NFPA Journal - November/December 2017 - 21

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NO MATTER WHAT PLATFORM YOU'RE ON,
WE'VE GOT YOU COVERED.

R

COVER STORY
RESILIENCY

COVER STORY

Training
the

Brain

RESILIENCE

A new team of NFPA data experts
is developing powerful new tools that tap
a century's worth of information and
may soon reshape how fire and safety
A big-picture
look
onejobs
of the most
professionals
doat
their

compelling concepts in
safety and emergency preparation, and the role codes + standards
By in
Jesse
Romanresilience happen. By Jesse Roman
can play
making
Illustration by Harry Campbell

AS AN EXAMPLE OF RESILIENCY, it's tough to beat the tardigrade. The eight-

S

itting on shelves, in cabinets, and on microfilm

GETTING SNOWED
IN BOSTON

A NEW STANDARD
ON DUST HAZARDS

IN PERSPECTIVES:
POWER TO THE PATIENTS

+
July/August 2014

legged, millimeter-long
aquaticofinvertebrate
can survive being frozen at minus 328 degrees
in the basement archives
NFPA's headquarters
are thousands of documents that
Fahrenheitnear
andBoston
heated
to more than 300 degrees Fahrenheit. It can survive in oxygencollectively tell the story of fire in the United
depleted water
stretching
its body
maximize
oxygen absorption. It can repair its own
States.by
Countless
narratives,
charts,to
photos,
and
maps recall the circumstances behind numerous calamities,
DNA
to survive radiation levels 1,000 times higher than what other animals can withstand.
from conflagrations that destroyed entire cities to detailed
It can
dial of
down
metabolic
activity,
curl indusinto a near-lifeless ball, and live in suspended
histories
fire inits
some
of America's
most obscure
tries and occupancies.
animation
for a decade or more. Dehydrated tardigrades exposed for 10 days to the harsh
About 90 minutes away, in a data center in Springfield,
vacuum
and deadly
outer
space have returned to life within 30 minutes of
Massachusetts,
sits thesolar
latestradiation
addition toof
NFPA's
data
depository. Beneath the casing of an unremarkable lookbeing
plopped back into water. ¶ The tardigrade's resiliency-its ability to respond, withing metallic box lies an assortment of circuits and chips
that adapt,
NFPA staff
hasquickly
nicknamed
Crosby, after NFPA's
firstsurvive events that would kill other creatures.
stand,
and
recover-allows
it to
secretary, Everett Crosby, who, more than a century ago,
There
is no animal on earth more resilient, save perhaps humans.
first championed the idea of collecting data to reduce fire

A BIGGER + BETTER
CONFERENCE PREVIEW

FIGHTING OIL +
GAS FIELD FIRES

40

www.nfpajournal.org

March/April 2015

www.nfpajournal.org

DATA CONNECTIONS

loss. While the reams of paper in NFPA's archives dutifully recall the past, Crosby has the potential to reveal the
NFPA JOURNAL MARCH/APRIL 2015
future, taking what has already happened to unlock what
may come. u

NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2016

JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2017

What it is, what it looks like, and how NFPA
codes + standards are shaping its evolution

HOW NFPA'S BOLD NEW DATA ANALYTICS EFFORT COULD TRANSFORM FIRE SAFETY

OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE NATIONAL FIRE PROTECTION ASSOCIATION

Recovery begins in the Breezy Point neighborhood
of Queens, New York, ravaged by flood and fire
during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

NFPA.ORG/JOURNAL

NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2016

Nov Dec 16 Cover.indd 2

NO
EASY
FIX

NFPA.ORG/JOURNAL

RRESILIENCE
DATA CONNECTIONS

Nov Dec 16 Cover.indd 2

Photograph: Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NYC)

installing power redundancies in hospitals or airports, or
even building stronger community bonds in neighborhoods. Since 2010, the federal government has focused on
resiliency as a key concept to national security and combating the effects of climate change.
Several reports have identified the importance of codes
and standards for bolstering resiliency efforts. "Organizations such as NFPA have a critical role to play in building
resilience into communinfpa.org/resilience
ties and systems," Flynn
said. "While researchers
can identify the 'what' and
'how' to make our societies
more resilient, practical innovations that draw on the
latest knowledge, tools, and
technologies are unlikely to
see early and wide adoption unless they are quickly
embedded into codes and
standards."
Over the last year, NFPA
has considered the role it

Read more on the concept of
resilience, including:

"Disaster Resiliency and NFPA
Codes and Standards," a new
report by the Fire Protection
Research Foundation;
"The National Security
Strategy of the United States
of America," from 2010;
The Community Disaster
Resilience project conducted
by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology;
A case study on how MassPort
plans to make Boston's seaport
and airport storm-resilient.

MARCH/APRIL 2015

THE FIRE SERVICE CONFRONTS
THE NATION'S OPIOID EPIDEMIC

HOW NFPA'S BOLD NEW DATA ANALYTICS EFFORT COULD TRANSFORM FIRE SAFETY

NFPA.ORG/JOURNAL

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's post-Hurricane
Sandy improvements have included concrete lining and waterproofing operations of train tunnels beneath New York City.

As in the animal kingdom, human resilience is often
a matter of life and death. Throughout history, societies
lacking resilience suffered terrible ends; people died, while
cities and civilizations collapsed and faded away. According
to Stephen Flynn, the founding director of the Center for
Resilience Studies at Northeastern University, modernity
has done nothing to change this fact of life.
"It will be the most resilient communities, companies,
and countries that will prosper in the 21st century-those
that are not resilient, that are fragile and brittle, will end up
isolated and will fail in the current global environment,"
said Flynn. "There is no risk-free place on the planet. People
will live, invest, and gravitate to places that are more resilient and flee those that are not. It is crucial as a country to
get this right."
Viewed through a hazards and security lens, resilience
can be defined as the ability to withstand a disruption, blunt
the impact, recover quickly, and adapt to emerge stronger
and better prepared than before. It is achieved on both a
small scale, as in a local business or a hospital, and on a
large scale, such as building resiliency into an urban transit
system, a regional power grid, a city, or even a nation. Resiliency can mean erecting better levees in New Orleans,

11/4/16 2:27 PM
11/4/16 2:27 PM

nfpa.org/journalapps

NFPA JOURNAL

41
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - November/December 2017
