New Standard Released to Protect Structures From Flood Risks
With resilient design as the first line of defense against natural disasters, civil engineers want to cover all bases. A new released standard by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) aims to prepare structures for one of nature’s most destructive: floods.
Flood Resistant Design and Construction, ASCE/SEI 24-24, establishes minimum requirements for building structures in high-risk flood areas. The guide comprehensively specifies minimum construction standards in flood hazard areas, lists materials viable for building flood-resistant structures and incorporates requirements of the National Flood Insurance Program and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
According to ASCE’s Vice Chair of their 2024 Committee, Jessica Mandrick, The standard had not been updated since ASCE 24-14 came out in 2014. ASCE 24-24 became urgently needed when ASCE 7-22 Supplement 2 was published in 2023. ASCE 7-22 Supplement 2 raised the mean recurrence interval for the flood level that is used to determine flood loads, with the average building now designed to resist the loads imposed by the 500-year flood.
To reduce the loads imposed on a structure and also reduce damage to its contents, it was critical to raise the elevation of buildings correspondingly. The standard now specifies building elevation based on a mean recurrence interval determined by the buildings Flood Design Class, which is similar to its Risk Category. We also moved elevation requirements that were spread throughout the standard to one consistent location. There were also many updates in FEMA Technical Bulletins and the standardization of ANSI/FM 2510 in the past 10 years that the standard was able to pick up.
