Resilience Check

Overview

Stress-test a North American building project against seven resilience axes — climate hazards, passive survivability, structural & envelope, energy, water, programmatic flexibility, and community/disaster role — and produce a written review that lives in docs/resilience/.

Aligned with the resilience standards used in NA practice: ASCE 7-22, ASCE 24-14 (flood), ASHRAE Standard 100, ASHRAE 55, IBC Risk Categories, LEED v4.1 Resilient Design pilot credits, RELi 2.0, PHIUS Passive Building, USRC seismic rating, and FEMA P-series guidance.

When to use

Trigger on:

• Pasted design / program context with a resilience or climate-adaptation question.
• Existing-building assessment requests focused on future hazard performance.
• Explicit asks: "resilience check", "climate stress test", "future-test this", "passive survivability hours", "RELi credit check".
• Hand-off from brief-review when the brief flags resilience as a stated priority.

Do NOT trigger for:

• General design critique (use design-critic).
• Brief / RFP completeness review (use brief-review).
• Drawing-set review (use drawing-checklist).
• Code-compliance question that is not resilience-specific (no skill for general code yet — write directly).

Workflow

Step 1 — Bootstrap if needed

Check that docs/resilience/index.md exists. If not:

python scripts/init_resilience_workspace.py

Step 2 — Establish the hazard profile

Resilience is hazard-specific. Identify the project's hazards before applying the axes.

• Read docs/project.md if it exists for site address, ASHRAE 169 climate zone, FEMA flood zone, USGS seismic design category, NOAA climate region.
• If site information is missing, ask once for street address (or lat/long) and intended Risk Category (IBC Table 1604.5 — typically II for normal occupancy, III for assembly > 300, IV for essential facilities).
• Pull hazard data from references/climate_data_sources.md (NOAA, FEMA, USGS, ASCE 7 Hazard Tool, USDA wildfire, NIDIS drought, EPA EJScreen).
• Project to 2050 minimum, 2080 if owner has stated long-life intent (institutional, civic, infrastructure). Use NOAA Climate Explorer for downscaled projections.

Step 3 — Apply seven-axis review

Load references/resilience_axes.md for the full framework with sub-criteria and standards. Quick reference:

1. Climate hazards — Flood, wind, heat, wildfire, drought, seismic, snow/ice. Identify which apply, current vs 2050 magnitude, and which are addressed in the design.
2. Passive survivability & operational resilience — Hours of habitable conditions during a power outage in summer/winter design week (ASHRAE Standard 100, RELi PS credit).
3. Structural & envelope — ASCE 7-22 wind/seismic/snow with future amplification. Envelope wind-driven rain, flood resistance per ASCE 24-14, wildfire-resistant assemblies (IWUIC, ASTM E2632).
4. Energy resilience — Backup power scope (life-safety only vs full building), on-site generation (PV + storage), microgrid capability, demand-response readiness, fuel diversification.
5. Water resilience — Potable redundancy, stormwater capacity for projected rainfall increase, sewer back-up prevention, on-site water capture/reuse, drought-tolerant landscape.
6. Programmatic flexibility — Adaptive reuse potential, structural grid flexibility, floor-to-floor heights for systems retrofit, technology and use change horizon (10/30/50 year).
7. Community / disaster role — Building's role during community disruption: shelter, cooling/warming center, EOC, medical surge, comms hub. Required by some AHJs for essential facilities.

Focus on the 3-5 axes with real signal for the identified hazards. Do not apply seismic-heavy criteria to a low-seismic site, and do not apply flood criteria to a high-elevation inland site, beyond noting the absence.

Step 4 — Write the review

Read assets/resilience-template.md, fill placeholders. Filename:

docs/resilience/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>.md

Slug rule: lowercase, [^a-z0-9-] removed, max 40 chars, derived from project name + dominant hazard if helpful (acme-hq-flood, harbor-school-wildfire). If a review with the same date+slug already exists, suffix -<n>.

Use the Write tool. English only — quote any code/standard text in original English.

Step 5 — Update the resilience index

python scripts/append_to_index.py \
  --date 2026-05-07 \
  --slug acme-hq-flood \
  --hazards "flood,heat,wind" \
  --risk-category III \
  --primary-axes "hazards,passive-survivability,envelope"

The script appends a row to docs/resilience/index.md. Do NOT edit the index manually with the Edit tool — table alignment breaks easily.

Step 6 — Report

Tell the user:

• Path to the review file.
• The 2-3 highest-priority hazards and the design responses needed.
• Whether the design as-described meets ASCE 7-22 + ASHRAE Standard 100 + Risk Category requirements, or where it falls short.
• Suggested next moves (specific studies: BIM-based flood modeling, CFD wind comfort, dynamic energy simulation for passive survivability).

Rules

• Hazard claims cite a source (FEMA FIRM panel, NOAA dataset, USGS map, ASCE 7 Hazard Tool query). Never assert a flood elevation or wind speed without citing where it came from.
• Distinguish current code minimums (IBC, ASCE 7) from forward-looking targets (2050 projections, RELi, Passive House). Mark each finding "code minimum" / "above code" / "below code".
• Reject vague resilience language. "Flood-resistant" is not a finding; "Finished floor at +12.0 NAVD88, 3 ft above BFE per ASCE 24-14 Class 2" is a finding.
• If projecting to 2050+, name the projection source (NOAA Climate Explorer, RCP/SSP scenario used) — do not invent numbers.
• Risk Category drives many requirements. State the assumed Risk Category at the top of every review.
• For seismic, cite Site Class (ASCE 7 Chapter 20) and SDC (Seismic Design Category) when known; flag if either is missing.

Anti-patterns

• Listing every axis even when most don't apply — pick the 3-5 with real signal for the hazards.
• Treating "resilience" as one axis. It is hazard-specific; flood, wildfire, and earthquake demand different responses.
• Citing future climate projections without a scenario (RCP 4.5 vs 8.5; SSP2-4.5 vs SSP5-8.5) — these change the magnitudes meaningfully.
• Recommending generic measures ("add resilience"). Recommend named systems with sizing intent (e.g., "add 72-hour life-safety natural gas generator + 250 kWh battery for refrigeration" rather than "add backup power").
• Editing index.md manually instead of using append_to_index.py.
• Confusing operational resilience (building keeps running) with passive survivability (occupants survive without it running). Both matter; they are different.

Resources

• scripts/init_resilience_workspace.py — bootstrap docs/resilience/ and the resilience index
• scripts/append_to_index.py — append a row to docs/resilience/index.md
• references/resilience_axes.md — seven-axis framework with NA standards (ASCE, ASHRAE, RELi, PHIUS, FEMA, USRC), sub-criteria, common failure modes, example findings
• references/climate_data_sources.md — primary NA data sources for hazard quantification (NOAA, FEMA, USGS, EPA, USDA), with what each is good for and how to query
• assets/resilience-template.md — review markdown template