New MBIE seismic risk guidance for buildings

MBIE has released some much needed guidance on using seismic risk assessments for occupancy decisions.

The guide provides support for interpretation of seismic assessments, in particular %NBS, and helps users to understand how this relates to life safety risk.

At Resilient Organisations we have been thinking about this and related issues a lot. Seismic, and other low probability natural hazard risks, do not sit naturally with typical enterprise risk management systems. Not only is seismic risk low probability, an organisations’ ability to effectively manage seismic risk has a natural limit. We think this key message from the MBIE’s guidance, “You cannot eliminate seismic risk. Even if a building is vacated, staff and building users will be exposed to seismic risk in their homes and other buildings” is a particularly useful reflection point.