeller Foundation initiativedefines “urban resilience” as “the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and systems within a city to survive, adapt and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience.” The discussions have noted that communities are made up of several components — such as buildings, infrastructure, water, power and communication — that all need to
