Building Science Resource Library
The Building Science Resource Library contains all of FEMA’s hazard-specific guidance that focuses on creating hazard-resistant communities.
You can search for a document by its title, or filter the collection to browse by:
- Topic: High winds, flood, earthquake, etc.
- Document Type: Brochure, report, fact sheet, infographic, etc.
- Audience: Building professionals & engineers, individuals & homeowners, teachers & kids, etc.
The objective of this MAT report is to provide actionable recommendations to improve residential building performance under wildfire conflagration conditions. It describes the MAT’s observations during the field deployments, draws conclusions based on those observations, and provides recommendations for actions that property owners can take to help increase the resiliency of their homes and neighborhoods to future wildfires. It also provides recommendations that local government officials, planners, builders, design professionals, and homeowners' associations can implement to reduce the potential impacts of wildfires on communities and improve their resilience.
This document provides information on ways to reduce the vulnerability of residential structures to wildfire ignition due to windborne embers, hot gases, and flames penetrating common detailing joints and building component interfaces that exist throughout the exterior envelope of a building. This document provides information on measures that builders, contractors, and other design professionals can take to “seal” gaps at joints and retrofit building components and interfaces on the exterior surfaces. While the primary focus of this document is to provide guidance on retrofitting existing residential homes, many of the recommendations for increasing wildfire resiliency of common details, joint systems, and building component interfaces would also be applicable to new construction and commercial buildings
This document provides homeowners with steps they can take now to decrease the likelihood their homes will ignite due to direct flame contact, ember intrusion, or hot gases from wildfires at various physical vulnerabilities throughout the exterior envelope of the house. Specifically, it provides information about some measures that homeowners can take to address vulnerabilities at joints, gaps, vents, and attachments such as decks and fences.
This document provides homeowners with steps they can take now to protect their homes from loss or damage from wildfires due to vulnerabilities introduced by surrounding landscaping and other exterior features (e.g., outbuildings, sheds, furniture, and trash bins) within the homeowner’s property. The goal is to increase homeowner awareness of the key mechanisms and characteristics of WUI fires that can result in home ignition.
This document helps planners, developers, local land management personnel and private property owners identify how wildfires interact with other natural hazards and mitigate the impact of these multi-hazard events. The information in this document can be used to guide the incorporation of site-based wildfire mitigation strategies into planning, community siting and zoning requirements. This document can also guide the adoption of proactive planning, development and maintenance strategies that can minimize future risk of multi-hazard events.
This document provides recommendations to contractors and designers on new building construction that may prevent or slow the spread of a fire from structure-to-structure in densely-spaced neighborhoods.
Developed in response to Hurricane Ida in Louisiana, the purpose of this guide is to provide guidance on how to improve the wind resistance of existing one- and two-family dwellings in hurricane-prone regions of the United States and its territories. This guide is not applicable to manufactured housing (MH) units or townhouse units.
This document provides builders/contractors, planning professionals, HOAs, and local land resource managers with information about wildfire resiliency planning and open-space management policies, best practices, and procedures at subdivision- and neighborhood-scales. The intent is to prevent or limit the risk of wildfire exposures and impacts through various regulatory and policy approaches during planning and entitlement phases (e.g., fire risk assessments, wildfire impact studies, zoning, wildfire-protection planning), such that wildfire hazards and risks are appropriately considered early in the planning-design-construction life cycle of future developments.
The purpose of this document is to provide recommendations to homeowners for pre-wildfire measures to help reduce the risk of smoke damage and do-it-yourself (DIY) steps that homeowners can take to remediate light to moderate smoke damage. This document also includes recommendations for selecting and monitoring a professional cleaning services contractor for heavy smoke damage.
This brochure introduces the 2024 editions of seismic design maps developed under the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and published in the International Residential Code (IRC) and International Building Code (IBC). The intended audiences include the general public, earthquake program managers, building officials, and designers using the IRC and IBC. New in the 2024 edition of the IBC are Seismic Design Category (SDC) maps, designating SDC based on a conservative assignment of default site conditions (Site Class), applicable for most building sites.